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diary |
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So what have I been up to? Throughout this project I decided to keep a diary not only to keep track of expected delivers and such but all also to document the progress of the project. I'll try to keep this section as up to date as possible until completion; the latest entries can be seen here. |
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2003-01-10 My iPAC and OptiPAC arrived first thing this morning from Ultimarc, not bad considering I only ordered it at the beginning of the week. Both turned up in a single padded bag, with each board individually bubble wrapped, which seems like plenty of protection for a parcel of this type. As many people had stated before, no instructions are included but then the online documentation is all you need and will always be up to date. Now I need my Happs order to turn up so I can start playing! 2003-01-10 Well how's that for timing, it was only a couple of hours ago I was moaning that I had my iPAC and nothing to hook it up to, well my order from Happs has just arrived, one 3" track ball (inc Mounting plate), 3 Super Joysticks and 31 buttons. This lot should keep me busy for the rest of the day! And a quick note on packaging, as can be seen in here, nothing too fancy and all crammed in as tightly as possible but as long as it all works I don't mind. 2003-01-10 Slight problem with my order, I've been sent three Universal Joysticks instead of the Supers, not a major pain I've spoken to Happs and they have apologised and said that if I posted them back to them they would send me the correct ones and refund me the postage. But with the majority of my parts available I suppose I had better start doing something with them. I had some large sheets of cardboard which I intended to make a test control panel out of. For a couple of hours I sat down and took the measurements from my CAD and put them to the cardboard. I have found this to have been a great help, the first thing I noticed was that even though you think you have planned everything you will miss something, and in my case it was something important, the CAD plans of my Control Panel were missing the trackball mounting plate, so when I attached it to my cardboard control panel I discovered that it would prevent the mounting of a few buttons. Not a problem just a small shuffle of my original design, and I carried on, I would have hated to discovered that after drilling several holes into a nice sheet of MDF. Using this cardboard control panel I have found that I'm not entirely happy with the layout of the player buttons, but this will allow me to make my modifications and update my CAD for the final design. 2003-01-11 Trip to B&Q brought myself a heap of MDF (couldn't buy 5/8 so got 12 mm) but this with the plexi-glass should come out nice and allow t-moulding to cover all. Whilst shopping I also brought some plexi-glass, crimping connectors and a few new measuring tools (steel rule, t-square), better than using an old plastic ruler. 2003-01-11 Finished my cardboard layout using the updated design and I'm fairly please with it, I have also slightly changed the position of the player buttons, as you can see the player two buttons look a lot tidier than those I did on the player one side. 2003-01-12 Fair bit of progress today, firstly I started to get my design onto the MDF I'm going to use as the control panel. I then decided I had had enough of measuring and drawing for a while and wanted to play with the electronics! I hooked up the trackball to the OptiPAC with no problems, and then hooked up the mouse buttons. Plugged the whole lot into my PC via usb and it worked straight away, Played several games of marble madness (much better compared with my own trackball, a Logitech Trackman) Next I wired up half the cp buttons (using some spare CAT5 cable), as I did this I realised I had made on huge mistake when doing the maths for how many buttons I had and what iPAC to got for (2-4 player), I did not count my special M.A.M.E control buttons (pause, exit...). I intended on having 7 this leaves me short by three!! Bugger!! 2003-01-12 Been giving some thought to this button issue, maybe use a shift function some how? 2003-01-13 More thoughts on the control buttons, maybe decreasing the special buttons to four and setup a shift function for each of them and then use two of the remaining buttons as pinball flippers? 2003-01-14 Posted the Universals off to Happs. 2003-01-16 Happs ran to report they had received them 2003-01-20 Rang Happs to ask about the replacement joysticks, they were posted by Royal mail and should turn up tomorrow. 2003-01-21 Still no joysticks, so to keep myself occupied and took another trip to B&Q for more supplies. This time I brought a new workbench, set of various clamps (two of which were broken so gonna have to return them also!), and a router. I thought if I'm gonna do this I might has well have all the tools. 2003-01-21 Carried on with marking up the control panel MDF, even at this stage I seem to be making ever so slight changes to the design. 2003-01-22 Wahoo the joysticks finally turned up and in addition to that I've made good progress tonight. I added the new joystick dimensions to the CAD, looking very detailed now. My spare room has begun to change from a computer room to an indoor workshop, but having it setup up like this makes it easy to transfer the designs from the computer onto the MDF. Talking of which I finished marking up the control panel. Now this section of the designing if over, it's on to the cutting and drilling. I've clamped up my plexi-glass to the top section of MDF for the control panel and started scribing the size out; tomorrow I will attempt to snap these lines, so fingers crossed! 2003-01-23 The plexi-glass snapped fine so I now have a perfect size piece to cover the control panel. Not much time for anything else today. 2003-01-25 Today I used a spare piece of MDF and plexi-glass to practice drilling/cutting/routing. Worth doing to get the hang of everything and to see which methods suit you best. 2003-01-27 Plenty of stuff got done today, first cut all my button and joystick holes on my control panel, found the best way was to cut in half way from the top of the control panel then flip it over and use the guiding hole to get the rest from the bottom. Also note I made very small pilot holes first to stop the drill from slipping. Picked up some screws from B&Q to mount the joysticks to the control
panel, whilst I was in there I searched for some T-Molding no such luck,
nowhere seems to carry this, think I may have to order from the States. 2003/01/28 I've corrected the few buttons I had wired up incorrectly. Mounted the control panel on my workmate using two stacks of CDs and some large g-clamps, (very professional!). Great fun playing games with this, hopefully keep me occupied until I can get my reaming parts 2003-01-30 This evening I made a start on my control panel overlay image. I decided
that Adobe Illustrator would be the best suited app for this as it would
allow me to work with vector graphics. I've never used Illustrator before
so I spent this evening just getting to grips with the interface and
playing with the basic tools. Took and old hard drive apart and mouse to start work on building a spinner, I like the Oscar control ones, especially the machined knobs, but they are fairly expensive plus I would also have to pay shipping costs to get it to the UK. Downloaded the WinPAC software and programmed my iPAC. 2003-02-01 More work done on the control panel graphic, mainly trying to decide on base colours and the overall look I want. Think I'm gonna go for a instructive/technical look. 2003-02-02 Again more work done on the control panel graphic. I've decided on the complete design; just have to create the details for each control now. 2003-02-04 Printed off my control panel graphic (still incomplete) at work today on a cheap colour laser printer. The printer only does A4 so I had to print off 10 sheets and tape them together. The main reason I did this was to see if my design was the correct scale, sigh of relief it was! 2003-02-04 Dismantled my second hard drive to get a few more bits for my spinner control, seems like I may actually be able to make my own one, which is not only saving a little bit of cash but also nice to know I built it myself. Saying that, I'm not actually saving cash as one of the drives I used was a new 18Gb SCSI III drives, hmmm did I mention I worked in an IT department for a large company ;-) 2003-02-06 Finished my control panel graphic and I'm happy with the design. Suppose It's a case of finding a printers now. 2003-02-10 Progress has pretty much come to a halt at the moment; my build is waiting on T-molding for my control panel. I can't seem to find any cost effective UK sources for it so I think I'm going to place an order with www.t-molding.com. But whilst the build has come to a halt, use of the control panel hasn't. Been playing plenty of M.A.M.E games and I've now installed a Playstation emulator (ePSXe) which I've so far been very impressed with, Tekken 2 with the control panel plays extremely well. 2003-02-12 Got my T-molding lengths sizes out of my 3D model and attempted to place an online order with T-molding.com, but I had a problem selecting a shipping method so I've mailed them to report the problem. 2003-02-13 One of the sales persons from t-molding.com got back to me today and informed me that the problem I was having was down to a bug in their online ordering software. But they were very helpful and setup a manual order for me so hopefully my T-molding will turn up soon and I can continue with my build! 2003-02-17 Posted the following on BYOAC forum and thought that I should probably add it here as it might be useful so someone:- ---- Since posting the above image of my control panel I've had several PMs and mails asking about my design and how I did certain elements. In addition to replying to them I thought I might post the info here just in case anyone else was interested. BTW I have no artistic skills, never touched a paint brush, but then again that's not really needed for a design like this. Firstly identify the sort of design your aiming for, I decided to go with a technical design opposed to a more character based one such as the cool Capcom based ones I've seen. As can be seen I've taken a lot of my design ideas from Motofish's great design, I believe there's nothing wrong with a little copying as long as you take that design and then do something to make it your own. With the technical type of design in mind I choose Illustrator as the software to use, firstly as it's a vector based package (easier for 2D shapes, both creating and arranging), and secondly I have access to it via work. I've never used illustrator before so I spent a couple of evenings learning how to do the simple things like create basic shapes, colour them, and arrange them on an image (layers and alignment tools). The help files and tutorial that come with Illustrator are very easy to follow and provide plenty of info on how to do a simple image like this. Next step was to decide on a colour scheme, one tip is to pick no more than three base colours that you want to work with, as can be seen on my image I picked black/white/blue and then just used shades of these. I picked these as they matched the M.A.M.E logo. After that I located a background image for detail fill, the space image I used was found on a public web gallery, I mailed the creator asking if they had any objections to me using it and let them know what I planned to do with it and that it was a personal non-profit project. Then it was just a case of putting it all together using layers in illustrator (i) Black layer on the bottom Just realised I've been going on a fair bit, so I'll shut up now. Any questions just ask. Cheers. ---- 2003-02-22 Started work on the control panel box, mainly just marking up the pieces onto MDF and cutting them out. I used the jigsaw to make the cuts, allowing 1-5mm outside my cut line as it was impossible to make a straight cut with this. Once cut I used a straight edge (anything long straight and stiff) clamped this along side my cut MDF and ran the router along it to get a straight finish 2003-03-02 Emailed T-moulding.com and told them that I had not received my order, they told me that they had sometimes had a few international orders go missing and would send out a second lot. 2003-03-13 Wahoo! Finally my T-molding has turned up, all seems correct; the packaging wasn't exactly brilliant, just three coils of T-molding stuffed into a cardboard box. Anyway hopefully be able to carry on with the build at the weekend. 2003-03-16 Fair bit of work done today, firstly I took apart my cp, so no more playing now until the project is complete. First off I started to shape my control panel; Cut off the two corner sections and rounded the top two corners. I need to round the remaining corners but need something to use as a routing template. Next up was cutting the slot for the T-moulding, this was a extremely straight forward and quick process, attached my new slot-cutting bit to my router (which I got from B&Q) and run it around the edge of the control panel. One thing to note, this cutting bit actually removes a lot of wood rather quickly so be ready to deal with all the MDF dust mess it creates. Finally I felt brave and decided to start cutting the plexi-glass. I clamped the plexi to the control panel and used a small flush trim routing bit to cut off the corner sections using the MDF control panel as a guide. Then I flipped the whole lot over and used the existing holes in the control panel as a guide for my hole-cutting drill bit. I took my time cutting these holes and had a waste piece of MDF on the underside to help prevent me from cracking the plexi. Once all the 31 holes were cut I just used my fingers to break off any small piece of melted plastic that was left. 2003-03-22 Today's task was mounting the trackball, I carefully measured it up to make sure it was centred to the control panel, traced round it then routed a 1.5mm recess for it. I was pleased with the results the mounting plate fitted tight but flush. I also added holes to the control box sides to allow an extra coupe of buttons to be used as pinball flippers. 2003-03-23 Took a trip to B&Q, brought piano hinge, L brackets, wood glue, fixing screws and some black gloss paint. I've given up adding up how much I'm spending, but I'm sure it would be cheaper to buy a pre-built system. But the cheapest option has never been my aim, I wanted to have a go at building a system myself and it's also a good hobby to keep me occupied. Anyway so what's also been done apart from shopping, well I've put my control box pieces together using the L-Brackets and wood glue, I'm quite pleased with the results as I now feel like I'm made it past the half way mark for the control panel build as things are being assembled. 2003-03-26 I've found an online service that offers larger format printing www.photoartisty.co.uk,
I rang them to double check their prices as they seemed a lot cheaper
than everywhere else I had looked at. They confirmed the prices were
correct so I placed an online order later that day. Due to they mail
system they can't receive file greater than 5Mb so I decided that I
would post a CD off to them (.tif format). 2003-03-28 I said the other day that I was pleased with my control panel box, I have noticed that the underneath hasn't fitted together as well as I hoped so today I spent about two hours sanding the whole thing down. I'm really impressed with the results, now it's not possible to feel where each section joins so once it's had a few coats of paint you shouldn't be able to tell it's just made up of MDF underneath. I also rounded off the remaining corners of the control panel top section and plexi-glass cover. I clamped both pieces together and sanded down all edges and corners to get a nice rounded finish. If I get time I should be able to start the painting tomorrow. I also attempted to make a routing template out of MDF for cutting a 3inch hole in the plexi-glass cover. This didn't go so well so I may invest in a 3inch hole-cutter tomorrow. Yep, another expense! 2003-03-29 Yet again another trip to B&Q, where I picked up a hole-cutter set. Using the 3inch cutter I first made a hole in a spare piece of MDF, as you can see this hole was a lot better than my previous attempt. I then clamped this piece of MDF to the top my plexi-glass carefully lining up where the hole was required. Another space piece of MDF was placed under the plexi-glass to sandwich it. The drill bit for the hole-cutter was quite large so I decided to use a smaller bit first to make a pilot hole, as I was drilling this hole I managed to crack the plexi-glass!!! Luckily though the crack was only about 2inches long and so I managed to cut round it with the hole-cutter. Using a piece of fine sandpaper I finished off the hole by sanding the lip to complete the plex-glass cover. BTW, being a little cheeky I also managed to return the hole-cutter to B&Q and a refund as it was still in perfect condition. 2003-03-30 Started painting today, applied the first coat of black gloss to the control panel, the MDF seemed to soak it up a fair bit so I'm guessing I may need another couple of coats, but that will have to wait till tomorrow as it takes each coat 16 hours to dry :-( I have also been playing with my hard drive parts trying to construct a spinner, I wasn't too happy with the results and the spinner felt too lose. So I gave in to temptation and I had saved a little cash this month so I ordered a Model-3 spinner from Oscar Controls including a 'MAME' engraved aluminium knob. 2003-03-31 Applied second coat of paint to control panel, finish isn't looking too good so I guess I'm gonna need to get some sanding paper and sand in between coats. Received a mail from Oscar confirming that my spinner had been shipped (should hopefully receive it by the end of the week). 2003-04-01 I had forgotten about my sending off my control panel image, so this morning a burned the image to CD and posted it off. This evening I sanded the paint down on my control panel box and it's a lot smoother, hopefully if I do this a few times plus the extra coats I should get a nice finish. 2003-04-04 Another coat of paint gone onto the control box and it appears to be building up a nice texture now. Also applied the first coat to the underside of the control panel top. 2003-04-07 Today's job was looking into a FrontEnd for my system. I installed ArcadeFX, after a bit of playing I decided I found it a too limiting for my needs and abounded it. 2003-04-08 Missed a parcel delivery today, guessing its either my control panel image or spinner, will have to pick it up tomorrow now. Spent a second day looking into a FrontEnd, today's choice was Lazarus, I liked the look of this FE a look and had hoped it would fit the bill, but I'm afraid it didn't whilst it had a nice interface added custom games (PSX/PC) to a list weren't possible (easily that is) and the filtering options were a little limiting. Also notice a few other bits were a little rough round the edges, but this FE is no longer in development, but its replacement LazDX should hopefully be due soon. 2003-04-09 Picked up my parcel this morning, it was my spinner!! Everything was nicely packaged, all I had to do was connect up the pcb and wire it into my iPAC, this took all of five minutes. I plugged the iPAC into my USB slot and everything worked straight away! Tired a few puzzle and driving games which were now that little bit more fun with the spinner. I am really looking forward to getting my control graphic now as all the parts will be ready then and I can finally put it all together. Another day and another FE researched, today's was Emulaxion, after a bit of configuring and playing this looks to be the most promising so far. Whilst I'm finding its feature list slightly overblown at the moment (3D arcade view, many sub menu/options) I'm hoping that if I trim a lot of this out I can get it to suit my needs. I will also need to create my own skin for it as the standard one is a classic 70's arcade theme and this doesn't fit my overall design (sci-fi/technical). 2003-04-11 Started the construction of my web site (this one funny enough!), Its been a while since I've done any web development so I spent time this evening getting familiar with DreamWeaver. 2003-04-12 A few more hours spent on the web site, I've decided on the colour scheme and layout, so its now a case of getting the content onto it. 2003-04-13 Web site work again, compiling content for the gallery section, resizing images and such. 2003-04-15 My printed control panel image
arrived today, it came securely packaged wrapped in a sheet of cushion
foam and rolled into a cardboard tube. I had no idea how this was going
to look or what the quality of the printers would be so it didn't take
me long to get this all unwrapped and ready for inspection. So how did
it turn out? Well I was impressed to say the least, the paper was of
high quality, printing detail
was extremely clear and the colours were perfectly matched to my original
illustrator file. 2003-04-16 Wahoo almost complete! I got a lot done today so be warned this entry is gonna be a big one. Firstly I finished off mounting the control panel top to the main section using the piano hinge. Then it was the job of re-mounting all the controls that I took apart over a month ago. The joystick housings screwed on easily into the mounting holes that were previously made, the trackball mounting plate was then attached and bolted into place. Next I had to trim the overlay image by removing the blank border so it matched the control panel top. I used an art scalpel to do this and I took my time, once done it was placed on top. The plexi-glass cover was then laid over the graphic after I had removed the protective plastic sheeting from both sides. The only problem I found here was that the static of the plastic sheet had attached quite a bit of dust and this was a bit of a pain to remove. Once all three layers (control panel, graphic, plexi-glass) were lined up I cut two button holes in the graphic at opposite ends and screwed in two push buttons to clamp the whole lot together. Then using the scalpel I cut holes in the graphic for all the other push buttons. The handy thing here was that the plexi-glass cover prevents the blade from cutting anything is shouldn't! A hole for the trackball hole then cut, again using the plexi-glass hole as a guide. Once done I flipped the panel up and mounted the trackball, things were really taking shape. Last holes to be cut were for the joystick shafts, which were then assembled next. Time was getting late so the last job for the evening was a little more trimming, this time around the outer edge so the paper matched the corners of he control panel and plexi cover. Actually looking quite good now. I'm aiming to have this all working tomorrow (hopefully!) 2003-04-17 I had one last control to mount today and that was the spinner, but this is where I ran into a small problem, whilst I already had cut a hole for this out of the MDF top panel I had forgotten a matching one in the plexi-glass cover, Doh! Now this was worrying, I had to cut a hole in the plexi-glass, which had now been assembled, and the protective covers removed. I decided that I should test this first so I dug out a small bit of plexi I had left over in the garage. I mounted this up to my workbench and used a small bit of masking tape on were I wanted the hole to stop the drill from slipping. I kept the drill at a high speed and drilled every so slowly, melting my way through rather than actually cutting. Luckily this method seemed to work so I went ahead with fingers crossed and repeated the process on my control panel. A few minutes later the panic was over and I successfully made a hole for my spinner shaft. Next I attached the spinner using a few small screws to mount it from underneath. With all the controls in place they needed to be wired up to the iPAC and OpticPAC, I took the wiring loom I had made previously for my test panel and connected it all up; I just needed a few extra wires to connect the spinner and a few buttons that previously were not connected, it may not be tidy but if it works I don't care. Well I had no excuses now, it was time to plug it all in to see if it works………. Success!! I now have my very own working arcade controller!! No more construction work for me tonight, Time to load up M.A.M.E and take this thing through its paces. 2003-04-18 Well after months of planning and constructing my control panel is virtually finished, testing last night highlighted that a few of the buttons were wired up incorrectly but this didn't take long to correct, just a case of switching a few wires around. A couple of other finishing touches were also done today. First popped to Maplins and brought an extreme brightness blue LED for lighting the trackball. Using the correct resistor I was able to take power from the OptiPac (+v5 out) to light it up, very simple but it makes the control panel look that little bit more professional. And lastly the T-molding was attached, again another of those little touches that just makes it look right. I must admit (even if I do say it myself) this controller really does look impressive. I'm totally glad I attempted this build, I think it's turned out better than I ever hoped/expected. 2003-07-25 The diary section has finally been updated again meaning that work has resumed on my cab. So what’s been happening all this time since the controller was finished? Well apart from making good use of it by playing a whole load of games with it I've also re-designed the whole cabinet design, which I won't go into too much here as I've created a whole section for it here. I had originally planned to use laminate on the new cabinet as I thought that it would have given a more professional finish, not to mention I hate painting so being able to skip that would have been nice. I ordered a few sample sheets from www.formica.com to help decide what colour blue I wanted the lower half of my cabinet to be, I decided to go with the colour I labelled A. So all was going well until it came to ordering the full sheets, I had spoken to most of the suppliers in the South of the UK and the cost of sheet laminate for individuals is extremely high, and after doing a bit more measuring I found that I would actually need 3 sheets rather than two as I originally thought. The total cost of laminate would probably come to almost £200 (yes it does seem to be a lot more expensive here than other US based projects I've seen), so I'm afraid I've had to abandon this path and I’ve stated looking into other options. I managed to get hold of some sticky back vinyl sheets, I tried this on a test panel and really wasn’t happy with the results, looked far too like a Blue Peter project (the UK guys will know what I’m talking about). So I finally took the plunge and attempted a paint finish; which out all things DIY, I hate painting in any form and I’ve never been happy with the results. I had B&Q make me up a tester of a colour matched silk-sheen finish (gave them one of those laminate samples). I applied the paint to a test panel using a very smooth form roller; whilst I wasn’t keen on the final colour I was amazed how well the finish came out. Smooth but not shiny and an ever so slight texture, feels/looks very much like the laminate I’ve been testing with. I’m back off to B&Q after work to pick up another tester (different shade of blue), if I’m happy with this I should hopefully/finally be able to start the construction of the cab (wasn’t able to purchase the MDF as its thickness would was dependent on whether I used laminate or not). Final note, I’ve also managed to find a second hand under/over coin door that seems to be in good condition, I’ve sent my cheque off for it so that should hopefully be turning up next week 2003-07-26 Got my second paint sampler from B&Q and this time I was really happy with the colour, so no excuses now for getting on with this build. 2003-07-28 Thought I'd save myself a lot of effort and instead of just buying a few large sheets of 18mm MDF and cutting them up myself I gave B&Q a list of my panels and had them cut them up, only thing they won't do are angled cuts but I can do those few myself afterwards. Need to pick them up in a couple of days, as they want 48 hours for this sort of project work. 2003-07-30 Picked up my panels from B&Q all seems fine, I realised as I was loading the car up that this is gonna be one heavy cabinet! I also had a little time to make the angle cuts on the two lower side panels for the cab. I did these with the router and a straight edge, plus the router allows me to plug in the vacuum to avoid all that dust. 2003/08/06 Spotted the PC virtual gun here, after reading some positive reviews of it I decided to order one for myself and check it out. Should hopefully turn up tomorrow! 2003/08/07 Well the gun arrived today, took me all of two minutes to get it hooked up so I could start playing with it. So far I’ve only tried it with House of the Dead 2 and had average success with it, I’m not over impressed. 2003/08/08 A bit more testing with the gun, still not convinced by it, but good or bad I will be putting together a full review of it including a few pics and putting it on this site, keep an eye out for it. 2003/08/09 Well I finally had a whole morning to myself and I got stuck into the assembly of the cabinet. I first trimmed the mid sections (B&Q would only do the straight cuts for me). Mounted the castors to the base (these are some very heavy duty casters, i got them free from a friend). Then I rounded corners on lower sides, and managed to complete 3/4 of the lower assembly. I originally intended to use metal L-brackets as I did with my control panel to hold it all together but B&Q have had a few price changes meaning that a bag of four brackets now costs £3, considering the amount I’m going to need this would cost far too much so I decided to use strips of ¾” timber instead. As the lower half took shape it dawned on me how big this thing is going to be, where am I going to fit it! 2003/08/15 Coin door still hasn't arrived going to chase it one more time, if I get no joy I’m going to give up on it and go else where as its no delaying the build. 2003/08/18 As I can't progress with my build I've been messing with my 3D model again, I'm trying to decided what colour I want the base section of the control panel to be, its currently gloss black at the moment but I will change it to the same satin finish as the rest of the cab in either blue or black. 2003/08/21 Bugger, just realised I have made a huge error today, I don’t think there’s enough room in my cab for the monitor. When I put together my original design I made sure that the shelf the monitor is going to sit on was the same depth as the monitor, but what I forgot was that the monitor would be mounted at an angle, this means the top of it sticks out further than the rear of the cabinet. I could solve this by making my cabinet deeper but this would mean not only would it not look as good but I would also need to redo my sideart to fit the new side. Maybe if I’m lucky I can get round this by removing the monitor casing and save myself a few inches. 2003/08/22 I’ve cancelled my coin door order, I’ve tired to seek another second hand door but with shipping its working out quite expensive, think I may just place an order with Happs for a new one. 2003/08/24 Been messing with my design (yes again) and I’ve made a small update. Although the bottom half of my cabinet is the only bit I’ve actually constructed so far (apart from the original control panel) I’ve decided that it was a little on the large side, so I’ve trimmed it down a bit and I actually think it looks a little better. Here’s an image of the new look, I’ll update the re-design section with this but I think I’ll wait a bit just in case I make more changes (which I probably will). I’ll make the changes to the actual cabinet tomorrow as I should have some free time. 2003/08/25 Very busy day today, firstly I brought myself a new toy, a circular saw. This will make those straight cuts a lot easier, not to mention a guy can never have enough power tools. I de-assembled the current lower half and marked up the lower sides and front to match the new design. Then I used my new say to make the cuts. After sanding them down so they matched I then set about routing out the slot for the t-moulding. Everything was then assembled again, one thing I’ve really come to rely on is my clamp set, this really makes jobs like this a lot easier. I was quite pleased with my results, really starting to look like a proper cabinet now. 2003/08/26 Brought a couple PS2 pads today, these are going to be used as player 3&4 controls when needed or if a 1-2 player game requires the extra controls they offer. I have a USB adaptor for these arriving tomorrow. 2003/08/27 Well the USB adaptor turned up today and it’s a great little gadget, just plug the PS2 pads into the adaptor and then plug this into a free USB port and your all set. No drivers required, XP picks up the pads automatically. I’ve tired the pad with PC games, PSX games via ePSXe, and N64 roms under Project64. All works very well and I’m really impressed with it. 2003/08/31 Only a small amount of work done today, I constructed my monitor shelf. As can been seen I’ve constructed it so it locks into the lower section, I will be using some quick-release bolts to secure it also. The top half of my cabinet will then be bolted to the top of this shelf. 2003/09/01 I thought I’d mount my control panel onto the lower half of the cabinet to make sure everything fits. Luckily it fits perfectly and I’m pleased with how it looks. 2003/09/06 I’ve added my Light-gun review to the site. Placed an order with Happs today for an Over/Under coin door. I did ask if I could swap the 25c mechs for ones that would accept UK coins, after checking they told me that they could do this but it would be £20-25 extra. Seeing how these would be doing exactly the same thing but just with different coins I decided not to bother, I’m sure I can figure out a way round this without having to pay extra. Only downside is that none of these doors are in stock at the moment so they will have to ship one over from the states which may take a couple of weeks. 2003/09/11 I mentioned above (2003/08/21) that I may have had a problem fitting my monitor into the top of my cabinet. Well tonight I disconnected my 21” monitor from my PC and stuck it on top of the cabinet for some testing; btw this thing weighs a ton. With the rear casing on the monitor it protrudes approximately 1” out of the rear of the cabinet meaning I couldn’t cover the back as planned. But with screw driver at the ready I soon had the casing off the monitor; I’m happy to report that it just squeezes in so that’s one less thing to worry about. 2003/09/17 Progress has come to a bit of a stand still at the moment, this is due to that fact that I’m awaiting parts (coin door hasn’t turned up as yet), and now it looks as if I may be moving house so this will probably take up a fair bit of spare time in the up coming weeks. 2003/09/19 Whilst the construction of my cabinet may have slowed I’ve had a fair bit of spare time whilst being sat in front of the PC, so I took advantage of this to work on another little idea I have, a cocktail cabinet. I’ve always liked cocktail cabinets; I remember playing on many of these when I was younger. So after seeing a very nice one being sold at arcadetimewarp.com I got thinking. Whilst I liked their cabinet there is no way in the world that I would pay £2500 for one, so I thought I’d have a go at drafting up one myself. I have a few details to iron out but this is what I have so far. Whilst my current cabinet has been designed to run as many games (as possible and not just Mame) this cabinet is aimed at the older classics. I considered a vertical setup for games such as Pac-man etc, but all the games I used to love were from the mid-eighties and were horizontals (Shinobi, Bobble-Bubble, and personal fav Wonder Boy). The cabinet is 38(L)x22(W)x27(H)” and will house a 19” monitor. Even the missus likes the look of this cab and wouldn’t mind it in the house (unlike the current one). Really wanting some more time to spend on these projects, so many ideas, just not enough time. And just for the info in case anyone was wondering these images were created in 3D Studio Max (modelled in Max, Rendered in Brazil using a HDRI setup). 2003/09/22 My coin door from Happs arrived today, what can I say? It really looks the part. I think this is the one item that really makes a Mame machine look like a real cabinet. When I ordered it the other week I mentioned that it was being shipped with 25c mechs, well after looking at the mechs for about 30 mins I figured out how they worked all I needed to do was adjust one screw and the mechs now work happily with 10p’s. So much for paying the extra money to Happs for the UK mechs. 2003/09/22 With the mechs adjusted to accept 10p’s I loaded up Illustrator
again and quickly put together a new
label for the coin door. Printed a couple off, inserted them into
the door and I think it looks the part.
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