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Cab project planning.


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Hi all,

 

After a long hiatus from looking at my arcade plans, I have my work/home life balance almost right to the point where I want to kick off on building a cab (again). Given a lack of workspace and the time to commit to building the physical cab (laying out and cutting out and prepping the timber) is at a premium im opting for one of the flat packs from Arcadworx. With some customisation im in the process of planning to get a final price and hope to order around November so I have some time to plan out a few options.

 

So questions for the brains trust.

 

1) Casters on your cabinets! They look like a bit of a must have for heavy machines and I want a 4 player stand up so I was thinking of using some with a leveling foot to take the load off the wheel. (see attached image) And for added stability during a fiery gaming session. DO they help / are they a must have or am I over thinking it?

 

2) I was thinking of using a 27" widescreen 16:9 ratio and using rocket launcedr & Hyperspin and getting some of the 16:9 artwork they have for it. Thoughts on that?

 

3) I dont know much about audio so coming from a pc what do I need in the way of audio hardware and what type of speakers should I be using (car speakers with an amp or amplified pc speakers??)

 

4) Does anyone have any links or images of 4 player control layouts? I think im suffering from information overload at the moment but I believe I would want a spinner and trackball so I can play just about everything. I will be using 2 x Happ rotary sticks for games like Midnight Resistance on P1 and P2. Any plans, would be a great start so I can get my head around it, I seem to find lots of pictures online of 4 player control panels but few top down plans. (maybe its just me)

 

5) How many internal ventilation fans (sucking in air from the front blowing out the back and top) should the average cabinet have?

 

6) Any pointers for powering on and off a mame cabinet? external switches, software like magic pakets? Also are specific monitors required so they auto power on or is there some trick to that too?

 

 

 

Sorry for all the noob questions but after reading on this forum and different forum's and googling I feel no wiser and in the past I have always gotten rock solid advice off this forum hence this post.

 

Thank you all for your time

 

regards

 

Harry.

 

castor.jpg.eb1aefa59e3b514539e2cf1f756d1f2c.jpg

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1) Castors are good. Most older cabs don't rest on the castors, they have two at the rear, and you rock the cab backwards until it's resting on them and then roll away. Yours look very nice but are they expensive?

 

2) I'm a CRT man, myself. If i was going to use a 16:9 LCD, I'd want to think about making sure i could get artwork overlays as you say, but also about making sure the cab wasn't going to be much wider than the screen itself. That's for an older-style cab with the screen sunk in a little bit. A newer cab like arcadeworx do should be fine as it is.

 

3) Don't overthink audio. A set of $50 PC speakers with a sub is more than sufficient. Most arcade games were mono without sub. A little beef to that is nice, but you don't need to set up a car stereo.

 

4) No links here, but google can find some. However. Think long and hard about adding a trackball and spinners. If you're 100% certain committed all day every day to playing game(s) that need either trackball or spinner, then look into it. If you're thinking you enjoyed one of those games once or twice, and it might be nice to have, don't bother - they'll kill the feel of anything you want to play more often, and you won't end up using them. And they take up space and just add visual bloat. There are also very few 4p MAME games worth playing, so apply the same logic again. How often will you want all four players, etc.

 

5) Depends on your setup. If you have a PC with a passive or no GPU, you probably don't need any fans, passive venting is more than fine.

 

6) Using a master-slave power board is one way to go. Hide a button for the PC on the cab's exterior, set to shutdown in Windows, then it can control everything else in the cab. Make sure you can find a monitor that powers on when the power is turn on, and doesn't just come up to standby mode, for that though. Otherwise more than one button might be needed.

 

 

These aren't the only answers to your questions, i'm sure. Just my 2c.

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depends what era games you're into and the cabinet look

say like dk , this looks right on 4x3 monitor vertical , LCD is the limited in 4x3 to 19" in which case perhaps start with a lowboy or even smaller caberet style cabinet so that 19" does not look tiny

If don't mind letterboxing old games then decase the 27" use very light glass tint , black out edges of LCD , black out LCD box area

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