My arcade control panel

[Bursar 0]

Well, as I mentioned in another thread, I'm making an arcade cabinet. I haven't started on the cabinet itself yet (MDF is being delivered on Monday), as I figured it would be much more fun to build the control panel first.

 

Here are some pics of the work so far:

 

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp1.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp2.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp3.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp4.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp5.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp6.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp7.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp8.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp9.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp10.jpg

 

As you can see, I only have sticks and buttons for two players at the moment, but I will buy the other ones once my bank balance has recovered

 

No comments about it being a bit messy or anything, as this is just a prototype made of chipboard. It's a complete nightmare to work with.

 

The PCB thing is an I-PAC, and allows me to wire in all the joysticks and buttons for 4 players. It then connects to the keyboard port on the PC. There's a pass through connector on the I-PAC that allows a keyboard to be hooked up at the same time.

 

I'm about half way through the wiring at the moment, but am off out for some birthday celebrations

 

I should have it done by tomorrow and will post some pics of me playing various arcade games on it

[Bursar 0]

Yup, it will be a PC running Win2K and Mame 32. I also have a few other emulators so I can run SNES games, and a couple of other games that aren't in Mame such as Killer Instinct, Ridge Racer and Rave Racer

[felix 0]

All looks a bit sinister to me......

 

You be a southpaw Mr Bursar?

 

Looks to me like it's going to be hard for a right-hander to use (not meant as a critisism, just an observation).

 

I'm ambidextrous but still prefer the stick in my right-hand. I find it easier just to point at a button with my weaker hand than control a stick.

[Bursar 0]

I'm a right hander. If you look at most arcade games, they are set up in the same way.

 

If the game isn't too complicated they may have the buttons on both sides of the joystick so that it's ambidextrous, but pretty much every machine has the stick on the left and the buttons on the right.

[Bursar 0]

Right, that's it, all done

 

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp11.jpg

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp12.jpg

 

Pic cp12 shows my step-daughter and her boyfriend using the panel to play some Puzzle Bobble 2.

 

Once they're done, I may actually get a go on it myself!

[Bursar 0]

More progress...

 

I've cut out the control panel again (from MDF rather than the nasty chipboard) and have also cut out the two side panels for the cabinet.

 

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/side1.jpg

 

Now it's starting to look cool and I'm getting quite excited. The weather has been a bit changeable today, so I'm not sure how much I'll get done tonight or over the weekend, but it shouldn't be long before I have all the parts cut.

 

Then it's the joyful task of figuring out the best way to bolt it all together and what colours to paint it

[Four and Twenty 0]

Dude that is cool as hell

i have seen lots of cool projects on messageboards but this one tops them all even that 6 processor pentium that bobdole built.

[gilgamesh 0]

That is so cool. I want one now.

[CUViper 0]

Hey, if you've got it, you should posts your plans, blueprints, cad files, or whatever - so we can all jump on the bandwagon...

[Bursar 0]

OK, well if you're interested in doing it yourself, here are some links:

 

www.arcadecontrols.com - loads of examples, hints and links to other people that have built cabinets and suppliers of parts. Great message board as well.

 

www.happcontrols.com - supplier of arcade components such as joysticks and buttons. They have a UK office which you can deal direct with if you're in the UK like me.

 

www.ultimarc.com - supplier of the IPAC keyboard encoder to hook the sticks and buttons to your PC.

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~seanhat/arcade/ - detailed plans for a cabinet and control panel. Also templates for joystick and button layouts. These are the basic plans that I'm modeling my cabinet on.

 

www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cpmeasure.jpg - rough measurements of my own control panel.

 

Have fun

[yakkob 0]

Bursar man, its shaping up good.

 

What I really really want is a sit-down star wars machine with the proper dual joystick control. Man, I loved that game! The speech, tie fighters and the death star trench got you, and just wouldn't let go.

 

I remember climbing out after a game, and just feeling euphoric.

 

Absolutely brilliant.

 

Pic of the machine at the bottom of the page.

> http://www.80salive.com/Articles/Miscellaneous/Arcades/default.asp

 

Fantastic!

[CUViper 0]

Have you guys seen this page? http://www.hanaho.com/products.php

 

They've got full-blown cabinets already built, computer and all! You can also buy just the joystick control panel... looks really good! Of course, I'm sure this costs more than it would to build it yourself, but if you got the bucks it looks like a great way to go!

[Bursar 0]

Yeah, I've seen those. Massively expensive though. It would probably be much more effective to buy an arcade cabinet, rip the innards out and stick a PC inside. I guess you do get what you pay for, but I'm quite enjoying the challenge of building this thing myself. And with my limited wood working skills, it is quite a challenge

[Bursar 0]

Bit of bump for this thread

 

After starting this project last August, I've finally found some free time to start making real progress

 

Here's some pics from last august:

 

This is a pic of the planned control panel. This is a prototype that I made from chipboard - cheap and cheerful. As you can see, it's going to have 4 players, and be a bit of a beast

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp1.jpg

 

This is the panel with controls for players 1 and 2 installed.

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cp9.jpg

 

Then there's the side panel (well, there's 2 of them )

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/side1.jpg

 

And that's pretty much how it stayed for 6 months. But today I got stuck in and started bolting things together:

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/cabframe.jpg

 

There you can see the basic shell coming together, and here's another with the prototype control panel placed on it

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade/framecp.jpg

 

Tomorrow I hope to get a bit further and start fitting some of the panels to fill the case in a bit. Then it's onto the final control panel. I've already made the panel top, just need to move the sticks and buttons into it, and order the extra bits for players 3 and 4.

 

Hopefully now the nights are pulling out again I should have it done fairly soon

[Bursar 0]

Well, originally it was going to be an Athlon, but I think I've killed it I never got on with that AMD stuff anyway, so it's back to Intel for me

 

It's going to be a P4. Not sure if it'll be a 1.6 or a 2.53 yet. Depends what I decide on when the bits arrive.

 

As for graphics, the cabinet will be plain black. I did think about printing off some large graphics for the side, but it's fairly expensive.

 

I will have a marquee across the top though. Not sure on final design, probably a MAME one. I'm also planning on a few graphics around the monitor bezel, but again, haven't given them a huge amount of thought yet.

 

The PC will be running MAME with a complete ROM set (err, 3700 odd games I think), Daphne (for the laser disc games such as Dragons Lair, Space Ace and so-on), and a couple of other bits and bobs too.

[adamvjackson 0]

Well, the advantage of a higher end video card would be antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. Honestly I don't know if MAME natively supports AA/AF or if there is a compile that does, but when I switched on AA/AF in ZSNES the difference was amazing!

 

Food for thought, anyway.

 

P.S. The cabinet looks amazing! Reminds me of the four player Gauntlet style machine...

[Bursar 0]

Quote:

* Probably won't need a Super High-End one for those games... & that is ALOT of CPU horsepower you're applying to that beastie man!

(I am HONESTLY surprised your putting P4 power into it... seriously!)

It is a fair amount of horsepower, but some games such as Metal Slug have a shed load of action going on at once, and they can suffer from slow down. The old Athlon 1.2@1.33 had trouble keeping up. I figured I might as well give it a boost so it can cope with any newer games that come out in the forseeable future.

Things like RaveRacer are fairly heavy on the system as well.

Quote:

Well, the advantage of a higher end video card would be antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. Honestly I don't know if MAME natively supports AA/AF or if there is a compile that does, but when I switched on AA/AF in ZSNES the difference was amazing!

Food for thought, anyway.

P.S. The cabinet looks amazing! Reminds me of the four player Gauntlet style machine...

Currently it's a GF2U, but it should be upgraded to a GF4 4800SE in te not too distant future

And you probably won't be surprised to learn that Gauntlet is exactly the reason I built a 4 player cab over anything else

[yakkob 0]

man, thats looking mint..

 

You have given me the urge to go on a ROM hunt too.

 

Haven't done any emulation for a while now.

Too busy playing Tribes 2 and just finished Splinter Cell (Very very cool game)

 

Keep us updated Burs

[Bursar 0]

I've just knocked up a couple of webpages that chronicle the construction

 

http://www.philspcmods.com/images/arcade

 

As you can see, I've moved on a little bit and have put in a couple of the front panels, and the monitor shelf.

 

I'm thinking I might leave the back of the cabinet open just so that there's more air getting around the PC and monitor, but I'll see how I get on.