Secret Progress

While I haven't updated the Blog in over a month, there has actually been a number of big steps forward...

1) I ordered the marquee from mamemarquees.com. They turned out AWESOME! Here's some pics of the cabinet as it's currently painted (needs just one last coat of touchup for the central two brown stripes). You can also see the marquee lit up from behind. As you can see, I need to put some light blockage behind the light so it doesn't bleed down the back into the monitor region. You'll also see that I still haven't finished the CP yet.





2) I also ordered the CP Overlay from mamemarquees.com.
It looks AWESOME also. Very nice, durable material. I have yet to apply the sticker yet but hope to soon (involves much cutting with razors & fussing about). Here's a pic of the CP overlay held in place



3) Thanks to my dad, I've gotten the hole routered out for the trackball & installed it flush with the top. I still need to putty it over so there's no gap. He also helped me "router" the joystick mount from beneath via lots of holes with a very big drillbit. The reason we didn't use the router on that was that it wouldn't fit (since I was dumb & didn't think to do that before assembling & puttying the CP box). Regardless, it works perfectly and now the joystick is just a bit taller poking up from the bottom, which is nice.




4) Last, but not least, my dad & I put in a wall and door frame, converting the far end of my finished basement into an office. The Metacab Jr. (and, eventually, Metacab Sr.) will go on either side of the door. Yes, that's right, I'll be covering up the basement firepit rotisserie that I'm likely to never use. But not permanently. Some day I just might roast something in a basement firetrap! Note that thanks to Dad's good thinkin', we have an outlet on both sides of the door - one for each arcade cabinet.




So what's left? Well, not much (for Metacab Jr., anyways!). Basically just all this:

- touch up the brown stripes
- apply the CP overlay
- install CP controls
- wire CP
- trim Marquee (needs maybe 1/8" shaved off the bottom to better center the graphics
- insert Monitor
- insert computer
- insert speakers
- connect everything
- customize MAMEWAH vertical layout (I got this working now -- no more directX errors after upgraded to Win2K SP4 and DX9).
- customize MAMEWAH gamelists to be only vertical games, and to have a few categories (e.g. trackball, maze, etc.)
- watch it all work perfectly my first try!