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Cabinet design progress


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  • 4 weeks later...
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Day of reckoning

 

Well, the time fnially arrived where I was able to start assembling the cab for the last time. After I gave it two coats of satin black, I was getting in a lot of trouble for leaving it in the car port so I couldn't go back for a 3rd. It looked good enough anyway so that had to do.

 

Here's a picture of it today mostly assembled and rady for MAMEing action:

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134638.jpg

 

A shot from behind. Note the vent down the bottom. Before I considered this, I posted a pic on Facebook and somebody commented on the fan, or more specifically where there air was supposed to be drawn in. Fair point. Luckily, I have a 120mm fan guard around that I took off my PC because it chocked the fan too much. Not chances choking this new fan, it's 240V and you definately know it's on.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134645.jpg

 

The bezeless, marqueeless front:

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134646.jpg

 

Underneath the front showing the volume control and pause button. Both work fine and you wouldn't know they were there if you didn't look for them. They're at a very good height for my 16 month old son however who has learnt they are very entertaining to press. Mid-game, you'll suddenly see your credits accumlate, the volume goes up and the game pauses cyclically... look down, and they're a laughing boy having a better time than his dad.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134651.jpg

 

The high-fi speakers pumping out the tunes.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134653.jpg

 

This shows the paint finish (very hard to take a photo of black paint properly). Turned out pretty well considering my painting environment. If I did it again and had time I would definately got for 1 or 2 more coats. It doesn't matter though unless it's put in a showroom, so I'm not too bothered. Maybe for the next one... :rolleyes

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134650.jpg

 

The power, reset and monitor controls. I was going to make a little hidden door or something to mount it in but I decided on this. Some will no doubt say it's blasphemous, but considering I can't open the doors up without the power being cut I think it's in a fairly accessable but inconspicuous place.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2084625.jpg

 

The buttons from the inside. You can see I made the buttons share a common ground. This made for some entertainment which I'll crap on about later.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2084623.jpg

 

The power junction box and safety/relay box. There was one basic wiring error, that being that I ran the 12V relay (to switch everything on when the PC is turned on) off 5V power from a Molex plug. I didn't realise that the red wires were +5V and the YELLOW wires were +12V. This had me totally lost, until I got the multimeter out. Reading at a solid 5V I was suspicious there may be two different voltages. I was right. Once I rewired it the whole thing worked an absolute treat.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2084618.jpg

 

A closeup of my hack wiring effort. Obviously in the absence of switches, when one thing's on they're all on. I may consider changing this in the future as I like to stream JJJ off it (got wireless internet you see...) and I don't really want the squeel of the CRT in the background while I listen to it.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2084621.jpg

 

The safety microswitches. Haven't missed a beat and are fail-safe.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134642.jpg

 

The computer mount and HDDs. I've put the HDDs way out of the way to keep them away from the nasty magnetism of the sub. I'm hoping a solid metre will keep them safe.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2084611.jpg

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2084609.jpg

 

The subwoofer and little 18W amplifier. Obviously there is a lack of amp for the sub. I haven't bought it yet, but am going for a 150W Jaycar job before they run out of stock. I borrowed my mate's 600W amp of the same make (I'm building him a home subwoofer next weekend) and the sub sounds really schmick. It won't shake the windows off a mount, but it puts out plenty of punch and will serve well as a party jukebox. Loud enough to piss off the neighbours, and their neighbours too.

 

http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz75/TheWiggman/P2134644.jpg

 

For the first powerup with my non-approved wiring I plugged it in and no smoke appeared nor did any circuit breakers trip. Success. I then pressed the 'reset' button which allows the PC to be turned on, and immediately the PC did turn on. This wasn't mean to happen without pressing the power button. It did a series of odd beeps and then shut down. It only powered up while I was holding the button it, which was what it was supposed to do. I couldn't understand this beeping though. Then I realised - because I shared a common earth between the power and reset switches, it was wired up so that the circuit was always closed. Some simple polarity switching solved this. However, when I pressed the power button the beeping followed suit. I diagonosed it and it came down to two things: motherboard, graphics card or RAM. I decided to remove the graphics card and after undoing the scren it came out with almost no effort. I facepalmed myself as I realised I hadn't actually pressed it in all the way. Pushed it back it with a little more force this time and PRESTO! Everything powered up beautifully.

 

All that remains now is to buy a light, put together the marquee, and buy some glass for the bezel. Until then, it's R-Type time.

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  • 6 months later...

Hi all, it's been ages but I thought I'd provide an update. Since my last post I've changed employer, bought a house, moved interstate and midway (literally) through all this I am now the proud father of twins. They've sucked a lot of my time, not to mentioned moving into the house and still unpacking. The good news is though at our new house I'll be putting in a 6x10.5m shed so when things happen they should happen a lot quicker.

 

The MAME still looks as it did above but over the months it has suffered from numerous BSODs and random resets to the point I could not play it for more than about 5 mins without something occurring. This all started when my son mashed some crazy key combo and then pressed a button over and over causing the machine to reset repeatedly. Good on you little man. After a lot of pain and frustration it wouldn't even load past the boot ROM without resetting. Then, it wouldn't turn on at all. After some thinking I tried a different power supply and voila! Problem solved. This was my home PC PSU however so I need to source a new one. Good on me though, I actually bolted the PSU to the case mounted in the cab from the inside of the PSU, meaning I will have to remove the entire chopped up case from the cab and pull it apart just to remove the PSU. Not to mention resoldering all the wires back in...

Bed time, if something happens I'll post. Otherwise once this new shed goes up expect something to happen fast! In about 6-8 weeks.

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  • 2 years later...

Well nearly 2 years later I've posted with minimal progress.

 

* Cactus hard drive

* BSODs from hardware incompatibilities

* Other hobbies ruling my life.

* Suspected 2nd dead power supply (later turned out to be a relay issue)

 

The shed is well and truly up and since last time, I've taken home brewing pretty seriously and the attention that it's focussed on the family is directed towards it. Recently though I revived the cabinet for Australia day and classic gaming is getting me keen to finish off the job. Funds are the major holdup so it won't be for a few months, but here it is at present -

 

IMG_2774.thumb.jpg.cf048cc08062024da18da9641a0401ed.jpg

 

Tap beer next to an arcade cabinet. Friday night proved that was a recipe for disaster.

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  • 4 years later...

The heartache from getting this cabinet to work has been staggering. All up I have:

  • 2 x power supplies
  • 2 x PCI motherboards, 1 x AGP motherboard
  • 1 x AGP ArcadeVGA, 1 x PCI ArcadeVGA

 

To start with (2014) I was getting BSODs out of nowhere. Then I attempted to boot up the cabinet after a small hiatus and got monitor sync issues. Must be the graphics card I figured. I then moved house twice and FINALLY got a shed built. Tried to fire it up again with no luck. I got hold of 2 x old PCs but both had PCI graphics card slots which was no good for my AGP ArcadeVGA.

I splurged and bought a PCI ArcageVGA, fearful they might soon stop making them.

Tried it with PC1 - no luck*. Tried it with PC2 and managed to get the fainest resemblance of an image. F***************K. Figured with both graphics cards not putting out an image my Jomac chassis must be at fault. Sent it away and a fault was found - great news because at least that's one box ticked.

I tried to fire it up over the weekend and couldn't get anywhere. Battled, no image with the PCI card. Swapped PCs and power supplies, similar issues. The computers would fire up with the fan going 100%.

I plugged a PC monitor in and still no luck. Was I going mad?!?!?! Both motherboards had onboard graphics so I figured there might be a conflict. I tried with onboard graphics with PC2 - after removing the AVGA - and it booted up to the BIOS with a warning saying the system fan wasn't connected (it was). It then shut down. So it's stuffed.

In one last vain attempt at getting ANYWHERE I found the old motherboard and AVGA. I booted it up and VOILA!!!!!! The BIOS screen. I nearly shed a tear and high-fived my son. I couldn't find the old hard drive around from about 2014 so I grabbed a CD of XP and a USB. Ran XP installer and boom - BSOD. Some hardware kernal issue. When I tried to restart all I got was a black screen.

 

WHY

 

I removed the graphics card then reinserted and boom, it ran again. I quickly went into the BIOS to play with settings and randomly after about 2 mins it would power down. Every time. So I have -

  • 3 out of 3 faulty/incompatible motherboards
  • 2 ArcadeVGAs, one of which has never been proven to work at 15 kHz

 

Next step is to source an old VGA motherboard, then I'll buy a new PCI motherboard if that doesn't work. I can only take so much heartache, all I want to do is play Bubble Bobble with my kids or show them how to R-Type.

 

* I have a circuit in my cabinet which runs off the 5V of the power supply, meaning any new power supply needs and additional wire soldered onto it. This means I can't just plug a PC into it for testing, I need the cabinet PSU to be 'on' to allow the monitor and sound to turn on. This means I needed a PC, faulty or otherwise, to be switched on in the cab while another PC is plugged in for testing. So frustrating.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 5 months later...
get rid of that pc equipment and get yourself a dell or hp sff and remove that entire headache.

 

Nice necro :)

 

He wouldn't be able to install the AVGA cards though, although a $20 radeon 5450 using crt_emudriver is always a better bet for 15kHz monitors. Something more powerful would work even better, though it would be more expensive. If he uses linux he wouldn't need either, of course, but i'm presuming he wants windows because he had the AVGA's to begin with.

Edited by buttersoft
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  • 5 months later...

Hey it's not that old. Only nearly a year, and a few days ago marks my 10 year annivesary with Aussie Arcade. Was it really that long ago and I still haven't finished this cabinet?

 

For me first and foremost is the 15 kHz experience with a CRT, running with perfect V-sync. Nothing can beat it, no display processing to worry about and the refresh rate of the old monitors still outclasses any LCD screen I've seen. Quality and resolution not so much... but that's not why I made the MAME cabinet.

I might consider other options but when I built the thing ArcadeVGA was the only option as it was 'plug and play'.

 

The story ended up being a happy one. My wife and I decided to clean out a cupboard and miraculously I found my old PC motherboard from years ago with AGP. It only had PATA HD connectors though and it turned out a mate of mine had and old HD in his PC for uni. 10 GB, but it'll do. Plugged it in, installed Windows XP, Ultimarc and... it worked. Copied my MAMEwah backup across and I was cracking out R-Type into the night. I regularly go out and play it, the kids love it, and it's one of the pleasures of life.

 

One day... one day... I'll spend some cash on it and have it presentable. If the PC dies I'll look into what buttersoft has recommended.

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