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Astro City MAMEification


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Thought I'd say hello, show some pics and probably ask a few questions along the way. I hope this is interesting to someone :redface

 

I picked up this Astro City from another AA member a few weeks back, the intention being to finally get a MAME cabinet happening after many years of want. After some research I settled on the Groovy Arcade linux distribution and went about scabbing PC parts with limited success. A pile of stuff came from the in-laws, the only useful parts being a motherboard, CPU, and hard drive. The motherboard needed some bad caps replaced and the CPU was quickly upgraded, power supply is new, RAM is new. In the end it's a dual core 3ghz Intel, 4GB RAM and 160GB drive. Graphics card is a new Asus HD5450 as it hit the cheap/good balance and seems in common use. I've gone over my self-imposed budget on the PC already as the original plan was $0 - $100 for that part :rolleyes

 

Onto the interesting bit (to me anyway). Apart from the unattainable PC budget I have a few goals for this -

 

- no permanent modifications to the cabinet

- recycle or scavenge as much as possible

- tidy and secure, everything inside cabinet and solid so the cabinet can be moved without hassle

 

After farting about trying to get one of the hand-me-down pc cases to fit, including cutting one shorter and bracing it with aluminium angle, I decided to mount the PC on the original board bracket. A bit of brainstorming later and I've removed the coin box to open up the space and set about cutting a panel to fit the opening. Thankfully I work from home and just happen to have a CNC router in the shed, and some 1/4" phenolic sheet left over from previous adventures. The holes are for 2x coin buttons, a small power button for the PC, plus USB and RJ45 ports. I like the idea of having the coin buttons down there emulating the hassle of topping up credits during a boss battle.

 

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The same day I found time to cut that I'd been busy in the spray booth and hadn't yet cleaned the gun properly. Time to give that panel a coat of satin white 2 pack polyurethane, again left over as I had to buy 1 litre of it from the supplier. Everything gets a coat of satin white now :/

 

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Moving on to the PC and J-Pac mounting. Same material, 1/4" phenolic sheet, with a bunch of PCB standoffs and M3 screws. So far this is the only part where I've permanently modified the cabinet, adding a 3mm hole to the board mounting bracket at the back to keep the board secure. I put a slot in there for the end of the graphics card but used longer standoffs than I originally planned. The card just has the VGA cable as support now, it seems secure enough to work.

 

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From there it's Groovy Arcade installation followed by installing the PC in the cabinet. Power on and I'm greeted by interesting noises from the monitor's anode cap :( Monitor out and chassis off to to Jomac tomorrow for a service and fresh cap (Joey has been great via PM :023:).

 

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Having the monitor out means I can see what I'm doing so I'll probably completely tidy up the wiring and connect the PC to the cabinet 240v cable before reinstalling it. Last pics for now. The HDD drives are in a caddy stolen from my work PC

 

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Accidentally hit reply instead of preview last night then gave up and went to bed.

 

Continuing on...

 

The small power switch came from Altronics IIRC, credit buttons I think came from ozstick years ago, all leftovers from unrelated work stuff. The J-pac is definitely from ozstick, I had a good chat with Chris last week as he unnecessarily apologised for delays. Lovely guy.

Panel mount USB and LAN extensions are from ebay and aliexpress, I think they were around $5 each.

 

Things still to do that I know of -

 

Mount audio amplifier, I have a small 12v circuit board on the way from ebay, about $5 again.

 

Tidy wiring, add LAN port when it arrives, splice 240v PC power to cabinet mains cable.

 

Work on Groovy Arcade configuration. I think I'll have some questions that are too dumb for the official groovymame forum, I'm hoping you lovely people can help :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Haven't had time to update but I have got some more work done and games played:D

 

Chassis is back in, serviced by Jomac and working wonderfully :cool:

 

Wiring is cleaned up. Pics later.

 

$4 audio amp board arrived, it's picking up some noise that seems to be only noticeable when really turned up. Not sure if a shielded box around it will help. Doesn't seem to matter where the amp is placed or what direction it faces. I've ordered a different type of mega cheap amp to see if it gives a better result.

 

On the negative side the motherboard keyboard encoder seems to have died so I can't tweak settings. Does anyone know if it's possible to plug a USB keyboard into the Jpac and use it's keyboard encoder? The Jpac is working fine, no problems getting keystrokes from that.

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I think I meant keyboard controller. Acording to the great Google there's a chip for it. Other stuff seems to work except keyboards, doesn't matter which USB port or keyboard is used and the keyboards work on other PCs. I've got a new motherboard on the way now so all good.
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