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Classic cab design with all the controls


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First time poster, so go easy! ;-)

 

Had a tankstick and hyperspin setup for about a year now and getting ready to make the next move to a cab with ipac and 24" LCD monitor.

Customised the tankstick a bit by adding a spinner, top-fire joystick and illuminated buttons to build up a bit of confidence for the ipac.

Really want a classic cab design but with 2 sticks, 6 buttons, trackball, and spinner, so I have nearly all MAME games covered.

Do you think I could squeeze all that onto say a Defender control panel and have a 24" widescreen LCD in there?

Want that classic cab look, but with all the controls.

Was thinking maybe somebody like AracdeWorx could make it work.

Anyway, any input appreciated.

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Hi!

 

Personally I find control panels crammed with every input possible unattractive, but that's just me. Seems that all the extras seldom get utilised and create a messy and difficult to use panel.

 

I'm happy with traditional 2P6B setups.

 

If you can make it work, go for it!

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Agree with the above. I have a spinner in one of my dual player setups which is pretty non-intrusive and works well though.

 

The big deal for me here is you simply cannot have a classic look arcade with a wide-screen monitor. I'm not a massive stickler for CRT although preferred but wide-screen will always look bad for an arcade machine imo.

 

Brad

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Thanks for all the feedback, guys.

I guess one of the reasons I want at 24" widescreen is that I want to play vertical games on it as well.

If I install a horizontal 19" 4:5 LCD then won't the vertical games look tiny?

I've had a look around but 4:5 LCDs over 19" don't seem to be commonly available.

I would love a dedicated horizontal and vertical cab, but space is an issue.

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All of my current ans past cabs use a horizontally mounted monitor. Again pretty much all 19" and all 4:3 ratio. I play vertical shooters on them all the time and don't see an issue with the display. I honestly don't think you'd notice it but you can always test it yourself on a PC and see what you think.

 

I've never seen a cab that looks original or any actually any good that uses a wide-screen monitor, they always look weird and not right. Of course this is just my impression. Others may have a different opinion but you DID say Classic Cab Design. If you're going for that look then it has to be a 4:3 ratio monitor imo.

 

Brad

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Thanks for all the feedback, guys.

I guess one of the reasons I want at 24" widescreen is that I want to play vertical games on it as well.

If I install a horizontal 19" 4:5 LCD then won't the vertical games look tiny?

I've had a look around but 4:5 LCDs over 19" don't seem to be commonly available.

I would love a dedicated horizontal and vertical cab, but space is an issue.

 

A 24" 19:6 monitor isn't any larger vertically than a 19" 4:3 monitor? Or not much, at any rate? You're right about anything bigger than 19" in 4:3 though. To my mind the bezels posted by esoteric_rt are the way to go, and use an bigger screen. An old 4:3 monitor is probably only going to have a VGA connection, which is bad for digital displays, and a newer monitor will look much better to begin with.

 

I agree with others about the control panels. I don't have time to play more than one or two games, let alone as many as i've set up. If you're not absolutely certain you need and will play games that need a spinner or trackball, then you never will.

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All of my current ans past cabs use a horizontally mounted monitor. Again pretty much all 19" and all 4:3 ratio. I play vertical shooters on them all the time and don't see an issue with the display. I honestly don't think you'd notice it but you can always test it yourself on a PC and see what you think.

 

I've never seen a cab that looks original or any actually any good that uses a wide-screen monitor, they always look weird and not right. Of course this is just my impression. Others may have a different opinion but you DID say Classic Cab Design. If you're going for that look then it has to be a 4:3 ratio monitor imo.

 

Brad

 

Totally agree with you on WS LCDs looking really, really off. I've seen some people do a pretty cool thing, which is to use a 24 inch WS monitor, but actually make the bezel of the cabinet so that it's basically a 4:3 19 inch. You then set MAME to display all games in 4:3 with no stretching and it just looks like a 19 inch 4:3 monitor, as you can't see the rest of the monitor behind the bezel. This way, you get all the benefits of a new, low latency IPS panel, without the weirdness of having a WS monitor in there. You can also get MAME to load bezels for you in the blackspace on either side of the 16:9 image, but I reckon that looks a bit distracting.

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You could do a rotating monitor arrangement. There was a Jap metal cab that did exactly this that just required one bolt be pulled to allow the monitor to spin 90 degrees and replace the bolt. It was on like a "lazy Susan".

 

A very cool setup that could easily be taken a bit further using a cable you pull from the otherside or even behind the coin door to achive the 90 degree swing.

 

Hell go full on and motorize the mechanism. It swung on ball bearing and was such a smooth easy to move setup I'm surprised it hasn't been copied.

 

As for the different panel configurations, quick release panels with good quick release reliable connectors was the way Taito did it.

 

A panel with unused buttons, joysticks or whatever sucks I think.

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Thanks for all the tips, dudes.

Think I might see how much real estate is lost on vertical games in a 19” 4:3 v 24” widescreen LCD and take it from there.

Got a hunch I might go down the 19” route as I don’t like the virtual bezels and masking it off exactly with a physical bezel on a widescreen could be tricky.

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Just saw that Arcade Rewind have re-released a Defender-style cab with widescreen monitor.

This is basically the kind of thing I was thinking about, expect with an iPac and spinner and trackball:

https://www.arcaderewind.com.au/product/arcade-rewind-defender-2019-in-1-upright-arcade-machine/

 

I see what you mean now about the widescreen kinda looking slightly odd in a retro cab.

Nice design though.

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