Nerdbloke

Finally, I have painted the arcade machine (black) and got it back together.

Here are some pics of the first black coat going on.

Here are some pics of the arcade machine after the final topcoat went on. It took exactly 1 litre of black semi-gloss to do the two coats of black. It was really way too hot to have been painting.

And finally, here is a pic of it getting it’s first series of use in the “production” environment:

//TODO: Proper marquee lighbox reverse-printed on perspex

//TODO: Bezel to cover TV

//TODO: T-molding on base

//TODO: Holsters for light-guns

//TODO: Reinstall operating system, emulation software and get drivers for dual lightgun working

It looks as if it’s possible to have multi-mouse and multi-keyboard support in MAME as of v0.117u1.

This post on the wiki for arcadecontrols.com talks about the best ways to set up multiple light guns.

Can’t wait to implement this as I have two LCD Topguns.

Ages ago I uploaded my Galaga CPO to the localarcade site to see if anyone else would like it. It didn’t appear on the site for ages and I had forgotten all about it. Today I was searching for some inspiration for “Galaga Side Art” in Google and up pops my CPO.

And the one person that rated it gave it a 5 out of 5. Yay!  :-)

Yeah yeah – small things amuse small minds…

I had a big session in the garage the other day and managed to get the top mounted, with the top shelf and speaker shelf attached.

I also managed to get a grill attached to the rear of the base to allow a little bit of air flow for the PC (and keep out little fingers, and cats).

I’ve have managed to get the base door attached (finally). I was originally intending to use hinges you find in your kitchen cupboard, but was having some dramas with them, so I fell back to using steel piano hinge. Really glad I did as it has worked better than I thought. It looks nice and is really sturdy.

Here is what I’ve got so far:

Here is a view of the mounting bolts, from the outside and inside:

The mounting bolts are 10mm thick so for the countersinking I had to resort to using my router as my standard countersinking bits were not deep/wide enough. With six of these one each side the left and right panels are not going anywhere.

I had to cut the speaker wires from the tv to mount the TV in the cabinet. I am planning on rigging up some kind of quick disconnect so that if I ever need to remove the top I don’t need to cut and resolder the speaker wires again.

TODO NEXT:

• Raise the tv by an inch
• Attach rear panels on the top half
• Solder the speaker wires to plugs

TODO Later:

• Get a marquee printed and attached
• Sort out the plugs and soldering for the control panel
• Figure out how to mount the control panel to the base so it does not move, but is still removable.

Cleaned up the garage – now have enough room to move about in there. Decided I’d better get cracking on the top half of the mame cabinet. Here is a pic of one of the top sides going through a test mounting.

I used some tiny corner braces to hang the top sides on the base so I could step away and get an idea of how it will really look.

TODO:

• Looks like I will need to straighten up the top half (rotate a few degreees anti-clockwise in pic) to make the back edge truly vertical. Once I’ve sorted out exactly where the top half will go relative to the base I will mount it using the fancy-pants mounting screws I purchased ages ago.
• Change the mounting screws for the monitor to move the monitor back a few centimetres. To give more room for bezel/glass.
• cut and splice the wires from the TV speakers to extend them so they can be mounted in the speaker panel below the marquee.