And now... the end is near...

Well, we are upping sticks and moving to new pastures soon - so the MAME Cab so lovingly built, slogged over, sworn at (delete as appropriate) last summer will have to move on to - sorry old girl, no room for you at the Inn.

I'm still working through all the details of how/where/when to sell the Cab - but if anyone comes across this in the meantime and has any questions, then please let me know.

Will be a sad day...

The final pics!

Ok, its been a long while since I updated the blog... but the arcade cab was finished in November time and here are the final pics!


Playing that old classic 'Narc'...



If you look closely, you can see the buttons lit up for the controls! Its more spectacular at night, but the pictures come out like crap!

Well, thats just about it from me. I hope you enjoyed my blog and if you are thinking of making an arcade cabinet - DONT DO IT!!!! LOL.... only joking :-)

Sure its hard work, it can be expensive and you probably have better things to do - but for those of us aged 30+ who remember the days in the arcades as kids, there is no better sound, than the sound of the arcade classics!!!

If you would like any info on the arcade cab, or any tips - then ask an expert. If you want any other information then feel free to drop me a line....

Update...

I am still alive!

Been doing the odd bit here and there when I can get some time, but the main thing now is saving for a half-decent PC to go inside the cab.

In the last few weeks, I have completed the marquee and also brought the glass for the front of the cab and the marquee.

Here is the latest image of the cab:


As you can see its looking ok, few small jobs to do and a bit of painting to finish later today, then thats about it! Cannot wait to get the thing up and running now!!

Light it up!

Just a quickie for now!

I've finished off the control panel wiring and here is a little sample of the result!

Building a Control Panel Pt 1

...SATURDAY

So now to today and time to make an Arcade Control Panel. If my experience in DIY and general woodwork was low, then my understanding of electronic components is through the floor!

A mass of buttons, switches, dials, wire and little metal things awaits me.

To start with, I tried to assemble the joysticks. Wondering why they wouldnt work properly, I went onto the forum for help and was told that apparantly if I dont use all of the parts provided to me in the kit, then what do I expect!! OK, lesson learned - now constructed properly, the joysticks are working...


Already, fingers are sore from screwing (cordless drill out of charge!) and fidling with springs and washers.

The next part was simple - adding all the buttons to the holes! Yah, something easy and fun :-)


And here is the back of the control panel - with all controls installed. The trackball (large thing in the middle!) went ok in the end - though cabinet purists will not like it. It works for me and is solid, so that is fine. I basically mounted it using bolts through the Lexan - but also through the plastic template part provided - bit unusual I'm sure, but heh.

The next part was installing the LEDs and circuit board controllers. The circuit boards were pretty straight forward - just screwed into position on the board.

The LEDs were provided with the buttons and come on a little tiny circuit board that has a resistor on it to control the volts to the LED and a lead for connection to an LED controller. The LED Controller (and buttons) are very clever - once working, it will not only light up the buttons needed ONLY for the game currently playing, but also the actual colour it was in the original game. So if the game used red, green and orange buttons originally, my buttons will also change to that colour - neat eh?!

The LED controller will also allow for things like 'attract modes' - I'm sure you've all seen in arcades where buttons flash all different colours all over the place when nobody is playing the games to 'attract' you to them. So all in all, looking forward to seeing this in action.

Anyway, this is what it looks like at this stage...


Bit more confusing! Next was to start the actual wiring. I managed to hunt down 2 reels of 18 guage wire to do this - one red, one blue. First job is to wire all the switches 'COM' ports (dont ask - really dont, I dont know either!) by daisy chaining each COM port to each other, then finally to the controller shown above and to the left.

Again, this was realtively straight forward if a little sore on the old fingers again - I'm not cut out for manual labour I'm sure! Lots of wire stripping, crimping, twisting etc. But the upshot is something akin to spaghetti junction!


Quite neat if I say so myself!

Thats about it for now folks - I'll just leave you with a 'money-shot' of the actual Control Panel - thanks for tuning in!

Big Update!

Having had a week off from work, I've had a chance to really crack on with the cab. Got lots done this week, so not had time for blog updates! So without further ado...

TUESDAY

After a bit of a rest from a weekend away, Tuesday afternoon began with cutting out the control panel. This went well as you can see below... or so I thought! The more experienced cabinet makers looking at this pic will spot the deliberate mistake. For the rest of you, just marvel at some fine drilling!


After drilling the wood, I then sandwiched a piece of 'Lexan' (like Plexi-Glass) between a piece of scrap wood and the freshly drilled panel to recreate the holes in what will be the top of the control panel.

From what I have read, this can be tricky with the plastic cracking whilst being drilled, but I took my time (and it took some time!), but again, it came out well.


WEDNESDAY

After finishing the drilling, I then painted the cabinet on Wednesday and left it to dry completely, which lost a day....

THURSDAY

Now then, as I mentioned a bit above, the more experienced cab builders would have recognised a big error - the large diamond shaped hole in the middle of the wood is a space for the trackball unit to go.

Having used the router properly for the first time, I was dead chuffed how this went... until I realised I'd routed the hole upside down!!! I didnt think to check the orientation of the trackball unit and now my neat work was ruined! The only choice apart from starting the panel again, was to make the diamond shaped hole a square and losing some stability in the trackball unit.

So I routed out a square shape and whilst at it, routed out a space for the joystick units to install...



Ah well, its not so bad!

FRIDAY

Few jobs for today - find some wiring (harder than I thought) and get everything ready to be wired. I had decided earlier in the week to not have a 'Control Panel Overlay' (which is basically graphics to go under the plastic top of the control panel - making it look nicer.

I was going to just paint it black ("...I see a red door...", sorry!) with the glass on top and have the silver t-molding round the edges.

I'd toyed with a few overlay ideas, but couldnt really get anything nailed down that I liked. I thought I'd have one last go before I started constructing the panel and I had some time to kill. With Claires assistance, we managed to come up with something we both liked at the last minute! I'm not a real big Sci-Fi fan, but the space scene seems to suit this cab - its mainly black, a bit of silver, some muted colours and of course the old skool Space Invaders.

I phoned up our local printers (Print Hub) and big thanks to them for printing this up for me straight away...

(Click for bigger image)

Again, a frustrating wait now for the overlay to fully dry, so I carried on getting ready for the wiring.

To be continued...

Enter coin for more credit...

After a few (nice) days away, I have a welcome week off and will set about finishing off as much as I can of the cabinet.

For now, I've made the makeshift 'coin-door' - which is infact a strip of wood with 2 coin buttons added to it, the machine will not accept actual money, but this looks as close as the real thing!

Firstly, I drilled 2 holes using my new hole making drill bit.



Then simply connecting the coin buttons makes a nice authentic touch for the machine!


Cool eh?

I've about finalised my layout for the buttons and have decided to just have a black lid (where the controls sit on) and some smart silver detailing - should look very smart.

I'll update later in the week when the action kicks off!

Lastly, over the weekend, I visited some big arcades in the 'lovely' seaside town of Clacton-On-Sea, Essex. I was shocked to see that these places of fun I used to enjoy are now stocked floor to ceiling with fruit machines - I did not see one 'normal' stand up arcade cabinet like I am building now.

In total, in one arcade, there were 4 gimick machines - 2 driving, 1 shooting and Dance, Dance Revolution, and over the 2 levels of the building, the rest of the machines were fruit machines... amazing...

I'm not dead!!!

Its been a while since I've posted as I've bene waiting for my Arcade Controls to arrive from New York.

They finally arrived on Monday and now I can start the second stage of the Project - though I feel that I am back at square one again! After starting out as a woodworking virgin, I was very pleased to come through it relatively unscathed and am proud of the cabinet sitting behind me.

Now though, as I look into the cardboard box of assorted buttons, wires, circuit boards, LEDs, connectors etc, I know I have got to start all over again as I know nothing about electronics!!!

Ah well, hopefully I will take to it as well as the carpentary.

Here is a very early draft of the control panel layout and a sneak preview of the mini steering wheel control!


Till next time...

Scorching Weekend (the weather was ok too!)

In an effort to help return the house to something more resembling a home, than each room a workshop or dumping ground, I've really cracked on the last 7 days and its now beginning to pay dividends.

After the 'hinge-incident', the front of the cab is now looking really good - so the next job was a keyboard drawer. I font some scrap plywood and set about fashioning a frame to affix to the MDF front. For some reason, this all took an age to complete - probably due to me faffing around checking all the measurements etc as I had no plans for this and was making it up as I went along...

The Keyboard Drawer

I tried to make this pretty basic, as I figured it wouldnt be used much (if at all) and it also would not really be seen. I made some MDF battons and glued and screwed to some plywood and then to the MDF front of the draw, leaving something like this (left) - which is pretty solid!

(This is the bottom of the drawer by the way!)

Thoughts then turned to how to make it run inside. I tried to get some plastic runners like you get in kitchen furniture, but couldnt find any locally - so I had to improvise and make some MDF battons covered in a hard plastic finish - this will allow the drawer to run smoothly.

This actually works ok, but I now realise that the drawer is massively front heavy, so will have to fix that with another batton above where the drawer will run to fix it in place - the battons are fixed to the cab with glue and 1.1/4 screws.

Now with the drawer in place and the new front (painted by Claire - far better than the paint jobs I've done so far!) we are looking in good shape - its looking like an Arcade Cabinet!!


Let There Be Sound!

My thoughts now turned to the speakers - I've been waiting for some Labtec speakers to come into stock at Argos due to the fact they (are cheap) have a remote control on a wire for volume and power - allowing easy access to wherever I decide to mount it. I finally got them on Saturday and set about immediately destroying them - which feels weird when you've just taken something out of the box!!

From This ........ >>> ................... To This!

Claire had previously painted the speaker shelf (which I had finished drilling the 'sound hole' patterns) and it looks really good! Will mount the speakers when the paint has fully dried.

Control Panel

Late on Sunday morning, I was about ready to pack in for the day and do some proper work, but I thought I'd make a start on the control panel box (where the joysticks, buttons etc will go).

It was hot and I'd had about enough so wasnt looking forward to it, but it was one of those jobs which went really well and I had finished it in about 15 minutes! So I excitedly dashed upstairs to put it in place and witness the closest I have been yet to completing this project!




















Thats about it for now - its too f**king hot!!

I've had a great suprise from my Dad who sent me up a present of gold (or a cheque) and I can now go ahead and order all my control panel parts - so big THANKS Dad! All I need now is a 27" screen, all the artwork, a new fast PC etc etc etc... I'll send you an invoice :-)

Peace out till next time...

The doors are coming off!

Its been a few days of frustration since I last posted. In that time, I've started putting the finishing touches to the cab - including affixing the back of cab and cutting the speaker shelf to the right size.

I've also been looking at a solution for the front of the cab. This is quite a large (heavy) section - which some people hinge as a big door - whilst others fix the whole section to the front of the cab with a hole in the middle for a coin door.

Its the hinges that have caused the first real DIY headache on the project. If people do hinge, then they normally use what are known as 'European Hinges' - which are large metal hinges, sunk into the wood that you would most probably have on your Kitchen cabinets. I did not feel competent enough to start drilling out large holes in the side of cabinet though as I felt I may go through the other side - ruining what I had done so far.

I looked at a variety of hinges and finally settled on some 'hidden hinges' - which when I got home and gauged the weight of the door, realised they would probably just rip out of the sides...

THE BAD IDEA

Hmmm... in a flash of madness inspiration, I decided to slice the big panel into 3 pieces. One at the top for a keyboard drawer and the remaining 2 pieces to be smaller hinged doors which the hinges would support. Ok - good... or not. My door hanging expertise leaves a lot to be desired and after plenty of swearing, I ended up with this abomination...

Damn, that sucks. By deviating from the plan, have I started to get ahead of myself? What was I thinking - am I some sort of 'Carpenter Freestylist?' Luckily I have enough spare MDF left and decided to trash the doors and think of a new solution.

THE NEW IDEA

So a new plan was needed - I decided to go back to one solid piece (but still with a keyboard drawer) and have it affix to a frame by - dont laugh - velcro... I'm sure this is a good idea, yes, this is a good idea, there is no way that this is a bad idea.

So I cut the wood again tonight and I think its going to be ok. This will also be stronger as I am making a frame for the panel to sit in that will be glued and screwed across the sides of the cab front. Also, you may be able to make out a thinner piece of baton that will sit between the new lower panel and the keyboard drawer space - on here, I will affix some 'Credit Buttons' to mimic the coin buttons on a real cabinet.



HOLE-Y SPEAKERS

The final piece of this bloated update is that I have started work on a speaker shelf idea. Most people (i think) just cut a space in the shelf to put the speakers over and then cover the hole the other side with a grill or mesh to make it look nice. I had an idea of just having holes for the sound to come through in the wood and whilst browsing the arcade forum I found this solution which is perfect.


Drilling the holes is a boring and arm aching job, but I think its going to be worth it once painted!

Thats all for now (folks) ...

Arcadius Erectus.

As a picture speaks a thousand words (and that I am very busy!), here are some pics and not a lot of waffle from this weekends efforts.

Its a pretty good moment when you actually start putting one of these together. Looking back at all the old pics, to start creating something like this from 3 sheets of heavy wood feels pretty good!













Here is a better view.

There will be a little bit of filler needed in some areas, but on the whole, its actually not far off. And a nice bonus is that when we stood it up and stuck a spirit level on it, its pretty much even all over!! Yeah!

Just a real quickie for today...

The paint arrived yesterday! After spending days trying to find a retailer that sold 'semi-gloss' Black paint to no avail, one last web search took me to "The Green Shop" who sell natural products.

I was a bit hesistant at first as the paint contains no dangerous products - so no lead or any other chemicals normally found in paint - its all made from natural goods! The finish is superb though, the paint went on very nicely, no fumes and now its dry, it really looks the part!

All this means that I can now finally assemble the cabinet in my room and the construction of the main cabinet is now over!

More pictures to come on Saturday of a full erection - stay tuned for those!

Putting away the tools... for now!

(This update is a day late!...)

Though the forecast was for more wet stuff, the skies stayed (relatively) blue and the rain held off - so with a 10am prompt start I was off and running trying to tie up all the odds and ends.


First up, some more minor cuts and trims -plus a bit of sanding to fix some off sizes. So far so good... quick, crack on! Whipped out the router for the first time to router the edges of the cabinet. This is to allow the 'T-Molding' plastic edging to slot into the groove I have made (right).

With all these little jobs finished off, I cut up some scrap wood into 2" x 2" lengths and set about making the supports for the cabinet.






This was pretty straight forward stuff - all about getting the measurements and angles right, heating up the glue gun and then drilling/screwing the wood to the sides of the cabinet.









Doesnt sound like alot, but it was a good days work and left me pretty tired - probably due to me racing with one eye on the skies. Anyway, everything wood wise is finished for the time being.

Next up... painting!

Make mine a smoothy...

What a miserable wet day! Due to the lost time in the week due to the weather, I was eager to have a good weekend - but it rained on and off for 99% of the day.

In the small windows of opportunity I did manage to grasp (in between doing 'real work' of webdesign and trips to B&Q) when the rain ceased, I busted out a new tool - the Palm Sander!

This genius little device was the last piece of my arsenal in the assault on cabinet hill (christ that sounds mental!). Anyway, I used the sander to finish off all the pieces and match up any symetrical parts that were not quite exact. Nice tool and again, for about £7.00, shows you dont have to go out and spend loads on tools.

So, with all the bits ready to go, I was about to take the plunge and start putting it all together. Aided by my trusty assistant Claire, we set about lining the pieces up, drilling and screwing together as much as we could.






It turned out to be fairly straight forward and though pieces may be a 1/16th of an inch out here and there, on the whole, I'm very please with how the pieces of the cab are working out.

We had to call a halt to todays proceedings though as I was starving and we also need to cut some scrap wood. Hopefully if the weather improves tomorrow, I can finish the building, take it all apart again, router the edges and prepare for painting! Pretty easy...

Stay tuned for more fun soon!

Back on it.

After praying for rain for the last 6 weeks, due to bad hayfever - and the gods mostly abiding, I've spent the last 2 days praying for sunlight!

The murky Lincolnshire skies have not been kind to the garden arcade cabinet builder and 2 evenings of showers have brought a semi-halt to proceedings.

Though we had an absolutely torrential downpour about 4pm today, the rain held off this evening and I was straight outside after work to set up the tools. On todays agenda was re-cutting the miss-cut control panel side pieces, taking 10" off of my base supports, cutting some 45-degree angles for the first time and trying out the router for the very first time!

But first delivery news... I ordered a router bit from a company called "Rutlands" in the UK, who promise 'Next Day Delivery on orders placed before 4pm'. Well, I ordered at 7am on Monday morning and obviously my understanding of 'Next Day' is different to theirs as it arrived this morning - that speedy delivery cost £5.95 (would have been 90p with Royal Mail)... still, putting Rutlands to shame were the ever faithul 'Play-Asia', who although sound like a Thai Mail Order Bride service, are actually suppliers of all things gaming from the Far East.

Only ordered last Thursday on a standard delivery, my LCD Light Gun arrived today, so thats very pleasing! Heres a YouTube vid (not mine) of it in action... should be fun!



Anyway... all the woodwork went very well today. Took me 30 mins to figure out how to operate the Router! Bloody thing... sorted it in the end and did some testing which went very well (the Router is used to cut a thin slot in the edge of the cabinet wood. Into the slot will fit some plastic molding finsh, called T-Molding). I will Router all the cabinet nearer the weekend.

So then I started the first part of construction finally! The base of the cabinet was assembled today. On the left, you can see how this was done. 4 thin slices of MDF are cut to the sizes you see here, then the edges drawn round with a pencil. Pilot holes are then drilled into intervals where you have marked the wood.

Once enough holes are drilled, the supports are attached using the hot-glue gun and held in place for a minute or two.


Once secure, the whole thing is flipped over and pilot holes drilled back through the base and supports enabling 2" Dry-Wall screws to be used to hold everything together, like this...

Seems very secure and it feels good to be actually building something now!

Next jobs are to put wheels on this base, rout the cabinet sides and then attach the sides to the base... will need some help - "CLAIRREEEEEEEE"...

Till next time...

Little bit of dust? Dust? Yeah, Dust?

Wow... what a day!

Against all my expectations, its gone very well today and I (with Claires fantastic help), have cut all the pieces out for the arcade cabinet.

To the right, are all the pieces required to assemble the body of the cabinet and build the control panel.

The two sides of the cabinet have come out really well and are shaped just as I want them. I modified the design in the book, reducing the depth of the cabinet by 10" to allow it to get in and out of my room easier - plus by adding a TFT monitor to the cab, it gives it a nice slim look (although the retro arcade purists will baulk at the look of a TFT screen!)

Anyway, considering before 1030am this morning, I have never operated a Circular Saw, Jigsaw, a workmate and hand clamps, then I've got to be pretty proud of how it has turned out!

Thanks again to Claire - couldnt have got through today without you helping out and putting up with my tantrums! x

Next up is ordering the Router piece on Monday and getting the edges of the cabinet routed (after squaring the matching pieces off) and then hopefully being ready to construct next weekend!

Finally, I promised a shout-out to my boss Sarah at work (JBS Webdesign, the premier webdesign company in the East Midlands!). Sarah braved the town center of Melton Mowbray to pick up my Saw and Router yesterday, (carrying them to the car bless her) to make today possible - thanks again Sarah!

I am absolutely f**ked now though, so just having a cold bottle of Budweiser as I write this, then I'm gonna relax with some Pro Evo!

But I'll just leave you with a better view of the sides of the cab...

All fingers are still present!!!!

Its 1pm on Saturday and just thought I'd leave a quick update and some pics.

Started cutting today and after a few practice goes, the nerves had gone and I was away.

Claire was my helper and we've got the first sheet cut!

Here are some pics - more later - now food...



Here we go!


Oops! Somethings gone wrong...


But it looks good in the end! (And the cabinet is coming on too!)

More later...

Recouping the Ebay way!

With the cabinet budget already spiraling out of control, I've decided to have a clear-out and start to recoup some of the money I'm spending on tools etc.

So (cheeky plug), I've stuck a load of bits on ebay;

Click for Ebay Items

That is all....

Etch-A-Sketch

Not much going on today!

Trying in vain to find a budget circular saw. Everywhere either out of stock, or out of my budget (about 20p).

B&Q have more stock of their budget version in on the 14th and Claire has a hardware store she deals with coming back to her with some news tomorrow. Cannot see any cutting starting before Saturday now.

So, the only action today was to draw out the 2nd sheet of MDF with the cabinet plans. Pretty straight forward this one, just square pieces, so no major headaches.

I wont update now until the cutting starts!!! VRRRM, VRRRRRRRM.....

And we're off!

Finally got to start some practical work today! Feels like we are underway at last.

ANC turned up for my pre-12 delivery (of tools) at 11:59... Hmmmm.... Anyway, after work I went to find a circular saw for under £30 as I had learned today that cutting thick MDF with a jigsaw was going to be very hard.

B&Q and Wickes had nothing, so will have to wait a few days and get to good old Argos to get my hands on my next weapon of mass destruction.

After tea, we set an area aside in the 'workshop' (which was a dining room) and laid out the first of the MDF sheets. Following the plans in the 'Project Arcade' book, I began (with Claires help) sketching out the shape of the cabinet - using my new 1m ruler, set square and a pencil lent to me by Sarah at work!

After double checking the plans and how much room I will have to manouvre the cab once it is installed upstairs, I've had to alter the size of the cabinet from 38" deep, to 28" and revert back to the original plan of putting a TFT monitor into the cabinet.

Once it was sketched out, it does look pretty cool the smaller size - and safe knowing that when we move or the cabinet moves on, we (should) be able to move it downstairs... should...

Thats about it for today. We really took our time sketching out the plans and treble checking all the measurements, so at this rate, I cannot see the cutting starting until Saturday. Better to be safe though!

Keep believing!