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ChesterJT
Dec 28, 2003

Mounty Pumper's Flying Circus
I have been wanting to build one of these for quite a while and finally got my rear end in gear to do it. I'm semi handy in the garage, but this is something I believe about anyone can do with some basic tools (and a bit of money). I really liked the PC game Crawl, a 4-player rogue-like brawler with old school graphics so I decided to make that it's primary function with some emulation on the side. Let's get to it!

Materials

*Wood
3/4" MDF board. I based the design off of these plans but due to the width I needed four and a half 4'x8' boards. At $35 a pop it wasn't cheap but this stuff is very easy to work with. The bad news is everything you do to it creates an insane amount of dust. More on that later.

*Monitor

A Sony Wega 34" flat tube tv, and yes that's an HDMI input on the back. It can handle 1080 and is basically the perfect tv for this if you don't mind the size. I found it on craigslist in my town for $5. Yes that is insanely cheap and I got extremely lucky. It also weights 200lbs. I debated breaking it down to eliminate the speakers on the side and lose some width but that would have required building a wood frame to support the weight and I decided the convenience of just building a shelf outweighed the 8" I would have gained.

*Sound
I used an old set of Dell PC speakers, the basic two channel plus a sub setup. I scrapped the speakers for another small pair I had that I thought sounded better. I cut out the board and power/volume knob from the left speaker as I planned to mount it in the cabinet.

*Controls

Happ buttons and joysticks. There are countless websites arguing on who makes the best controls and for what. Read up and decide what's best for you. For me, someone who was just playing some 4-player pc games and some emulated games , it didn't make much difference. I got a four pack of joysticks and a box of buttons with microswitches for a good deal off Amazon.

I bought this trackball from Ultimarc which has the option to be usb. Insanely easy to use, plug and play. It also doubles as a mouse in windows, making game selection that much easier.

*Board

I recently upgraded my PC so I had a Core2Duo laying around with MOBO. Nothing too fancy but I didn't want it to be so slow I was waiting forever for it to start up. I believe the video card is a HD4500 series. The other card is a sata controller because the one on the mobo was dying.

To handle the inputs I bought an ipac4. There are alternatives but for me this was an easy choice. Tons of inputs, simple screw down connections. Full customization that is saved onboard, plus a shift key that can double up functions if needed. Can't say enough good things about this product. It plugs into your pc by usb and acts like a keyboard making it very emulator friendly for programming.

The Build
I used basic 1 1/2" construction screws, with pre-drilled holes. Due to the layered nature of MDF it can be easy to split. PRE-DRILL your holes. I sunk them in an 1/8" or so and covered them all up with wood putty. There are casters on the bottom that can support 200lbs each for a total of 800lbs. I calculated that with everything loaded on the cabinet will weigh around 500lbs. The casters can also lock in place. The floor is raised in an inch or so to cover them up. I made sure to frame 2x8"s over the wheels and up to the tv shelf so the wheels and not the sides or the bottom of the cabinet would be supporting that tv. I cut the back into two pieces so I could hinge the bottom for easy access to the pc. The speakers were dropped in cutouts along with that control board from the dell speakers and covered with aluminum screen that was spray painted black. To light up the marquee I just used simple hooks and an LED rope light. This gives a nice even glow on the marquee rather than a couple of bright spots. I backed it up with aluminum foil for light reflection. For fan grills I just drilled two holes about the width of the fans and used a jigsaw to connect the dots so to speak. The edges I wanted t-molding to go on were grooved with a 1/16" slotting bit on a router. I gave it two good coats of white primer and then three coats of satin black with some light sanding inbetween. I would recommend using a paint roller with 1/4" nat to eliminate roller marks. The PC and it's parts were mounted to the base along with the Dell subwoofer and I stuck a small touch-on led light above. The rope light, tv, pc, and speaker were plugged into a beefy surge protector with a 6ft cord which was fed through a hole in the side of the cabinet. I used on of those desk cord hiders you can get from office supply stores to make it look nice. The TV was covered with 1/4" MDF, simple cutout in the middle for the screen.





Electronics

There was a small bit of wiring involved. I was going to run lead wires from the TV circuit board by the physical on/off button to a switch for easy access but I managed to fracture the tv wafer board which killed that idea. I bought a cheap $5 universal remove and cut it open. Ran the leads off the on/off button part of the board then ran more lead wires from the transmitter which is now superglued to the tv right by the receiver. I also ran wires from the front panel jumpers on the mobo for power to another switch. Got a simple 2x USB extender meant for a car dash and ran it, along with the switches, to a flat wall plate I cut into to make a mini control panel. Now I can turn on the tv, pc, and plug in a flash drive, keyboard, whatever right up top by the control panel so I don't have to get under the hood. The switches are simple 3/8" momentary switches from Radio Shack.



Control Board

I designed the layout in photoshop which made moving the layers around very easy. I wanted 4 players, 6 buttons per player and some menu function buttons up top. Plus room for the trackball in the middle. I had the artwork printed at Game on Grafix. It is pricy but it is amazing quality. It has a protective layer on it but has the thickness of a heavy sticker. I cut the holes out with an xacto knife (very tedious) and then laid it on the board to draw the holes. I used a 1 1/8" spade bit to create the holes. Then I put down a big piece of scrap wood, plexiglass sheet over that, then the control board on top as a guide and prayed that I could drill 50-some holes without cracking the plexiglass. The key to cutting and drilling plexiglass is to go slow, not too much pressure, and no vibrations. Keep it sandwiched between two boards at all times if you can. For the plexiglass I used a 1 1/8" hole saw without the center guide and it performed amazingly well. I ended up breaking my first piece in an unrelated accident and it drilled the holes in both sheets perfectly and without any cracks. Pre-drilled holes on top and used some #8 3/4" screws to hold everything together around the edges. I routed in grooves for the joysticks and trackball to be bottom mounted. Then began the fun of wiring every button. Extremely time consuming.




Marquee

I can't say enough good things about Phylodox. I wanted some custom artwork done for the marquee and have not a single artistic bone in my body. I looked around SA Mart for people volunteering to do artwork which led me to his webpage, Phylodox.com. Some PMs back and forth over needs and price (extremely reasonable) and he understood what I was going for, keeping me in the loop as he continued to work. Ultimately he created something pretty great, which is not only in the spirit of the game but has that old school fantasy arcade art look I was going for. I also had this printed at Game on Grafix which they printed on backlight material and mounted on plexiglass. Rather than buy some expensive marquee holder I bought 8' of simple L-shaped drop ceiling tile holder at a local hardware store for $2. Cut it to size, painted it black, and it looks and functions great.



Final Product
Still a little dusty but it's in great shape. I will probably do something to the MDF around the tv as it feels a bit plain to me. We have a few hours of fun on it every day. Working on getting the rest of the games going and programming all the emulators will take some more work but it's getting there. As the builder you can always see the slight imperfections but it's a pretty good first effort and I'm very happy with it.



Tips (aka don't do these stupid things I did)
Cutting/sanding/routing/looking-at these board creates a dust storm. There's just no way around it. If it's possible to do these steps outdoors you should. A good air compressor can blow most of it out later but this stuff gets everywhere and you should probably wear a mask as well because you will breath in a poo poo ton of dust if not.

If you're doing T-molding or recessing your controls, do it first. I decided to do that after mounting my controls and seeing how they sat. Was a pain in the rear end to unhook everything and hook it back up again. It also sucks holding a router sideways and trying to move it around joysticks and curves at your head.

Pre-drill every single hole. So important.

Test your control board layout. It's hard to think in three dimensions when planning where everything goes. Before you spend the time and money getting a fancy control deck printed on high quality poo poo, make sure everything fits first. My first box for the control panel I designed wouldn't work and if I had taken 5 seconds to think about I would have known that before wasting wood. Also I didn't think about the joystick on the far left side having a large base so close to the edge so I had to cut out some material on the support box side wall to make room. Nothing catastrophic but annoying and time consuming. Also take a small board and cut out the holes to build your setup. Try it out and make sure they are in a comfortable position and that your buttons fit where you plan to put them.

Heat, oh the heat. After a couple of hours my TV started to discolor in the corner because I didn't give a single thought to the heat building up in an enclosed area. Bought three 120mm fans, hooked them up to the pc with one on the bottom pulling cold air in and two above the tv pulling the hot air out. Fixed the issue but it sucked to have to do all that with the heavy tv and rope light in the way.

MDF board edges will soak up paint like a sponge. Either be prepared to put about 6 layers on it or use some bondo or wood putty to seal them up first.

When doing the wiring use zipties and wire clamps/holders everywhere. It's going to be a rats nest but it can be a managed chaos with a little bit of effort.

Conclusion

Any question/comments fire away. If you have a cabinet of your own post some pictures!

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Corin Tucker's Stalker
May 27, 2001


One bullet. One gun. Six Chambers. These are my friends.
This is cool as heck. Thanks for sharing, reading about the process of creating a home cabinet is always super interesting.

Projects like this make me wish I had the room to build and store my dream cabinets: A Neo Geo-style red MAME machine, and an Arkanoid replica. The latter because it was the first game I remember playing, and the notched spinner dial was satisfying.

anothergod
Apr 11, 2016

This is super dope. Do you have a time/cost analysis for the project overall? We dev our indie games in bars and a lot of people have expressed interest in having us build them full arcade cabinets and we just ::shrug::: because we don't know the time/cost commitment. I know there are other dudes out there that have done similar projects, but I feel like they started w/ a leg up with know how or tools or things like that.

Agent Escalus
Oct 5, 2002

"I couldn't stop saying aloud how miscast Jim Carrey was!"
Very informative! (Especially the controls aspect.) I was contemplating using my old-but-perfect-condition 15" NEC MultiSync CRT-flat monitor for a project like this, or trying to sell it to someone who was planning on doing the same (no idea what to ask for it price wise).

StarkRavingMad
Sep 27, 2001


Yams Fan
That's super cool. I've wanted to do one of these for a long time as just a general MAME cabinet but I've never gotten enough crazy up to do it.

Phylodox
Mar 30, 2006



College Slice
Hey! That looks awesome! Was super fun to work on. Glad it turned out so rad lookin'!

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ChesterJT
Dec 28, 2003

Mounty Pumper's Flying Circus

anothergod posted:

Do you have a time/cost analysis for the project overall?

It took two months altogether but that includes a lot of days where I worked and didn't have time to touch it. Several days were spent just sitting on photoshop or graphing paper designing and planning stuff. The computer work was way more intensive than I expected. Trying to make sure buttons were even and that I even had enough buttons. Things like that. Once I got serious into building it that part took just a week or two depending on work hours and parts availability. Due to some poor time planning I spent a few days here and there waiting on parts to ship, like the fans for instance. The construction itself goes quick but having to paint several layers and wait for drying is very time consuming.

Money wise I'd say right around $650. The big expenses was $200 for the artwork (commissioned art plus having the two items printed/shipped), $160 for the ipac4 and trackball, and $150 for the wood. After that it was just a lot of small odds and ends like the fans, wheels, heat shrink tubing, female wire connectors, box of colored wire, paint, misc hardware like hinges and hooks and screws, etc. The little stuff added up quick.

For tools my 19.2v hand drill/screwdriver and a simple black&decker jigsaw did a majority of the work. I did buy a router and a couple bits for about $150 but I returned them afterwards (after a good cleaning) as I realized I wouldn't use it often enough to warrant the expense of keeping it. Also a large T-square is hugely helpful (and cheap). I don't even have a nice set of horses or a work table. Most of the boards were laying on our dog kennel when I cut them.

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