MetaCab - MetaHipster's Home Arcade Endeavors

"A Simple Plan" - T-shirt by Neil Gregory

2009-02-23T16:17:00.001-06:00

Great. Another t-shirt I have to buy.

"A Simple Plan" - T-shirt by Neil Gregory

Catver.ini - Less is More

2008-11-21T06:10:00.003-06:00

Maximus Arcade is sweet - lets you set up quickly & even generate gameLists for mame based on the catver.ini file which has categorical information for MAME roms.

However, since Maximus doesn't let you make a game list from multiple categories, the only easy way to make (for example) a Sports category encompassing all the various sports is to manually find/replace for things such as Sports / Baseball and Sports / Football, etc.

As such I've just finished collapsing all the subvariants into their master categories for most genres. Fighters, Sports, and Shooter were among the worst.

What I didn't remove was any *mature* flags, nor did I really mess a whole lot with the language of quiz games or the more obscure japanese tabeltop subgenres.

For anyone interested, here's a link to my modified catver.ini. You can unzip then swap it in place of the catver.ini in maximus (or other FE).

It's Alive!

2008-11-06T12:23:00.001-06:00

With one final thrust of effort on a day off of work, I managed to finish all thepainting & wiring! It's now 100% playable (though currently still needs a bezel & a second spinner.

Progress!

2008-11-06T11:58:00.008-06:00

Well now that it's been like 9 months since posting any progress, I figured I should get this up to date a bit. Since I last wrote I managed to get the marquee installed, build, paint & wire the control panel, and install the monitor with a proper angle.

closeup of a classic coin slot.

Level_13:_Secret_Level: Video Game Art series

2008-09-08T14:55:00.001-05:00

Level_13:_Secret_Level

MikesArcade Upright Cabinet Kits

2008-05-17T15:48:00.000-05:00

MikesArcade.com offers fully assembled arcade cabinets including Galaga, Ms. Pacman, Midway, Nintendo, etc.

Finally ordered artwork

2008-03-18T08:06:00.003-05:00

I Finally locked down my art order from Mamemarquees. Basically stuck to the pics in most recent thread but used all-white text for the marquee and fixed the text kerning a bit. I'll post some pics when the artwork arrives.

In other news, the SlikStik Tornado spinner seems to rub like hell and is almost unusable. Happ Controls was on the spot with great service, though, and have already offered me a replacement and RMA shipping label. Hopefully the next one doesn't have the same flaw as I've read some similar reports at a post I dropped on arcade controls forums. PCB posted a great fix if the replacement has the same issue.

Also, my cup holders have finally shipped from Happ :) There'll be spots for beers!

Finalized MetaCab Art (Finally!)

2008-03-10T17:15:00.003-05:00

So I was still futzing with the CP art and Marquee art and just now feel it's finally ready for ordering from Mame Marquees. I've been over-analyzing since I couldn't make up my mind about control layout until now and also don't want to order anything twice from mame marquees since it's sorta pricey.

I am now locked in on a 19" LCD monitor, 2x spinners (both with silver skirted SlikStik Tornado knobs), 1x 3" Red Happ Trackball, 2x 4/8-way switchable Ultimarc MagStik Plus, 2x 6-buttons, and a variety of pinball/utility buttons.

Here's the latest cabinet mockup with marquee and CP overlay updated.

Here's closeup of the new Marquee look (just changed font to Intellivised & added some red.)

And here's a closeup of the new CP Overlay.

Once I've triple checked my measurements, I'm going to finally place the order from Mame Marquees which should break the deadlock I've been in progress-wise. I'm going to wait until I have CP Overlay to start drilling any holes as this way I can guarantee everything will line up with CP and Plexi.

I've got almost everything else I need (other than plexi, T-Molding, and a few other odds & ends from Radioshack). As can be seen by the typical cluttered workbench photosbelow.

The Official MAMEY page

2008-02-24T03:44:00.001-06:00

The Official MAMEY page

Awards Site for Mame cabinet developers. Some really sweet creations here...

New CP Overlay Design

2008-02-24T02:55:00.006-06:00

I've decided to knock the sides off and do a T-Shaped control panel after all. It's a bit big (not more than 5" extension on sides and 6" in front so not too bad) but very versatile so I'm thinking it's the best all-around design I can come up with that doesn't require switching CP's. It seems far more tasteful to me than the stupid rectangle idea I started with.

I'll be putting the P1/P2/pause/quit buttons below the monitor and find a way to trim down that glass so that they can simply slide in the glass track.

I also decided to clean up and simplify the design in a way that I think better ties in with the Taito side art. Here's a quick mockup of this CP in place.

Note that I've also come up with a first draft of marquee art. I may take another look at it when it's not 3:30 AM :P Also note that I think I'll do some Red T-molding for the control panel - I think that will really pop (though White or Black would also work).

I also think I may go all out and design a bezel that ties it all together as well. I think seeing the white lines against a jet black bezel around the monitor will look really sweet.

Concept CP mockup applied to photo

2008-02-21T13:36:00.004-06:00

To help me visualize how it will look to have the notched CP design installed I skewed that first CP design to make it look like it's installed in the cabinet.

I'm no longer sold as it looks really clumsy just having a giant plank wedged into the cabinet. I'm thinking an upside-down T-design like Ubercade (with nothing aside the side panels -- having it instead jut out left/right after it extends beyond the kick plate) will look at least slightly more elegant.

Doing this, however, means I now need to find a new spot for my coin buttons, P1/P2 buttons and Exit/Pause utility buttons. I've seen some folks put them under the monitor bezel but this means I'd have to either replace the nice tempered glass that came with the cabinet or find a way to cut it (which I've never done). Alternatively I may put the coin buttons on the front vertical side of the cp box like I did on Metacab Jr. and put P1/P2/Pause/Quit up by the Trackball.... back to the drawing board, at least partially, I guess.

PacMan + Piet Mondrian == PacMondrian

2008-02-21T09:45:00.005-06:00

What happens when De Stijl Art meets early 80's video gaming? This modern art cum video game is a great concept in both playable art and themed cabinet design.

Rather than stop at the custom pacman cabinet art, he even wrote his own game in Java which lets you effectively eat the colors of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie.

CP Overlay - v3 finally ready for commentary

2008-02-20T23:54:00.006-06:00

After much dickering around thinking of overboard 2-spinner/2-trackball cp's, I think I've at last simplified it with 1-spinner/1-trackball. 2x 8/4-way joysticks w/ 6 buttons. Utility buttons in very nonstandard columns to either side of the side wall of the cabinet, thus a rectangle notched for the sidewalls. It seemed this would be a good out-of the-way spot for them so overthrow on trackball/etc doesn't accidentally hit quit or anything.

Below is a pic (the grey rectangles are the 8" notches for walls thus what's between them is standard CP size for a Taito cab. This means there will be some jut into the room but trying to envision two players crammed in the 23" between side panels feels too shoulder-to-shoulder. This gives a little breathing room which should be fine given the 170º viewing angles on the new LCD monitor I've ordered.

What is this CRAP?

2008-02-20T14:48:00.001-06:00

A hilarious review of the many horrors that are created by misguided mame cabinet builders....

Doc's Modular MAME Concept - modular control panels

2008-02-13T22:25:00.005-06:00

Oh man, Just when I thought I had my new Metacab CP design figured out, I stumbled across this sweet modular approach to CP design. While it's less polished than what I was originally picturing doing (there will be seams), you can literally re-organize the entire panel with no tools and some simple plugging in/out of RJ45 jacks. This means you can totally mimic original layouts in many cases with no excess controls and no extensions beyond the width of the cabinet.

I also really like the idea of the utility buttons on the vertical side just below the monitor - this really means the side wings I pictured having on either side of the notches would be irrelevant/unnecessary.

The other reason this seems particularly appealing is that it didn't sound completely trivial to get dual spinners and dual trackballs working so this lets me slack on that indefinitely since the modular design allows you to add panels as needed with no commitment to lock on a single layout right now.

:: RetroGaming Radio - Modern Radio for Classic Gamers ::

2008-02-13T21:09:00.001-06:00

:: RetroGaming Radio - Modern Radio for Classic Gamers ::

This is a great radio show complete with interviews, etc. Includes full archives of the show over the past 8 yrs.

Better photos of empty Metacab

2008-02-12T12:36:00.001-06:00

As promised, here's some better pics of the empty cabinet. Dunno if you can even tell given the quality of the phone pix, but these reflect the fully cleaned up sides post-marker and magic eraser.

Also, here's a shot of the control panel prototype I roughed in with cardboard.

As you can see, I'm not using the T-shape used by Ubercade (another Taito MAME cab someone made). Instead, I plan to notch the control panel so that it actually has some button space on either side of the sidewalls of the cabinet. This should fit in pretty well and while it looks weird, what mame cab CP doesn't look unauthentic given how many different controls they typically employ.

I feel this design gives the most free space for the controls so that utility/P1/P2 buttons aren't infringing on the trackball/joy/spinner area. I wanted to be sure not to put buttons above the trackballs since overthrow rolling of the hand e.g. when bowling sucks when it accidentally quits your game.

So basically, top row is two trackballs (possibly I'll add another Player 1 Btn 1 for centipede etc next to that but I think the block of 6 below should work for both players without being too non-ergonomic.

Bottom row is spinner, 8/4-way joystick, 6btns and then another block of the same for player two.

Then pause, quit, coin, and P1 left of side wall and coin2 and p2 right of sidewall. Pinball buttons horizontal on sides/front. I'm still toying with option to put coin buttons on the front since this seems most like using actual coin door at least in terms of where you're reaching. I have no plans to actually use the coin door any time soon - just keeping it for looks.

I'm hoping to finish the Adobe Illustrator version of the control panel layout which will be the basis for designing a CP overlay to scale... hopefully this will be my next post & not too long in coming.

CoinOpVideogames.com

2008-02-11T13:47:00.000-06:00

Check out this huge collection of arcade game audio recorded in the 1980's. This guy recorded tons of arcades between 1982 and 1988 and has taken the time to digitize it all for the collective good. Not the best sound quality but pretty good given that it's all 20+ yr old cassette.

Metacab the Elder - the saga begins

2008-02-11T11:15:00.001-06:00

Wow - long time no work. Since Metacab Jr. reached playable completion, I've slacked mightily and had another son. Primarily due to the latter, I still haven't finished the bezel issue on Metacab Jr. but that's another story.

In much more exciting news, I've finally started moving forward on Metacab Jr's big brother, Metacab (Sr.).

The plan (which has swum in my head long before reaching the state it's at now) is to make a horizontal multi-cab that can play just about everything from MAME to console emulators

19" CRT TV for monitor (I don't want to have to cut a hole in the back which eliminates the 21" CRT Computer monitors I have from the equation :)

swiss-army control panel (not literally, just in the way it combines everything in a single board). This took a lot of thinking but I've finally settled on a design which has all of the following: 2x Trackball, 2x spinner, 2x 8/4-way switchable joysticks with red ball tops, 2x 6-button player buttons, side/front buttons for pinball (L/R/plunger), utility buttons for coin 1/2, P1/P2, pause, quit.

Front USB for if/when I get some console controller adapters, as well as for StepMania dance pads I've got.

speakers w/ subwoofer (cheapo computer-style should be fine)

I originally was hoping my brother-in-law would build it for me in exchange for my wiring up a cabinet for him but he's gotten too busy with refinishing a sweet 60's muscle car ('69 mustang? I can't remember exactly... ) as well as his busy schedule with work/kids so it just didn't work out timing-wise.

Instead I responded to an ad on Craig's List for empty arcade cabinets for sale locally & stopped by to a nice guy named Marty here in Minneapolis who had several for sale. I was initially torn between a black (i think, converted) Tiger-Heli cab and an old golf game with blue side art and chrome t-molding.

Then I saw it... a classic Taito cab with the manufacturer painted out but otherwise identical to this arkanoid pic:

I'll post better pics later but for now here's some crappy camera phone pics taken with my blackberry pearl: (love the crumbliness I get in low light?)

It was originally a vertical (golf game, I think) but came with monitor glass (featuring taito logo - cool!) and an old 19" vertical plastic bezel which sadly won't fit on Metacab Jr. Coin door in tact on the front though it will need a new lock to keep it closed. Other than some very minor scratches and rubbed off paint it's in great shape! no water damage, etc. I already touched up the black with marker and used a Magic Eraser to get all the scuffs off an it's looking awesome already.

More later as I get time... Control panel design is already nearing the end of concept phase... So hopefully I can post on that soon.

.:: Arcade-, Videogames- and Retrogaming-Shirts | LowRez.de ::.

2008-02-11T10:10:00.000-06:00

LowRez.de ::.

This site has a huge range of retro gaming-related apparel including obscure consoles, arcade game characters, and more. Not the over-commercialized sort of stuff you find at your local dept store -- much cooler!

Cat with Bow Golf

2007-05-25T10:05:00.000-05:00

What happens when you give a cat a bow? He propels himself through an empty blue grid towards targets, of course!

Click & drag to draw the bow & let go to shoot. Note you don't have to land before shooting again.

TARDIS MAME Console

2007-03-14T16:21:00.000-05:00

Very sweet, very thorough interpretation of a Dr. Who TARDIS that serves as a MAME Arcade Cabinet.

Retro Arcade Radio (streamed over the internet)

2007-01-22T16:03:00.000-06:00

This site has an online radio station filled with vintage 80's game ads and remixes streaming to yer iTunes/Winamp or facsimile...

Includes ads unless you're a $5/mo live365 subscriber. Plus either way it has 80's game ads as featured originally on the radio to add to the flair.

Retro Arcade Flickr Set

2006-11-17T14:14:00.000-06:00

Very cool photo retrospective of the Time Out Arcade of the late 70's/early 80's. Here's a link to the Time Out Tunnel fan site.

Sushi Samurai - Flash-based Burgertime clone

2006-08-18T11:01:00.000-05:00

For a sorta fun japanese take on Burgertime, try this flash game, Sushi Samurai

15-player Gradius game Video

2006-08-11T08:40:00.000-05:00

Gradius (space shooter game) is typically not a 15-player game, but this guy managed to meaningfully composite 15 layers of players completing the first level of Gradius for NES.

Cup holders

2006-07-12T06:37:00.000-05:00

Just was looking at what some other folks have done for their cabinet & found that Happ Controls has not only the best in authentic arcade controls (i already knew that), but also the cup holders I've been looking for! seems like a must to be sure people aren't trying to set (and subsequently, spill) pop and beers on the slanted control panel surface. In the mean time there's a nice little fold-down table right by the cabinet which most like dates back to the 50's when the in-wall rotisserie was originally built.

FINALLY! IT'S ALIIIIIVE!

2006-07-05T17:30:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in a prior post, I have finished painting the stripe, which now look as good as Masking tape has to offer me. If I ever get inspired, I would still like to put 1-2 coats of polycrilic on for durability, but at this point it's quite presentable with its semi-gloss latex exterior.

I applied the vinyl control panel overlay & inserted all the controls. Then wired 'em up to the Mini-PAC. Given the small CP size, the wiring took me only like 10 minutes since i didn't need to crimp any connectors for splicing extension wire.

Next stuck the cp into the cabinet. It's so tight that it rubbed paint off the cab which will need to be touched up (barely visible just above the left end of the cp on the black side wall) but I don't need to worry about adding screws to hold it or anything. If need be, I have some velcro to give it more stick but I don't think that will be necessary.

Finally here's the full view of the cabinet, in place by my never-used in-wall woodfire rotisserie grill.

As always, there's still a list of to-do's but they're getting to be pretty minor. I've already mentioned that I still want to clear-coat the paint to protect it from little hands & stains. I need to touchup that black paint on the interior side walls where the CP scraped it. The door is still kinda tight due to the already tight fit worsened by the black paint. The plexi is also sorta tight and rubbing - could lose a good 1/8".

And, most importantly, the monitor needs some manner of bezel. I'm picturing getting some black gatorboard or matteboard & making something that way. I know there's some prefab plastic options too but there's so little clearance below the plexi that I'll need something flatter, or perhaps even simply mask the back of the plexi & paint the borders black from behind. This should hopefully solve most of the light pollution from the marquee light reflecting down off the back wall, but if it doesn't take care of it completely, I can put some aluminum foil or styrofoam or something behind the fluorescent tube light up there to make sure the light is going forward only.

The only other remaining business is customizing the interface itself to make the Mamewah menu system as ideal as possible. For some reason I have yet to fathom, it's resisting the display of the background image for the menu (just a solid color instead). Screenshots from the games are showing up just fine though so that's cool. I also want to customize the game lists to feature only vert games.

Status Update

2006-06-22T14:05:00.000-05:00

Am I still alive? Am I still convinced I'm almost done? Yes! Yes!

While there's no photos (today) I have finished the touchup painting! I've gotten my CP overlay finally applied & all controls affixed to the CP! This means that all that's really left is to wire up the switches to the MiniPac interface, and then get the Computer running! All said & done, probably no mre than 3 hrs to have the box fully functional.

At that point, I enter into the "fine tuning" phase in which I add minor cosmetic things like a monitor bezel, some light-blocking for behind the Fluorescent marquee light (to kill overspray of light that ends up behind the monitor), and redesigning all the MAMEWAH menus.

Masters of the Universe!

2006-06-22T14:01:00.000-05:00

For some of the sweetest in retro He-Man and the Masters of the Universe video game action, check out this great little cranny of he-man.org.

Secret Progress

2006-05-28T21:00:00.000-05:00

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!

Final CP Overlay & Marquee for MetaCab Jr.?

2006-04-17T22:19:00.000-05:00

I think this may finally be the end of the MetaCab jr. design process! I've got a message in to the folks at mamemarquees.com confirming that white on the marquee is translucent (I don't want it transparent lest I see the light right through!). Assuming that's as expected, I'll be ready to order!

Here's the final marquee.

Here's the final CP Overlay (hopefully those holes line up! I won't actually be printing the circles, so if it's off a tiny bit it shouldn't matter, as long as the text doesn't need a hole cut through it.

Latest CP Overlay for Metacab Jr.

2006-04-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

I totally revised the control panel overlay thanks to a new font I found. I like this way more & think that it has a better mid/late-1970's retro vibe. It should work well, assuming my measurements are sound and the printout matches the holes I drilled. (Tell me again why i thought it was a good idea to drill *before* the Overlay was printed?!). As before, the overlay will wrap the beveled corner; however now (among other changes) I've pulled the Coin labels up above the bevel, even though the buttons will be below the bevel.

As soon as I finish the marquee, I can get my MameMarquees order placed so that everything can come together (some time next week).

More stripes - Orange...

2006-04-11T22:50:00.000-05:00

here's after the first go around of orange. Looks like I'll need to do a bit of touchup on some edges since my masking skills leave something to be desired. Overall it's looking mighty sharp though. Aside from touchup, I'll (hopefully tomorrow?) be working on the next stripes as I progress inwards: More Brown. At that pont it will just be the very center which may be white-red-white, may be orange, or possibly even black-red-black. Who knows what's in store?

THE painting continues...

2006-04-08T11:49:00.000-05:00

I figured I'd toss up the latest pics before I go and continue the stenciling/masking/painting process...

here's the cab with the interior/front painted black. I did the first round of masking the brown in. I've got to add more brown later but first some orange.

I am still waffling on whether I'll be having a white with red stripe in the middle (i.e. brown orange brown white red white brown orange brown) - sounds like a lot more time & effort than I'm interested in right now so I might just combine them into a third orange stripe (thus Brown, orange, brown orange brown orange brown). You can never have enough brown & orange if you're looking to do a 70's vibe.

Looking back at my earlier concepts, I've tweaked the cp overlay to match the actual holes drilled.

I'm hoping my measurements will result in a piece of CP Overlay from mamemarquees that fits perfectly. I totally should have drilled *after* getting the CP Overlay. Duh. Well first time making a polished CP & all, so I'm bound to screw up. My other screwup is that I can't router the bottom of the board without totally dismantling the CP (which has already been puttied & sanded). Thus my joystick will either have to be top mounted & routed a bit on the top to make flush, or else just bottom mount it with no routering which results in a shorter stick. My proof of concept CP isn't routered either (and is bottom-mounted). While the sticks seem short, it's entirely playable, so not the end of the world for me. I want to be sure my final Metacab Sr. has them done properly though.

It wouldn't be impossible to just build a whole new CP to fit the cab too - I can use the old one as a template and redrill everything and extend the side boards so that it's fully hidden. Would also be nice to plan the side boards differently so that i could use T-molding along the edges (the current design would cut through some wood if I do that.

Metacab Jr. Primer & CP layout Completed

2006-04-03T09:14:00.000-05:00

This weekend I found the time to layout & drill the control panel! I quickly noted that there really just wasn't enough room to fit a trackball *and* spinner *and* joystick *and* three buttons. Instead I dropped the trackball and have a much stronger layout, in my opinion. Since MetaCab Jr. is a vertical-cabinet, I'm thinking I'd prefer the spinner to the trackball anyways given all the great arkanoid-style games and the games that can use a spinner with joystick.

As you can see in the layout, I'll have two buttons in top-left (pause, quit), two buttons in the top-right (P1/P2), joystick, 3 action buttons, and spinner in the center, and then two more buttons (Coin1/Coin2) on the front face. I may still add two buttons to the sides if I find any pinball games that work well in vert mode; I'm probably going to hold off on that idea until I get to MetaCab Sr.

As you may have also noticed, I had the time to apply a whole can of Kilz primer to the entire cabinet. I used a nice little 2" sponge roller which did a great job of applying the paint evenly without runs or brush strokes. The only areas that haven't been nicely whited out are the regions people probably won't see anyways (e.g. behind the monitor bezel, the back, the top). I'll be applying a couple layers of black as soon as I get some new roller heads - the ones I bought to refill the 2" roller I have were totally too loose and fell right off the handle!? So yeah - black up the middle (around the marquee, monitor, front panel, etc. And then some brown with vintage orange stripes for the side art.

I'll be ordering my marquee and control panel overlay from these folks at Mame Marquees. Kira is already on my side for doing that, so that's cool (it would be cheaper but far far far more tedious to try to create these through traditional media rather than digital prints). Plus i'm hoping the CP prints are going to be very durable since they're made for just that. Obviously I'll be designing my own art and not picking any of their stock designs.

Progress at last!

2006-03-28T15:16:00.000-06:00

Well after a march filled with emptiness progress-wise, I finally had some time last weekend when my dad was up to hit it again. I did squeeze some work in prior to that too, wiring the fluorescent tube light as well as mounting it. I also built out the rails to insert the plexi for the marquee and various other minor updates including purchasing the pre-cut plexiglass for marquee (2 layers) and the monitor (1 layer).

Below is a pic with the control panel off (I will be putting velcro on the rails, which combines with the tight fit to give it a snug mounting mechanism without any problems removing it later if I need to get at the wiring). As you can see the wood for the top trim of the marquee is too thick (and other stuff I have is too thin). I'll need to rip a good 3/4" off of that on my brother-in-law's table saw at some point.

The primary upgrades we did this past weekend were to add a 2"x6" base to the cabinet, raising it up high enough so that I'm no longer looking straight into the marquee. I don't know if you can really tell from any of the pics but the original cabinet I found was TINY! Not only narrow but short. The fact that there was no lightup marquee at all either (just a piece of wood) so maybe that was why it being short wasn't a big deal. It's now a perfect height for me - much more comfortable and makes me feel like less of a giant (I'm only 6'1"!). We also finalized the mounting of the inner ceiling so that there's a nice track in there to insert the plexi for the monitor - it slides up and behind the back of the ceiling.

With the light on, there's a bit of back lighting coming down... I'll decide later (once it's painted & the monitor is installed) whether that''s annoying -- I may just need to stick something behind the light in the top cavity so that it can only shine forwards. For now I've just got a sized sheet of drawing paper in there and it gives a nice soft glow. I'll be playing with some media to see if there's any way to get a design in there without having to pay Kinko's for some oversized color printing... Here's a pic with the light on and the control panel inserted:

It's really coming together! Best of all, I think I'm finally at a point where I can start doing some work at night (assuming I still have energy) since almost nothing is left to do that requires power tools other than the CP itself. And that I can do in the garage once again now that spring is in the air. My wife has granted me 4 more precious hours of uninterrupted work this weekend so that should hopefully be enough to get the CP in order so that it's time for making painty.

The main things left to be done are these:
- rip marquee top board so that it doesn't stick up above the top fo the sides
- layout & drill/router the control panel
- finish sanding all the wood putty (applying more if needed)
- primer entire cabinet
- paint entire cabinet
- apply painting details to entire cabinet
- figure out a solution for the control panel visuals -- will require either adhesive pre-printed vinyl or some sort of coating to the entire thing which can be painted. I can't simply stick a printout under plexi due to the beveled corner design (well, I could but it would, I think, look & feel weird to have plexi not around to the front face of the CP).

Atari Concept Art

2006-03-17T16:12:00.002-06:00

Here's some sweet atari prototype concept art. A wide range of marker renderings for arcade cabs I doubt ever saw fruition.

--update-- I went to take a look at these again and the site is down so here they are below (complements of Internet Archive):

Still no progress

2006-03-03T11:23:00.000-06:00

Thanks to an overwhelming lack of free time I haven't had much time to work on Metacab Jr. for a couple weeks. I have brought it out of the garage & into the basement (those subzero days made it an expensive prospect to heat the garage continuously with the propane heat cannon). This made it considerably warmer but also has the unfortunate side effect that it's directly under my son Logan's room. So, no working on it after 8pm (aka my only free time).

I've bought my plexiglass for the bezel and the marquee. I'll post some pics of the progress I've made creating mounting rails for the marquee. I still haven't finalized/printed a design so it's boring looking at blue sticker-coated plexi, but you may be interested to see what's up.

I'm hoping to finish up the construction stuff soon so I can get to the painting. Hopefully the painting goes much quicker since I can actually work on that while Logan's sleeping (as opposed to hammering, sanding & drilling right beneath his room).

In other news, my t-molding (black 5/8") has arrived and the edges have been slot-cut, so I'll be ready for that once painting has completed. Really it's all just waiting on the attachment of the front door, and the woodworking side of the CP construction.

I think I'm currently planning to have the CP feature (left-to right) spinner, joystick, 3-4 buttons, trackball. And then another row either above or on the front face of the CP, which has P1/2, Coin1/2.

I'm also contemplating just hand-painting my CP & side art and coating it with a few coats of clear acrylic polyurethane since that will be way cheaper (and more durable?) than commercially printing on vinyl adhesive sticker.

Last Starfighter game!

2006-03-03T11:18:00.000-06:00

Since Last Starfighter was only ever created as a movie prop, people have apparently finally gotten sick of waiting for an arcade version and just made their own!

This site has info on last starfighter fan cabs and even a freeware download of a windows-based fan version of the game as shown in the movie.

I'm still alive

2006-02-08T16:43:00.000-06:00

I haven't updated much due to being on a 5-day vacation to Wisconsin Dells. It's a very surreal place to begin with, made doubly so by the fact that we hit it during the off-season when no one is really there & most of the town is shut down. The only arcade-related occurence there was that they had some cabs at Denny's Diner at Hwy 12 & 23 (no not the chain). I played some Asteroids (though I think their aged leaf switches desparately needed to be be replaced - seemed you really had to push on them to get it to respond). God bless those old skool vector monitors.

I also discovered a Namco Classics Vol 2 cab that I'd never heard of which had 2 versions each of Rally X, Pacman, and Digdug. "Original" and "Arrangement".

Metacab Jr. Gets a facelift - part 1

2006-01-30T09:49:00.000-06:00

This weekend my dad was in town, so I thought we'd quick overhaul that little freebie cabinet shell I brought home. I pictured a simple process (maybe 4 hrs or so Sat. AM) of adding a control panel, allowing for a marquee, and mounting the monitor. As per usual, I am cursed with a propensity to vastly underestimate the time it takes to do something.

To begin with, we decided the best way to start was to completely disassemble the unit.

I figured that as long as we were going that far, I may as well take off the crappy atari side art, since it was low-res and bubbling up in places anyways. One of the pieces came off in on sheet, so I hung it up in my workshop, but it left behind a vast tract of sticker detritus that took us a long time to get off completely, even with the help of some Goo Gone adhesive remover. Note: Goo Gone is not the same thing as Goof Off (a product I'd already used which would eat through any adhesive in seconds). Goo Gone is a slow-acting citrus blend that takes forever and doesn't really have what it takes to get off that much sticker. After going through over half the bottle, we gave up on it and insttead resorted to the trusty belt sander.

After that, we had all our pieces ready to roll and took a look at them. Since the original Cabinet maker used *very* thin MDF (most of it was 1/2", the side walls were a whopping 5/8") and did a whole lot of shooting screws into the edge of said MDF, there were tons of spots where the wood was splitting. So we then set about figuring out what it would take to put it back together in a way that would be more structurally sound than the original. We decided to use 2"x2" lumber to reinforce all of the edges and provide rail supports for everything (rather than screwing into the edges). This proved to be a good approach, but meant we were effectively re-using the lumber to completely rebuild it. This was a good idea, but a time consuming one. By the end of the first day we had it free-standing again, but the monitor still wasn't mounted, there was no control panel, and it was rough sanded down to look worse than it started by far.

Note also, that when working in the frigid climates such as I am here in Minneapolis, it helps to have a 30,000 BTU propane heater in a sealed garage. We were able to work without gloves and coats (though it was pretty loud whenever we ran it).

We also found that sealing all the holes created by the original manufacturer (as well as covering up all our screwups since we were building without plans and made frequent messups thanks to the wide variety of angles & curves going on) that a bit of wood filler does a great job. It looks like someone did a drive-by shooting on it but has sanded down smooth and will hopefully be completely unnoticeable when I finally get around to priming & painting it.

So at last we were at a point where we had decided the angle to put the 19" Dell CRT monitor at, and dropped it in. As expected, it was way too big for the little 24"x24"x66" cabinet. As you can see, it will be sitting on its side since this will be an upright-dedicated cabinet.

After much option-considering, we finally determined that the primary importance was the user's experience (not the sanctity of the crappy MDF) and so chopped a whopping hole in the back for the monitor to poke its butt through. Hack? Definitely! Does it work? Yup!

We also mounted a board across the back above the hole to reinforce it. And, to prevent sliding left/right (and keep it centered) mounted some 2x2 on the monitor shelf to keep it in place. The monitor is still primarily held in by gravity at this point, but due to how tightly it's wedged into the hole in the back, it won't be going anywhere unless the cabinet gets some serious abuse or is knocked over. At this point i was pretty happy with the direction it was heading.

Enter the challenge of providing a mounting structure for the plexiglass that will serve as a shield and bezel for the monitor. I ultimately decided to go with a similar approach to what DanW & Theo used on their Aarghcade and Time Machine cabinets. Essentially, rather than building a complex picture-frame-esque bezel system, they just dropped a single pane of plexi down, which was masked & painted black on the back side. That said, it was still quite a challenge to figure out how to mount a rail system for them to rest on, yet keep it easy to slide in & out since removal is crucial for getting the monitor in/out or turning it on/off if need be. Not something that will happen at all regularly, but it seemed a good idea to make it easy to get in & out to remove the monitor when moving the cabinet, etc. In combination with the plexi removal, we wanted the inner ceiling simple to remove too since both that & the plexi would need to go in order to allow the monitor to come out. Both the inner ceiling & the plexi will ride rails.

The control panel was intended to be something of a cross between a classic defender cab's shape and a more traditional elevator action-style shape. We reused the cp box from the original, but attached a nice piece of maple to the top. Once attached, we routered the corner to make a rounded edge since buttons/controls will be on the top surface and more buttons (for coin/Player starts) would be on the vertical portion. This turned out really good until we got the idea to use the slot cutter router bit to add a groove for some t-molding along the edges. Strangely enough, a 1/2" deep slot cutter, when used on 1/2" MDF, cuts through it! Who knew? :) We gave up on the t-molding idea and puttied it in. The CP will ultimately have a vinyl overlay sticker applied to protect it, so none of those issues will hopefully be noticeable in the end.

The marquee area was easy enough to make room for a light... we just removed the board that was there. I will be mounting an 18" compact fluorescent light there eventually, and drop some sandwiched plexiglass up there for the art.

And, easiest of all was routing the slot for the T-Molding along both side panels. Setting the depth was a bit tricky but once we switched from my dad's spring-loaded depth router to a more easy-to-control twist-depth router, we were quickly able to dial in on a distance that would properly center the 1/16" slot. The only real bummer there was that since the MDF is only 5/8", I'm pretty much limited to black t-molding. No biggy. When Metacab Sr. is built, it will be done from scratch with 3/4" MDF so as to allow for a full variety of color choices.

What's left? lots! Despite putting in roughly 16 hrs this weekend, I'm probably only about 1/2 done. I still need to decide upon a final CP layout and put that all together. I need to mount the CP to the cabinet. Need to install the plexi for marquee and monitor bezel. Need to finalize artwork and get printed a marquee and CP overlay. Need to re-install the kickpanel/door. Need to wire and install the marquee light and powerstrip to provide simple single-switch powerup. And, of course, need to do some finish sanding, prime, and paint the entire cabinet. I think I will be hand-painting my side art to save some money. If I go with a simple retro striping such as I'm currently envisioning, this should be simple enough to do with some acrylics and/or latex enamel. Once it's all finished, I'll apply a couple coats of acrylic clearcoat to protect the colors on the entire cab.

Metacab Jr. Gets a facelift - part 1

2006-01-30T08:32:00.000-06:00

This weekend my dad was in town, so I thought we'd quick overhaul that little freebie cabinet shell I brought home. I pictured a simple process (maybe 4 hrs or so Sat. AM) of adding a control panel, allowing for a marquee, and mounting the monitor. As per usual, I am cursed with a propensity to vastly underestimate the time it takes to do something.

To begin with, we decided the best way to start was to completely disassemble the unit.

I figured that as long as we were going that far, I may as well take off the crappy atari side art, since it was low-res and bubbling up in places anyways. One of the pieces came off in on sheet, so I hung it up in my workshop, but it left behind a vast tract of sticker detritus that took us a long time to get off completely, even with the help of some Goo Gone adhesive remover. Note: Goo Gone is not the same thing as Goof Off (a product I'd already used which would eat through any adhesive in seconds). Goo Gone is a slow-acting citrus blend that takes forever and doesn't really have what it takes to get off that much sticker. After going through over half the bottle, we gave up on it and insttead resorted to the trusty belt sander.

After that, we had all our pieces ready to roll and took a look at them. Since the original Cabinet maker used *very* thin MDF (most of it was 1/2", the side walls were a whopping 5/8") and did a whole lot of shooting screws into the edge of said MDF, there were tons of spots where the wood was splitting. So we then set about figuring out what it would take to put it back together in a way that would be more structurally sound than the original. We decided to use 2"x2" lumber to reinforce all of the edges and provide rail supports for everything (rather than screwing into the edges). This proved to be a good approach, but meant we were effectively re-using the lumber to completely rebuild it. This was a good idea, but a time consuming one. By the end of the first day we had it free-standing again, but the monitor still wasn't mounted, there was no control panel, and it was rough sanded down to look worse than it started by far.

Note also, that when working in the frigid climates such as I am here in Minneapolis, it helps to have a 30,000 BTU propane heater in a sealed garage. We were able to work without gloves and coats (though it was pretty loud whenever we ran it).

We also found that sealing all the holes created by the original manufacturer (as well as covering up all our screwups since we were building without plans and made frequent messups thanks to the wide variety of angles & curves going on) that a bit of wood filler does a great job. It looks like someone did a drive-by shooting on it but has sanded down smooth and will hopefully be completely unnoticeable when I finally get around to priming & painting it.

So at last we were at a point where we had decided the angle to put the 19" Dell CRT monitor at, and dropped it in. As expected, it was way too big for the little 24"x24"x66" cabinet. As you can see, it will be sitting on its side since this will be an upright-dedicated cabinet.

After much option-considering, we finally determined that the primary importance was the user's experience (not the sanctity of the crappy MDF) and so chopped a whopping hole in the back for the monitor to poke its butt through. Hack? Definitely! Does it work? Yup! We also mounted a board across the back above the hole to reinforce it. And, to prevent sliding left/right (and keep it centered) mounted some 2x2 on the monitor shelf to keep it in place. The monitor is still primarily held in by gravity at this point, but due to how tightly it's wedged into the hole in the back, it won't be going anywhere unless the cabinet gets some serious abuse or is knocked over. At this point i was pretty happy with the direction it was heading.

Enter the challenge of providing a mounting structure for the plexiglass that will serve as a shield and bezel for the monitor. I ultimately decided to go with a similar approach to what DanW & Theo used on their Aarghcade and Time Machine cabinets. Essentially, rather than building a complex picture-frame-esque bezel system, they just dropped a single pane of plexi down, which was masked & painted black on the back side. That said, it was still quite a challenge to figure out how to mount a rail system for them to rest on, yet keep it easy to slide in & out since removal is crucial for getting the monitor in/out or turning it on/off if need be. Not something that will happen at all regularly, but it seemed a good idea to make it easy to get in & out to remove the monitor when moving the cabinet, etc. In combination with the plexi removal, we wanted the inner ceiling simple to remove too since both that & the plexi would need to go in order to allow the monitor to come out. Both the inner ceiling & the plexi will ride rails.

The control panel was intended to be something of a cross between a classic defender cab's shape and a more traditional elevator action-style shape. We reused the cp box from the original, but attached a nice piece of maple to the top. Once attached, we routered the corner to make a rounded edge since buttons/controls will be on the top surface and more buttons (for coin/Player starts) would be on the vertical portion. This turned out really good until we got the idea to use the slot cutter router bit to add a groove for some t-molding along the edges. Strangely enough, a 1/2" deep slot cutter, when used on 1/2" MDF, cuts through it! Who knew? :) We gave up on the t-molding idea and puttied it in. The CP will ultimately have a vinyl overlay sticker applied to protect it, so none of those issues will hopefully be noticeable in the end.

The marquee area was easy enough to make room for a light... we just removed the board that was there. I will be mounting an 18" compact fluorescent light there eventually, and drop some sandwiched plexiglass up there for the art.

And, easiest of all was routing the slot for the T-Molding along both side panels. Setting the depth was a bit tricky but once we switched from my dad's spring-loaded depth router to a more easy-to-control twist-depth router, we were quickly able to dial in on a distance that would properly center the 1/16" slot. The only real bummer there was that since the MDF is only 5/8", I'm pretty much limited to black t-molding. No biggy. When Metacab Sr. is built, it will be done from scratch with 3/4" MDF so as to allow for a full variety of color choices.

What's left? lots! Despite putting in roughly 16 hrs this weekend, I'm probably only about 1/2 done. I still need to decide upon a final CP layout and put that all together. I need to mount the CP to the cabinet. Need to install the plexi for marquee and monitor bezel. Need to finalize artwork and get printed a marquee and CP overlay. Need to re-install the kickpanel/door. Need to wire and install the marquee light and powerstrip to provide simple single-switch powerup. And, of course, need to do some finish sanding, prime, and paint the entire cabinet. I think I will be hand-painting my side art to save some money. If I go with a simple retro striping such as I'm currently envisioning, this should be simple enough to do with some acrylics and/or latex enamel. Once it's all finished, I'll apply a couple coats of acrylic clearcoat to protect the colors on the entire cab.

Elevator Action - Ain't She a beaut?

2006-01-25T18:30:00.000-06:00

Since I don't have any time to work on the cabs tonight (stupid homework for Work), I won't say much today. Here's a pic I found of Elevator Action. It's that bare-bones minimalism that I hope to recreate. As cabinets go, it's one of the browner.

The Bounty Continues...

2006-01-24T20:04:00.000-06:00

Well, I've gone ahead & ordered a white 2.25" trackball, single Mag-Stick Plus 8/4-way switchable joystick (black pear-shaped handle), another minipac, and a bunch of buttons for what Kilgour neatly dubbed "Metacab Jr.". This should be everything I need except for a spinner. I will see if there's indeed room for one on the Jr. once I have all the parts and can start to think more accurately about the CP dimensions. The trough currently in the Jr.'s empty cabinet is only 21" x 6" (the dimensions I used to design the CP overlay). I may well extend the CP outwards beyond the edge of the cab, though, if only a bit, since the monitor situation may require it if I can't fit a monitor in there without it poking forwards a bit.

Speaking of monitors, the bounty of my IT guy overfloweth! I asked him what ancient tech we have kicking around the closets at work and was informed of a P3 500Mhz and a 19" CRT! Perfect! I've tested them both out and they seem to work! I grabbed an ancient 15" CRT too, just in case the 19" won't fit. As they were all destined for the junk, it's good to be able to put them to good use. As I quipped to my manager today, "What good is an 8-year old computer? Well, it's great for playing 15-30year old games!"

Here's some pics of the two monitors i picked up, as well as my old 20" TV I had briefly considered using if required. Thankfully I can stick to computer monitors. They give a seriously sharper image!

After testing all three in the wee little cabinet, it became clear that both of the larger ones have some depth issues that could be resolved by decasing it or extending the back of the cabinet slightly where it needs it. However, since the biggest (20" TV) is a TV, I think I won't bother with that. The 15" fit easily but looked lame and tiny, even vertical. I think that the 19" CRT Dell monitor is the finalist, and will accompany the little Dell P3-500Mhz as chief tech for the Metacab Jr.

Here's a pic of the Dell. it's so old and tiny that it fit easily inside the bottom of the cabinet! Yay!

New CP design

2006-01-22T19:16:00.000-06:00

Here's a new control panel layout idea I'm toying with, this one for the overhaul I'm going to give to that Big Electronic Games empty cabinet I found..... Again, I will be dedicating that cab to vertical games that have 1p at a time (e.g. pacman, dig dug, etc).

Very Elevator action-inspired, still going for the retro vibe. Ironic since Elevator Action is actually a horizontal game, but i don't much care for trying too hard to be authentic (it's a difficult battle I'm not willing to wage). I've envisioned this being a wrap around a beveled control panel ala defender's CP. Main controls on top half, 1p/2p and 1coin/2coin on bottom half.

Anyone have any tips/examples of doing the control panel this way? Where I can get some CP overlay printed that's durable enough to not need plexiglass over it, but flexible enough to wrap the corner (or, if there's a way to have plexi wrap the corner, tips on how to do that? Seems like the wood is just a joint that's been routered round at the corner.

This will be a very shallow (~6") angled CP reminiscent of the Defender, yet ideally versatile enough for a wide variety of vertical games. Mag-Stik Plus with 3 action buttons. Do you think I'll be OK with only one bank of 3 buttons? Or should I save room for a redundant set for lefty's? and/or using trackball or spinner?

Given limited space, do you think I should include trackball as pictured? or instead a spinner? both? If anyone can tell me how to see what vertical games use trackball vs spinner, that'd be cool.

here's a mockup of what I may do initially to the cabinet. Eventually I will remove the atari art in favor of my own.

Fate/God/etc. Says Let there be Cabinet!

2006-01-18T19:36:00.000-06:00

What a coincidence! Today I came to work driving the Matrix (usually I either bus or take our little Honda Civic). Also today, one of my coworkers happens to walk by the loading dock (which he rarely does). Also today a business down on 2nd floor got rid of an empty stripped down arcade cabinet that was free for the taking and ready to drop in a monitor/computer/control panel! It is a compact design (2' x 2' x 5.5') which fit perfectly in the Matrix. I will hopefully have some time next weekend when my dad is up to figure out a control panel and Marquee design and route the edges so i can add T-Molding to it (currently it's just smooth edges).

The sideart is an Atari theme that features Missile Command, Baseball, Basketball, Football, Soccer, Breakout, Pong, Centipede, Asteroids, Video Pinball, Crystal Castles, and Lunar Lander. I can't seem to find an exact match for this on KLOV.com so I'm thinking it's a homemade cabinet. The fact that it has no coin door, no marquee to speak of, and no control panel adds to this suspicion. In any event, it's a great find and should save a bunch of time in constructing the Metacab!

Here are some pics... If you recognize the cabinet and can give me any more information about whether it ever existed in arcades or if it is just a DIY, I'd appreciate your comments/links.

The RIGHT way to approach Arcade Wiring (for n00bs like Me)

2006-01-17T21:59:00.000-06:00

So after doing pretty much all the dumbest things I could have (short of perhaps blowing up the control panel with dynamite) I now have this simple tutorial to show what you should do and exactly what you need to do to get the most out of your Ultimarc purchase.

Everything you need
If you're going to buy parts, make sure to get everything you need before starting. It's tempting to just want to dive in there but believe me, doing this the right way makes everything 100x simpler. To begin with, you need a PCP such as the Mini-PAC. I chose the Mini-PAC Opti. with harness. This allows me joystick+6 buttons per player, 4 utility buttons, l/r mouse, trackball (x,y), and spinner. Unless you're doing a 4-player board, I don't see any point in going the I-PAC/Opti-PAC combined route (it's very much the same effect for way more money). I also highly recommend you buy the "wiring kit" and the mounting feet for the Mini-PAC as long as you're placing your order there anyways. The wiring kit comes with extension wire for every color used by the harness (plus extra black since that's used for ground). It also includes 100 quick-disconnect connectors and a crimper. And, make sure the buttons you buy have the same 1/4" size. if everything's the same size, tis way simpler.

Other than that, you really only need a staplegun, tie wraps, needlenose, wire stripper, male quick disconnects (I'm not 100% clear what you get with that wiring kit), and some M-M-F Quick Disconnect splitters. Radioshack's splitters came in a variety pack which was handy.

Basic Wiring theory
By default, you want each button's switch in the middle of a loop going from the PCP to the button (which is open by default) and back to the PCP's ground. Then, pressing the button flips the switch to complete the circuit. Doing it backwards would have the key down all the time by default, releasing it only when you hit the button. About 1/2 way through my first attempt I realized that the switches have a mini diagram engraved into their side to show you what the two prongs mean that are next to one another. You want to always use the prong that matches up to the dot in the diagram which DOESN'T have a line back to the center dot. For joysticks, you may need to unscrew the switch from the stick to flip it over so you can see its diagram and confirm which prong to use for the harness connections. The ground loop goes through the other prong on top of the switch opposite its button.

I made this little diagram to help explain it visually. The diagram displays three different buttons, two of which do the same thing.

1) Study the wiring diagram and read their instructions carefully.

2.) Tie-Wrap the harness wires to match the diagram so you can quickly analyze which group/color matches up with which button as labeled on the diagram.

3.) Work your way down the diagram, connecting positive (harness) cables to match with the diagram. At some point in this step, you will come across a switch that is too far for the harness to reach. All you need to do is crimp a male quick-disconnect on some new wire (ideally wire which matches the wire that's too short). Plug this into that harness quick-disconnect. Extend enough wire to easily reach the destination and crimp a female quick-disconnect on that end. Plug it on the correct prong.

4.) Connect the ground quick-disconnects in a loop around the CP, making sure to reach the ground on every switch (switches won't work without it so it's a common reason why one of your buttons won't work later). Just as in step 3, use quick disconnects and spare wire to make sure the grounds reach every switch. Note that in cases where you have only a few buttons far away from the previous ground plug, you can branch out using a quick-disconnect splitter. Send a tributary off to that first button and crimp two wires per quick-disconnect (just like Ultimarc did) and you can have it stretch out without having to make a return trip back after hitting those stray buttons.

5.) I had an Ultimarc Trackball too. This came with its own red/gold/green/black wiring leads which you can disconnect and set aside. To connect the trackball, first be sure the power end is plugged into the Mini-PAC (near where the main harness goes in). Then try to track where the appropriate wires from the diagram go. I got confused by looking only at the colors and assumed the power was purely power (instead it branches to feed all three of the other ends). Simply plug in the X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) axes' molex connectors on the pins of the trackball. At this point you can test it to see how it moves the mouse around. It is very common for one of the axes to move backwards (for me up went down and vice versa). To correct this, find the wires for that axis and cut/cross the two wires in the middle so that they "cross the streams". This reverses the signals to correct the direction issue.

6.) Any spinner you may have which requires this same kind of connector as the trackball can simply take advantage of the final molex connector. I don't currently have a spinner but the cheap one I've got my eye on is actually USB and won't be using the Mini-PAC.

That's pretty much it! Once you get the hang of crimping the quick-disconnects it's a very simple and straightforward process. And if you mess up, you can always trash the extension wire and redo it without violating your harness.

The wrong way to approach Arcade Wiring For n00bs (like me)

2006-01-17T21:24:00.000-06:00

Here's the first of two wiring tutorials I promised. It's a quick summary of what I did first (aka what not to do!!). Read if you want to learn what sort of mistakes can be made so you don't do the same thing.

What NOT to have for supplies

So after getting all excited about starting the project I ordered my parts and assembled the control panel and finally reached the point of wiring the PCCP up for use. What did I have for supplies? A soldering gun, some heatshrink, some electrical tape, and a needlenose wirecutter/stripper. I also had a ton of tie-wraps and telephone crimpable scotch-lok connectors. And finally, since I knew the Ultimarc Mini-PAC harness wouldn't probably reach all my switches, I had some cat5e I could strip into its component strands to extend any given wire I needed to. To mount the board to the CP, i had my home-grown chunk of aluminum with the Mini-PAC attached.

How NOT to wire your CP

I began (far too late one night) by clumping the harness wires as per their Mini-PAC wiring diagram and plugging in the harness into the Mini-PAC. So far so good! I then glanced at the instructions and puzzled out that the diagram labels each wire that you need for your various switches is numbered so you can follow along. Rather than having a ground/common wire for every switch, you instead do a lap around the control panel using the ground loop that came with the Mini-PAC. Easy, right?

I quickly connected a the switch closest to the Mini-PAC. As for the switches themselves, there's three prongs on them, all the same size. Two are hanging out next to one another, the other is on the side of the switch opposite the button. I really had no idea which ones went where but knew there couldn't be too many possible combinations of 2 with 3 connectors (3 combinations, to be exact). So I guessed and it worked! I didn't know why it worked but I was ok with that. However, the quick-disconnect plugs were super loose on the prongs which sort of puzzled me. I realized that since I was impatient and ordered all my buttons from SlikStik (while the Mini-PAC came from Ultimarc who was then out of stock of buttons as well as closed for the holidays), the quick disconnects that came with the harness were 1/4" whereas the SlikStik switches had 3/8" prongs. Nothing a bit of squeezing with the pliers couldn't fix. Now it's super tight to the point of barely coming off? OK then!

I went to do a joystick which was further away. Hrm. already needing longer reach for these quick disconnects! I start cutting apart the harness and putting two splices in the line so that it's harness->splice->extender wire->splice->quick Disconnect. This seemed to get the job done. I kept plugging away with this approach using the telephone crimp scotch-loks (eventually remembering that the scotchloks didn't require stripping the wires!). So I had a system. An ugly system. A system which decimated my beautiful wiring harness and ground wires. A system I recommend no one adhere to. Did it work? Mostly. However, sometimes I'd muscle a connector back off (after having squeezed it snug) and accidently yank a nearby wire clean out of its quick-disconnect. Oops. It happens a few more times. I also notice that one of the joysticks was placed SO close to the 2x4 I'm using underneath for the side legs to the CP that I have to bend one of the joystick's Microswitches. No big deal - until I dumbly used a pliers to bend it but didn't hold a needlenose at the spot where I wanted the crease. This put force on the side of the plastic microswitch case enclosure and cracks it. OK, that's the last dumbass thing overtired me is doing. It's 2am and I'm accepting that I need to be done for the night. Clearly I'm only making things worse at this point even though I had a number of successes.

The next day I continued doing the splice extendo method and get as far as possible, given that there are a number of wrecked quick disconnects and one direction on a joystick not working. By then end of another hour or so of wiring I had P1, Coin1, 4 menu buttons, Joystick1 and P1B1-P1B3 working. Yay! I can play games and see that yes, it will soon work! By the end of that day, it became clear I needed a trip to radioshack to get some more quick disconnects and a crimper now that I had wrecked enough such that I couldn't possibly wire all the switches.

After the trip(s) to Radioshack, I finally learned my lesson and now have a significantly simpler and cleaner way that I highly recommend to all you idiots like me who have never done this before and aren't electronics geeks who actually know what they're doing.

PCCP reaches v0.1; GameFest 0.1 a Success!

2006-01-16T09:29:00.000-06:00

So I got my new ball-top sticks for the Mag-Stick Plus on Saturday and got them installed. It's smaller than I was picturing - more along the size of what I remember for some of the 4-player cabs such as The Simpsons. I think I was picturing the Ms Pacman knobs which must have a larger diameter ball. I still think they look much more retro than the pear-shaped knobs that originally came with the Mag-Stick Plus's.

In the same shipment, I got my replacement microswitch for the one I broke installing the Mag-Stick Plus that one fateful night. Turns out I got 4 replacement switches for the price I thought was for one! Andy Warne at Ultimarc has certainly been nothing but helpful and I'll be sure to get all of the parts for Rich's cabinet through Ultimarc. So after a few quick minutes I had all the controls working on the Proof of Concept Control Panel (PCCP). This finally brought it up to release candidate version 0.1.

Wiring up the last of the buttons/joysticks, I approached things slightly differently than the first time around. Rather than cutting wires and splicing in extension wire in the center, I crimped on the quick-disconnectors and made use of the quick-disconnect splitters. This is SOOO much easier, and I wish I would have thought of it before starting the project - it would make for a far tidier looking bunch of wiring. I will definitely post a full Ultimarc-based wiring tutorial as soon as I get the time to take pics and post them here.

I also took advantage of one of Logan's naps by completely cleaning up my mess in the basement and moved a desk & end table around down there so that the controls were at waist height with the monitor up off the floor. It is *way* more ergonomic now, and gives me the first taste of what the cabinet could be like, though the height of the monitor is still too low.

In other news, I decided to celebrate the completion and cleanup by having several friends over. We had 5 friends in attendance for Game Fest 0.1. The controls performed admirably, with the only negative performance I could see being that 2P Double Dragon wasn't running at full speed through MAME (we didn't have NES working yet so couldn't test it there).

I did seem to have SNES working but it seems that i still need to work out the best way to get out of their games -- the current SNES emu I'm running has its own GUI that shows up after playing a game and hitting esc. Seems like the trackball works to get the game quit, but if possible, I want the same quit key (ESC) to work in every emulator.

Burns & Kilgour managed to get well beyond level 70 in Bubble Bobble (though most of us lost interest by then and wandered over to play some Blokus or just chat instead.

Sunday I got NES working and figured out some of my issues trying to set up a second MAME menu in MAMEWAh (so I could have one for Mame32.exe and a differnt one for mame.exe since the roms seem to run differently). I had forgotten I'd moved the roms out of the mame folder and into the mame32 folder (no wonder it said i had no games! there were none in the folder I had mapped!). Turns out that I still couldn't get the speedup hacked version of Ms. Pacman working, even in mame.exe. I have to wonder if the ROM got corrupted or something since it used to work back before I discovered mame32.exe ran most things better.

I also got a chance to play some Joust and made it up to Wave 7, which is probably a personal best. I was never the king of Joust or anything, but definitely count it among my favorites right now thanks to its simplicity, speed, and challenge. It looks pretty sweet in the digital bezel that mame32 displays, too.

Viva le Mame32.exe!

2006-01-12T12:06:00.000-06:00

I decided to try to figure out why my games weren't running (the afore mentioned "merge" issue as well as other lag issues). Rather than tackling the roms themselves, I first tried using Mame32.exe as my chosen mame executable in mamewah. This fixed EVERYTHING! Games that wouldhn't run now run, games that ran slowly now run at full speed! I no longer think the celeron is too slow -- seems fine! I will undoubted still hit a performance wall eventually but not for a while hopefully. If i can make it to mid-90's that'd be great. If I can play even more modern 3D fighters via Zinc as well as LaserDisc style games via Daphne, all the better (we'll find that out later).

Last night I decided to tackle the trackball working in windows but not in games. Turned out my friend Trif, the grand king of all creation and lover of all things DOS, told me to simply tweak the mame32.ini for mame32.exe (aka mame.ini for mame.exe) file for my emulator. This INI is not to be confused with the ini files that Mamewah uses. Just had to change a 0 to a 1 for mouse support. INI files contain all the startup prefs that you want to engage when using the program from commandline (avoids the need for an overabundance of commandline flags).

I now am back to having all my mame roms and all my atari roms running, with art wherever possible. I think I'm next going to tackle getting all the rest of the buttons working before continuing the long rom sorting process.

I've also ordered 2 replacement ball-top handles for the Mag-Stick Plus as well as a replacement microswitch for the joystick whose switch I broke while trying to bend the prong. $14 is some hefty shipping but I guess it is DHL from the UK.

I bought some quick-disconnect crimp connectors from Radio Shack (by arriving *before* 8pm). While the cashier barely knew what I was asking about, I think I still ended up getting what I need. I've never had to crimp this type of connectors -- my past crimping/punchdown experience has been limited to RJ45's and RJ11's for ethernet and phone. Among the new crimp connectors are some "flag" style connectors which make a right-angle to the prongs. Maybe that will avoid any need to bend anything.

Spinner Hunt '06 Concluded?

2006-01-10T20:27:00.000-06:00

Well after a week with no response from ArcadeGames4U, I decided to check their site again -- all the broken links were fixed & I could browse their catalog! Unfortunately I found that the Cyclone retails there for $75, not $60 as the retroblast review had indicated.

I think this means I've come full-circle on the spinner front, returning to the original $34 (+$6 for aluminum knob) bargain basement model from EZMount. I'm pretty certain the spin on this won't be even remotely comparable to the arcade-quality of the much more expensive options but frankly I really don't care since I just want something that will let me play Arkanoid and the like without having to use the trackball.

For the duration of my PCCP, I'm just going to stick to the Trackball. Who knows, maybe by the time I'm ready to build my real-deal cabinet, Oscar Controls will rise from its ashes like a phoenix. If not, I'll just snag an EZMount then.

The Old Grey Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be

2006-01-10T08:38:00.000-06:00

Last night I made a last-minute trip to Radioshack in hopes of finding some crimp-on Insulated Quick Disconnects and wire so that I could rewire my panel (the right way). I checked their site for the location by me and called a bunch to see what time they closed... As it was busy every time I just drove there and got there at 8pm sharp, only to find that was when they closed. Despite the 3+ customers still inside, the door was locked and I was out of luck. I'll have to try again later :(

Since I couldn't really make any further progress on the electronics front, I decided to just kick back and play some games, only to find some interesting things

1.) My Celeron 500Mhz (512MB RAM, Win2K) does indeed hit a wall when it comes to being able to play some of the more modern games. I suspected this would be in the post-Street Fighter II era of games, but i was shocked to find that even much older games such as Galaga '88 and PacMania were slogging along at ~2-3 fps. I'm only to 1988 in my rom sorting process and so I haven't even gotten to 1991 when Street Fighter II came out. I will still give it a try but am not expecting much.

2.) I think I have a Merged Set of ROM's. I will need to test games out and deal with the ones that won't launch. If you don't know what a "Merged Set" is, here's a quick primer: Basically each game is loaded from a ROM file that was created by analyzing the data on the original game's circuit board. In MAME, a ROM is a zip file of game data files. Since many games have multiple clones which share some files, you can save space on your hard drive by "merging" the set, thereby making clones look to the original game ROM's ZIP file for game data that the clone does not need a second copy of.

The long & short of it is that when I was tossing games into my mame box, I think I've thrown some clones-only in for some games (since they worked on my Mac on which I was browsing the full set) but not thrown in the original game, resulting in some games that just won't launch at all. In general I was only throwing the original game in but for some such as Joust, it seemed that the only game that worked properly was one of the clones. I'll have to do a further cleaning of my system to analyze which games won't load, and see whether they do run on a different, faster box. Thankfully I've got an Athlon 2000+ XP Shuttle PC kicking around that I can plug my CP into to see whether I have any better luck on a faster winXP box.

How to Install a button with microswitch

2006-01-09T09:06:00.000-06:00

it's pretty obvious as soon as you've done one but I figured I'd take some photos of just what you do to install a button

Drill a 1 1/8" hole for your buttons. 1" isn't big enough because of the outer arm for the switch. Simply drop these through and screw on the plastiic nut that holds the buttons firmly against the control panel. The little red square pictured on the white switch here is the thing which gets clicked when you press the button from above. Obviously this one is upside-down since there's no way for the button to push that red switch.

So, let's see how you put one in correctly... First, with switch towards button, get the hole on the switch-side of the switch enclosure positioned on the post closest to the button

Now rotate the switch on that post until it snaps the second post into place in the second hole.

That's it! Wiring these is pretty straightforward but can take a second to understand. There are 3 terminals on the switches. The two parallel are connected to the switch and the 3rd on top is for common/ground. To determine which of the two switch connectors you want to use, look at the side for a diagram. You should see a line leading to one but not to the other. The one with the line means it's engaged by default. Pressing the switch moves that line to the other terminal. Thus if you want a switch to only be activated when you push it, connect to the post which has no line leading to it. This is the terminal you use when connecting the specific control wire from your PCB (mini-PAC, i-PAC, keyboard, whatever). The top (ground) one gets used when you connect all of the switches' grounds together in one long daisy chain. that way all switches get a route to complete the circuit back to the PCB.

MetaCab reaches v0.1a

2006-01-09T08:35:00.000-06:00

My buttons arrived from SlikStik on Friday... Thus, this weekend I finally had some time (and the parts) to begin work on my proof of concept version of the Proof of Concept Control Panel (PCCP). I planned to do a mini layout using whatever scrap wood I had on hand. This would give me very valuable experience with the wiring concepts as well as give me something to play games on while I'm waiting for construction on the actual cabinet to begin.

Turned out I had some treated lumber 2x4's and the formica scrap formed when I cut a hole for my Kitchen Sink. I just squared it up and shot in some deck screws and it's plenty sturdy for my purposes.

My son, Logan decided he'd give me a hand with this part.

Once the framework was constructed, I set about trying to mark where I wanted all the holes to go for the buttons, joystick, and trackball (Since I don't have a spinner yet I left room but won't drill that until later). It was at this point that I discovered how laying out the joystick/buttons on the computer and printing out a template is crucial in terms of saving time and staying accurate. You may recognize the template as being Lusid's -- that worked well enough for now. He used different joysticks than my Mag-Stick Pluses, so while the big 1 1/8" hole for the stick was positioned correctly, the mounting holes for the stick were off. This didn't turn out to be an issue since I cheated on this CP and just used some woodscrews from the bottom. On the final version I will likely drill all the way through to use bolts/nuts instead for greater strength.

All of the holes were drilled with a 1 1/8" flat bit and were the perfect size for the buttons (and their switch mounts) to fit through. Here you can see the board with everything mounted in place. I've got Coin buttons for each player next to their start button. 5 green utility buttons at top. 6 buttons per player plus the 2 mag-stick plus's and the trackball. The only real problem I had was drilling the mounting holes for the trackball since I tried converting the measurements at Ultimarc from metric to english and I think I may have messed up. That or I'm just a sloppy measurer. Either way, it was nothing a bit of reaming couldn't fix.

Here's the back of the PCCP with switches installed before I wired it up.

The next step was to mount my Mini-PAC board to the PCCP so that I could connect up all the switches. As you can see, it's friggin' wee!

And, the underside of the PCB (oooh! electronics porn!)

Since I got all my Ultimarc items for christmas, I didn't place the order myself and a few more things would have been useful. Among these was the wiring kit and the mounting feet. Since I didn't have the mounting feet I just bought some standoffs at Radioshack and attached them to the board and a piece of aluminum. Then I just shot some screws through the aluminum to attach it to the PCCP. I think this will work fine even on the final one, though the mounting kit appears to save a ton of space. Since I'll be wiring two cabinets once my Brother-in-law starts carpentry on them both, I will cut the aluminum in half then and use a second set of standoffs for his Mini-PAC.

At this point my camera ran out of batteries. I'll post back more later to show the wiring and tell about my adventures there. To give away the ending, by the end of the night I had botched a few things and learned that splicing cat5e strands between the mini-PAC harness and its push on connectors is not the best way to do it. Furthermore I learned that some crimpable Scotchloks save a TON of time over hand-twisting and heat-shrinking/taping. By the end of the weekend I got to a point in which P1, Coin1, Joystick1 and P1Btns1-3 are working so at least I can play some stuff. But I still need to figure out how to wire the trackball (since the harness didn't have two connectors for it). I also need to rework my grounds, etc. But more on that later.

How to use more buttons than you have inputs for

2006-01-06T13:49:00.000-06:00

With MiniPacs, i-Pac2s, and iPac4s, it was a real hassle to know what the right board was to convert game inputs into something the computer can hear through PS/2 or USB. I've already got my Mini-Pac, so figured I should really nail down what I'm going to use it for. This should also help me deal with my control panel design a bit better.

At this point I want the following
qty | why
---------
8 * | 4/8-way MagStikPlus per player
12 * | 6-buttons per player
2* | P#Start button for each player
2* | coin# for each player
1* | ESC (quit) (to P1btn7)
1* | Tab (Mame config P1btn8)
1* | Pause (Mamewah config P2btn7
??? | Unknown - can always un-double-up something (P2btn8)
1** | 5? (next emu in Mamewah -- shared with Coin1)
1** | 6? (next gamelist in Mamewah -- shared with Coin2)
1* | left-Mouse
1* | right-Mouse
4* | trackball
2* | spinner
3** | 3-buttons for trackball/spinner to use (shared with P1btn1-3)
1** | Start game in Mamewah (shared w/ P1Start)
1** | Menu in mamewah (shared w/ P2Start)
2** | Pinball left/right flipper (shared with P1btn1-2?)
1** | Pinball trigger (shared with P1btn3?)
1** | Coin Door? (shared with Coin1)
--------

KEY:
* = prebuilt input on MiniPac
** = two buttons to same input on MiniPac
*** = two inputs triggered by single button to actuate Shift function on Minipac (YAY I don't have to!)

This should use every input on the Mini-Pac with none to spare. It should only require combining two buttons to a single input 9 times -- a 10th if I actually buy a coin door some day. I think I can handle that.

To explain what is meant by ** and *** I've found some sites that explain these wiring tricks that let you expand on the inputs of your board.

Here's a post that discusses how to wire multiple buttons to share a single input.
The options are very simple to have multiple buttons to the same input (e.g. a coin door and a button both hitting the coin key on a single minipac slot). Just wire them together!

here's a post that discusses how to add more buttons than you have inputs for by having a single button trigger 2 inputs. The Mini-Pac and i-Pac boards from Ultimarc all allow a combination of keys to act as a "shift function", thereby letting you send more keystrokes than there are inputs on the board.

The options are much more challenging to understand if you want to start wiring up a dedicated button that works via the shift function, though they mention $1.50 adapters by RandyT which sound like they take the headache away from wiring n00bs like myself. Of course I could always just design the CP to indicate what happens on a button if you use the shift button manually (hitting 2 buttons yourself at once).

Atari 2600 - The Cleansing (status update)

2006-01-06T09:11:00.000-06:00

While I'm still stuck in the late 80's looking through MAME Roms, I've just completed the bulk of a side-track mission to cleanse/organize my Atari 2600 ROMs for the Z26 emu. I've tossed clone after clone (no, I don't need 3 PAL versions *and* 4 NTSC versions of the same crappy game!). I've also tried to standardize their naming format to have the name of the game and (where available) the year and company of origin. I will probably have one final pass at browsing through them all in MAMEWAH to see which ones still have no artwork displaying for cartridge, screenshot, or box... Then I'll have to scan thru those in the appropriate artwork folders to see if art exists and if so, fix its name to match the root of the ROM name itself.

Total pain in the ass, but it's really the only way I can see it possible to browse MAMEWAH with art for everything possible. Once that's finished the only remaining step will be to customize the default art for games who really don't have any images available.

The prospect of doing this for every emulator I want to use makes adding emus seem like less fun than I thought. Getting ROMs is only part of the battle -- having them organized and easily navigable is a royal pain. Granted it's only a few minutes to use the MAMEWAH Config 1.6.1 utility to add them to the MAMEWAH interface menu; but to make it truly look awesome (and help illustrate what some of the more obscure games are supposed to be before launching them), it's going to be a very long haul. Thankfully I've got a strong anal-retentive streak (and the patience to do this over the next year or so) -- this means that one day I'll have a config of everything I'm truly happy with.

Wilford Brimley Vs. NES Emulators

2006-01-05T16:19:00.000-06:00

Apparently people have taken the time to hack ROMs. No surprise. What has surprised me is that there are THREE different games for the NES hacked to feature Wilford Brimley! That's right, star of Remo Williams, Oatmeal commercials, and Our House has finally made it into Adventure Island, Donkey Kong, and River City Ransom!!! The rest of the hack reviews at this site are similarly hilarious in a vein very similar to Matt at x-entertainment.

Spinnerhunt '06 - the saga continues

2006-01-05T09:03:00.000-06:00

Still no word back from ArcadeGames4U about their new Cyclone spinner... However, I've made a rather startling discovery!
Happ Controls' Store is selling the slikStik Tornado Spinner for nearly $20 cheaper than Slikstik.com's online store!

--edit. My bad - while Happ sells them, they're actually the same price. I hadn't noticed that SlikStik includes a spinner knob for their $90 pricetag. Happ does not. Add one in and you see they are both charging roughly $90 for the spinner.

In any event I'll still wait a bit longer for the ArcadeGames4U folks to see what's up with that Cyclone. Otherwise I'll go back to el-cheapo from EZArcade.

Hrm Now Which Spinner Do I Get?

2006-01-04T13:14:00.000-06:00

After thinking I had decided on the ~$40 EZMount Arcade Spinner II with Aluminum Plated Knob Upgrade, I just stumbled across a review of a more heavy-duty $60 spinner that just came on the scene.

As is mentioned in the reviiew, the Oscar Controls company seems to have vanished without a trace last year, and with it the only major player in top-quality Spinners was the SlikStik Tornado, which rings in at $90!!

I had originally thought to spend less than half that by getting the EZMount Arcade Spinner II.

However, with the introduction of what looks to be a mid-priced contender, the review of the ArcadeGames4U Cyclone Spinner has convinced me that I'd rather invest the extra $20 to get a longer-spinning, higher quality spinner that will plug into my Mini-PAC instead of being yet another USB input with extra drivers that may or may not get on well with my Win2K setup and Minipac drivers.

The only thing to figure out now, is how to order. ArcadeGames4U seems to not have a working catalog at present, though I'm hoping they're going to fix that soon.

Minneapolis Mame Makers Met

2006-01-04T12:41:00.000-06:00

Last night I stopped over to DanW's to check out his Aarghcade cabinet. His friend Theo (maker of his own very similar cab, Time Machine, was there too.

I had a great time checking out the Aarghcade over a few beers and they were most helpful in telling me about their own cabinets. Apparently the only major difference between the Aarghcade and the Time Machine is that Theo's Time Machine has dual spinners for games like Ikari Warriors (which had a rotating joystick in the original upright arcades).

The cabinet construction itself was very professional and solid. No amount of hammering on the joysticks or buttons really caused it to shake around or jiggle the monitor. This was thanks to their 2x4 frame and the means by which they permanently affixed the monitor to the cabinet. The monitor bezel was a simple black-painted plexi which looked very nice & shiny though they noted that plexi is prone to minor scratches over time so it's a bit less resilient (though easier to work with) than glass. I think I'll go the plexi route too, though, to make sure it's not going to get broken and also to help keep the weight down.

They are using MAME32 as the frontend, which gives you all the convenience that Windows-users are used to with regards to using the mouse to scroll around to find the game you like and/or browsing by game genre. Despite their Windowblinds/Object Desktop and CursorXP customizations of the interface, it still felt very much like Windows to me. I think this confirmed for me that my tastes are more towards completely obscuring the fact that it's Windows running the show by using Mamewah to completely shroud the OS and make everything navigatable through the joystick and buttons rather than using the Trackball like a mouse.

This was also the first time I'd had a chance to see Daphne (for games like Dragon's Lair) and Zinc (for 3D Fighter Games) in action. It's truly stunning the way the computer can smoothly recreate the originals. It's currently unclear where my Celeron 500's processor (with GeForce 4 Ti4600) will be too slow to play games - I guess I'll know once I have a chance to try out Zinc and Daphne on there. I won't be too surprised if its age limits me to older, less system intensive games.

Having had a chance to try out their trackball setup it quickly became clear that my earlier control panel draft in which 3 buttons are below the trackball needs to be updated to place those buttons to the right of the trackball. This makes it easier (for right-handed people anyways) to play games like Missile Command, Centipede, etc without having a second hand under their trackball hand's wrist. I think I will try to situate my spinner and trackball such that they can share the 3 buttons.

In other news, I placed my order through SlikStik to get the rest of the buttons I need in order to get that Proof of Concept control panel up and running. I've also contacted my brother-in-law who will be handling my construction (and his) while I am free to get my control panel/software/front-end configured (and his). The goal being to have both he and I get a machine out of the same efforts.

The only remaining parts to order (aside from cabinet construction materials) is a spinner. I am pretty sure I'll be ordering the (budget-oriented) EZArcade EZ Mount Arcade Spinner (with Aluminum-plated knob upgrade). Later I'll have the option to buy a steeringwheel attachment for the spinner (though without a footpedal, I think this will still be somewhat cludgy).

Coincidentally, it was the EZ Arcade site's Cabinet Building links that first linked me in to look at the Aarghcade site (and from there meet Dan & Theo). Dan was surprised I hadn't found his site through BYOAC - I'm guessing EZArcade folks must have bought a copy of Dan's MAME Cabinet Construction Plans at some point and payed homage through a link.

Well more later - i'll just be organizing my rom collection while I wait for the buttons to arrive. Seeing the vast tracts of ROMs on the Aarghcade, it became clear that I would rather have quality over quantity. I'm going to toss all the clones I don't want and also all the Mahjong/etc that's cluttering my drive. Hopefully there will be a working Proof of Concept CP to report about by the end of January.

Minneapolis Mame Makers Might Meet

2005-12-30T09:31:00.000-06:00

As I've been researching more and more peoples' sites about their own arcade machines, I've stumbled across at least 3 who are here in Minneapolis... The first, Aarghcade looks to be a very nice setup similar to what I'm thinking (though he went prebuilt Control Panel, whereas I'll be custom-tricking mine out). Dan and his friend Theodore have both built their own together. The other, DoughCade II, looks to have every bell and whistle I can think of, and is a glory to behold.

I'm hoping to get to check out both of these masterpieces in person and report a quick review here, as well as tap into some of their experience to guide my process.

In other news, I'm still slogging through the process of sorting MAME Roms into those that I actually want and those that can go to the trash. Thanks to my #ereet friend, Loafhead, i have far more Roms than is really sane, and so begins the process of ridding them of japanese trivia games, cheezy clones, mah-jong games, and other digital detritus. I'm hoping to go with the I'm currently working my way through the games made in 1988 and have almost reached the half-way point in the quality over quantity route for my MAME organization process. After that I might clean up the artwork folder a bit so that it doesn't have videos/art/etc for all the games I'm not using.

I've decided to use Mamewah for my front-end and after hours of bashing my head against .ini files, have finally discovered a 3rd party Mamewah Config utility that allowed me to make the headway required to actually organize and launch the games through the MAME controls. If you've ever wanted to use Mamewah but been intimidated by the setup, this app is for you -- it gives a GUI to all the configuration that must go on to make Mamewah menus work with their games. I've even gotten Atari 2600 working through the same interface, which is nice. Eventually I'll design my own menu background for everything, but for now I'm happy with some off the shelf ones from ScreenshotArchive.

I've also received my first shipment from Ultimarc -- 2x 4/8-way switchable Mag-Stick Plus's, 1P/2P buttons (all their standard buttons were out of stock), and a 2.25" Ultimarc (budget) Trackball w/ plate. I also have my MiniPac PCB now so I can start wiring stuff up to that for use via my computer's USB port. I hope to start a proof of concept Control Panel Monday when I've got some time home without childcare obligations (thanks, Sarah!). I really need to order some more buttons before getting too far on that, but at least getting a board to start with will be nice since I can always add the buttons to it later when shipments arrive.

Here's my current draft of the control panel overlay that I'm designing. It's subject to change (as is the name of the cabinet) but it's where I'm headed at this point...

My Master Plan - How to DIY

2005-12-28T12:21:00.000-06:00

I plan to approach this project in a multi-phase process so that I have minimal backtracking (though some amount of backtracking is inevitable as roadblocks are found & new techniques are discovered).

Phase I - Research
Study the classics for inspiration and to see what it was about their art and layout I liked best. Look for examples made by other people and evaluate those I like best - download plans as needed. Read up on the technology and what requirements it will have.

Phase II - Software
The biggest challenge here is finding ROMS, art, screencapture, etc for all the games you own so that you can get everything organized and working on the machine before you even think about building the cabinet. If you can't make it work through a keyboard, it won't work through arcade controls. This includes downloading emulators and finding a front end that will let you navigate the entire mess through simple controls.

Phase III - Design
This is when the plans get finalized, including the control panel layout, cabinet construction, and artwork.

Phase IV - Control Panel Proof of Concept
Once you can navigate the games and play them via keyboard/mouse, it's time to shop for the parts you need and build a proof of concept to see that it all works. Some people skip this step and go straight to the final Control Panel construction, but as I'm no master carpenter, I'll be having my brother-in-law handle the final construction. I just need a simple ugly box that will let me test the dimensions and wiring to see that I've got the electronics side of things handled

Phase V - Construction
Once the proof of concept works, it's time to build the real deal cabinet according to the cabinet plans established in Phase III.

Phase VI - Final Wrapup
This is when all the paint, trim and final artwork get applied. Any last-minute tweaks will be done here.

Some links to get you started

2005-12-28T12:04:00.000-06:00

Since I'm just getting this blog rolling, I thought I'd list and explain some of the best links I've found so far

Build Your Own Arcade Controls
The grand-daddy of all DIY arcade sites. It was viewing this site over 5 years ago that first inspired me to do this. Of course things were much different then as most people who did their own arcade cabinet then had to hack a keyboard or game controller in order to get their buttons to work. Thankfully things are much easier now. Even still, this site has a huge archive of tips, tricks, and resources, as well as links (many broken) to tons of blogs and sites made by other people like me who have made their own arcade cabinet.

Killer List of Videogames
This site is a great place to view photos of the cabinets, art, etc that you'd find in commercial arcades. It's like walking through a museum of old games. I found it highly inspiring as I was looking for art to use in my project.

Arcade Art Library
This site is a huge archive of full-res and/or vector illustrations of authentic cabinet art, including side art, marquees, control panels, etc. It's a great place to contribute if you're a digital artist capable of vectorizing scans and photos of the oldies. It's also a great place to grab quality source art if you're looking to use any elements/characters of existing games in the designs you use on your own game cabinet's art.

MAME Marquees - Arcade Printing
While I haven't used their services yet, these guys seem to be THE place to go if you want to order a custom-printed marquee, sideart, etc. They will print full sized, durable artwork for using in your own arcade. They also have some stock designs if you don't have any design capacity but still want to add some art to your project.

Ultimarc Arcade Supplies
This place is the number one place to go if you're looking for a circuit board that will let you run your buttons/joysticks/trackballs/spinners into the computer. They also have a full range of the afore mentioned buttons/joysticks/trackballs for use in your cabinet. As of this post, they still don't have any spinners, but that's likely to change.

Happ Controls Arcade Supplies
Another site full of authentic arcade parts, including arcade monitors, controls, etc. Many arcade owners go here for replacement parts on their authentic games, but you can also shop here for the pieces you'll need to build your own.

MetaCab - The Story Begins

2005-12-28T11:44:00.000-06:00

Now that I'm finally actually moving forward - not backwards, upwards - not forwards, and ever twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom, I figured I'd start a blog to log my progress on the project. So, until I get around to adding a section in my website, I'll be posting here to get stuff out there for all the legions of fans who are wondering what I'm doing when I'm not busy hanging with my family or friends.

To give some of the backstory, (perhaps the same backstory everyone who builds their own arcade machine), I grew up in the early 80's, when video arcades were still a huge deal and it seemed every restaurant, mall, store, etc had at least a few coin-operated arcade video games waiting to gobble your quarters in exchange for a few minutes of pixel-based bliss. I grew up eating Donkey Kong cereal, watching the Pac-man cartoon show, and aching to go to my friends' house to play on their Atari 2600. When I was about 5, I got my first computer, a Commodore 64. This let me play most of the arcade classics at home (in stunning graphics that put the Atari to shame).

Fast forward about 20 years and we have a guy done with college who's working full time, married, has his own house, and who still loves the classic games he grew up on. I don't have a Playstation/Xbox/GameCube/etc, and probably won't any time soon since I don't have the hours it takes to make it through today's challenging games. Back in the early days of gaming, the average game lasted only a few minutes, so that's why I thought to find my roots and pay homage to them in the form of a Do-it-yourself upright arcade cabinet.