 |
Arcade Machine |
| |
|
It took me a few days to find a place that would even talk to me about selling arcade cabinets, which is all I was looking for. I found a place in Champlain, Minnesota that I visited (along with my brother and girlfriend), and I got the chance to look around a bit. I found a few really cool but impractical cabinets, but came across a working game of Atari's Klax - it's funny, but that was maybe one of the last games I played while exiting my arcade phase - near the Tetris era, early 90's... Anyhow, the owner said he'd let it go for $125, so I picked it up immediately (with cash in hand - I had heard about these folks being a little fussy), loaded it in the van, and took it home. I spent a day or two essentially discovering it as I took everything apart. I learned a lot about controls, flourescent lights, coin mechanisms, and how heavy a television tube can be. The first thing I did once I had taken most everything out was paint the cabinet - it was an ugly gray and black with lame stickers on the side. I stripped those off and wore my thumb down spray painting the whole thing glossy black. After it dried, I took everything else out - CPU board, monitor, power supply, etc. I replaced some of the plastic trim (known in hardware stores as 3/4" T-Edging), but I could only find white. I was suspecting that I would paint it black, just to be conformist, but the white actually looked quite nice, so I kept it. [new info: check www.t-molding.com for all colors, shapes, and sizes of T-Edging/Molding for your arcade needs!]
I used the Gravis GamePads almost verbatim - 4 buttons and a joystick of sorts. I used the Gravis MouseStick II's buttons for 1 and 2 player start, add credit, Return and Tab (so I could edit the controls of a game to match the arcade controls - later I might change Tab to Command-W to end the game and choose another). I decided to forego the trackball/dial for the time being. It seemed kind of expensive to start out ($90 at least), and I wasn't sure I was going to have room.
The toughest part was mounting a monitor. There was an old, burned-in 19" screen (it looked like it used to be a Berzerk machine as well!!) already mounted with wood and a metal frame in the old cabinet, and I took special care to take it out, not bumping anything. After a few scars on my hands, I got it out. I unmounted the tube, leaving just the metal and wood frame. I had a left over 16" Apple Color Monitor that my brother had ordered used, and was WAY out of alignment in terms of contrast and brightness. Almost useless as a computer monitor. I aligned it as best I could, but it was still kinda smeary - I justified it as a good sharp television! I just barely fit it in the metal mount, with a few added materials to hold it in back, but nothing major. My brother and I returned the case to it's mounting holes in the cabinet, and it looked great. A little black permanent marker covered the monitor to mach the rest, and was even better. I would imagine every monitor would mount differently depending on the cabinet and size and so on - just make it fit with what you've got. I checked that the monitor could do resolutions that worked well for MAME's resolutions - it did 832 x 624, which was fine. The best would be 800 x 600 by my calculcations. After the black plastic frame and the paper frame, the monitor could be construed as a bit small, but it works, and you lose sight of how small it is when you're playing games.
To hold the control board in, there was a latch system that connected to a hinge bar on the underside - I had to move the latch up about 1/4", but it worked nicely. I soldered all the grounds together for the controls and left one free. I bought some blade connectors at the local electronics place and crimped some leftover wires to them - they were about 2' long. This way, I could disconnect the controls when I needed to remove it for repair or whatever. I soldered the other ends onto the PCBs (I had to scrape some leads open, no big deal) and double-checked my work. There was a door on the front left side of the cabinet, apparently to slide out the old circuit board for update/repair - I just mounted the PCB's on the door so I could get to them easily if I had to. I kept the wires somewhat organized and grouped together with Scotch tape. For the "attraction film", or the cover for the flourescent light at the top, I just used a rather large piece of art paper, and cut it to the right size. There's no artwork on there for right now, but I'm tempted to put "Sucker!" in circus-type letters on there - that's what it is, literally and figuratively, and what it's telling you you are. I dunno, *I* thought it was funny... I cleaned up the glass and plexiglass parts that covered the monitor and flourescent lighting, added a power strip for the monitor, flourescent light, and 12V adapter for the coin lights (REALLY bright with 12V, I might suggest 9V or 10V instead) and a little power for the computer. I wired the lone 10W speaker to a 1/8" mono plug, and it was done.
Final cute touch: a bar stool just the right height to play games with. My girlfriend and I found it in the street ready to be thrown away, so we snagged it. There's nothing quite like free stuff. MacMAME is pretty easy to setup and use in this box - it's nice to be able to get to the PowerBook (which I set on a small table on the side) to fix up things like the sound level, color controls, etc. when I need to. If a dedicated computer is in there, then these things will be preset anyway, but keyboard access might be necessary sometimes... I plan on keeping my eye out for a cheap trackball I can bastardize for a dial or a trackball mechanism. I'm not sure exactly how it will work, but I have some ideas. Looking through a used computer store in town, I thought I saw a mini-trackball for $25. I'll have to look at that a bit closer - it might be perfect. I've play tested a few games since I set it up, and my favorites so far are Robotron and Sinistar. They play great (loud and fast and responsive) with the double-joystick setup, and I don't feel afraid slamming it every once in a while. I'm just getting around to the other 790 games - 80% of them play great, and some suffer without the trackball/dial or other strange control setups (Tron is an example). All in all, about one week of work, about 3-5 hours a day, and the expenses:
stuff I didn't buy specifically for this, but used anyway:
...now if I could just charge my friends a quarter for every game, I might make my money back... ;-) Update - December 31, 2001 I inherited a PowerMac G3 from my father, so I put it to use as a permanent arcade computer! I had to do a few changes, as there have been changes in my life. When my old ex-girlfriend moved out, I decided to move the arcade machine into my dining room. When my brother finally took over the old "laboratory" room, I decided to leave the arcade on all the time. Both of these moves helped SO MUCH in actually using the arcade for it's intended purpose - short-term time wasting. I slid open the side door one time a year or so ago and busted on of the ADB cards - I lost my one-player/two-player/insert coin controls for awhile. Since the new G3 had USB on it, I decided to kill two birds with one stone - I got two new Gravis Gamepad Pro USB's (one for xmas! hee hee) and took them apart, did the same thing I did with the other old gamepads and plugged them straight into the USB ports. Big advantages to far to USB - one, USB seems faster. Two people can actually play Track and Field simultaneously and play well. Two, Input Sprocket control. Three, never having problems with "which ADB device is first", which would occasionally switch player one and two joysticks - big pain. I also found the ATI Rage plug-in - with the monitor being so bad, it blurred things out even more, and made it look even more arcade-like! The full screen also helps a lot in the overall effect. I moved the computer inside the case, but kept one ADB Gamepad (for the player one/two etc. buttons) and the keyboard/mouse attached on the outside, on a small table. Hopefully I'll be able to add some sort of hinged table system so we don't need that anymore. We still need keyboard access to choose games, etc (at least with MacMAME).. The thing keeps evolving and getting better with age! I'm willing to entertain comments and questions at ev@triplo.com. | |
I was inspired to finally go ahead and create the MAME cabinet I had been dreaming about for a good 6 months after floating around town one day and coming across an Amusement Supply business of sorts (which was only available by appointment, apparently). Looking in the window, seeing the emptied Missle Command, cocktail PacMan, Jr. Pac Man (with pinball option), and other parts, I couldn't resist the temptation. I thought, hey, I've got some time now (we're between tours), and maybe I could spend a couple hundred dollars and build this thing.
I had already designed in my mind the layout of all the controls, but the idea that I got from 
I took apart the GamePad and MouseStick II and took the PCB's out, finding out which solder joint connected to what input. I ordered some buttons (matching the colors on the GamePad) and a couple of black joysticks from Happ Controls - they came to me in two days. I routed some other buttons that I got from a local electronics store in front of the game for adding credits and editing game controls. I soldered those onto the MouseStick II PCB and tried it - it worked great.
I bought some 3/4" pressboard and some thin plexiglass to mount the controls on, and I had to get a bit of hardware: a 1 1/4" router for my drill. I measured and layed out the controls very carefully - I only had 23 1/8" x 8" to play with. I routed the holes (which turned out to be a BIT too big - 1 1/8" would have been perfect) in the wood and plexiglass very carefully, spray painted the wood the glossy black again, and mounted the controls nice and tight - it looked great.
The computer I use is not dedicated to the video game - I can't afford a 200MHz machine just for this, but I use my PowerBook G3 instead (what I'm writing this on right now). I have a special Extensions Manager setup that I start up with, including MacMAME in the Startup Items folder - I plug in the monitor (with adapter), ADB, and sound, and that's all that's necessary. Eventually, when I can get a machine fast enough and cheap enough to be dedicated, I'll do it. But for now, the PowerBook works fine. Amazingly, it can work for a few hours on the battery - imagine that...