So I started building my arcade machine, beginning with the essentials, the PC and controls. I bought my arcade stick already built for $140, and it's a nice little setup for sure. (http://www.xgaming.com/)
I configured it to work with MAME and Nestopia, and so far, it's freakin sweet! I couldn't get an actual RBI Arcade ROM to play with MAME, so I had to settle for playing the arcade version of the NES game.
I gotta say, this is gonna be a fun project. It'll be sweet to have my own arcade and play most any game I desire.
I just realized I posted this in the RBI section and not ATG. Woops...
I'll be playing RBI on it, so I guess it counts then :)
RBI is probably the right place for it
Man. This is sweet. Just got NBA Jam and NFL Blitz working.
Started this project today. Attached are pictures of our progress thus far. Sometime this week we're gonna finish off the roughing and then comes the finishing...taking pretty good shape now!
that's a great looking project. i hope you'll put a couple speakers up above the monitor somewhere, think about it.
also, does your son have a license?
I am putting speakers in the slanted part above the monitor, maybe even a subwoofer inside (someday). And no, my son is 2.5 years old...why were you wondering if he had his license?
picture #1, he's all over that lawn tractor.
Haha, didn't realize that.
Missed this thread before, nice work - keep us updated
very nice, so did you have a template for the cabinet cut out or did you basically make your own design? This project interests me.
Arcadecab.net I believe.
It was arcadecab.com. And, here it is with phase 2 done (keyboard drawer, top, back, basicall complete, minus finishing stuff (paint, t-molding, marquee, monitor bezel)
That looks great - nice work.
Yeah, I can't wait until I can get some time to finish this bad boy. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out...
that's some mighty fine craftsmanship, turd. Mighty fine.
I have a friend who helped out immensely...the guy had a lot of the right tools for the job. The job ended up costing about:
$140 for initial trip
$20 for a flush cut bit
$20 for a second trip
$140 for the controls (although I used my fantasy football super bowl winnings for this)
$10 for the monitor
- some money for stuff I can take back
$330 so far...
I think probably $20 in paint, $50 in t-molding, $15 for a marquee, plus money for a piece of glass for the monitor cover...
Not a cheap project.
Not cheap but the flexibility will absolutely rule, sounds like next milwaukee fest is at your place
Yeah, pretty fun thing to have around for entertaining purposes...we're gonna be selling our place, so if that happens, I'll gladly have a Dee-Nee fest at my place...
Opinion...I'm painting this thing black...for the t-molding trim, what color do you think would look best?
Black
Red
Blue
I'm thinking red to match the X on my controls, but I don't know...
I would go with red..
Red will shock ya eyelids.
Quote from: Turd on 06/25/10, 01:10:59 PM
Opinion...I'm painting this thing black...for the t-molding trim, what color do you think would look best?
Black
Red
Blue
I'm thinking red to match the X on my controls, but I don't know...
red or white to tie the controller in.
Remember this old thread? I made progress:
Lots more to do...the unpainted part is where the red (I think) t-molding will go...
That's pretty fkn cool.
Othanks. I'll slowly add stuff until its finished. Monitor bezel and t-molding are next.
For the bezel and marquee, are you getting something that's custom-made for projects like this, or using something from an existing arcade game? Also, did you ever get RBI working? I've never had problems running that game in MAME... I think I have the ROM from Gantry's ROMs page, but in the event it isn't, I can upload mine if you don't have yours working.
For the bezel, I'm just taking a piece of plex and masking off the non-monitor areas. For the marquee, I'm designing something myself. Not sure what yet, but def. custom and not from an existing game.
Yes, I got RBI working...I learned a lot since that post, and basically what I know is that every new release of MAME comes updates and changes to ROMs. Your ROMset needs to match your MAME version. I now have in my possession the lastest MAME emulator and every workable ROM for that version.
Furthermore, I've setup Hyperspin, which is an awesome front-end. I have it set to have a theme for each game, as well as an image for each game so instead of just showing "RBI Baseball" in some basic font, it shows it using the real logo text from the game. It also shows a preview video for each game. The whole thing is rather authentic-looking, and should be a really nice tough for those like myself who like aesthetics...
Trim newly applied. It's all coming together.
Pretty fkn sweet...
I would agree. Lots of coolness to add yet.
Turd is a craftsman.
Damn skippy. I'm a crappy one though. This first one is a learning experience.
That thing does look pretty phenomenal.
How many games do you currently have? Are you grabbing entire sets of ROMs, or being fairly choosy about what you put on there?
so hard. my only critique would have been to go with one of the four-person jobbers so you could play some Gauntlet, TMNT, etc and throw in a flying-game style joystick in the middle so you can play some afterburner.
how difficult was the wiring for the joysticks and buttons or is that just plug and play?
You can't really second-guess the joystick configuration because he bought this:
http://www.xgaming.com/ (http://www.xgaming.com/)
It's plug and play, so he doesn't have to do any troubleshooting. Plug it in to the USB port and go. Smart.
what are you, his mother? I'll second guess his control panel all I want!
I went with x-arcade at first because the wiring was kind of scary to me. Now that I've been through it, wired up a few test buttons on my own, and wired an arcade button the outside of the cabinet so I can power up/down the PC without opening the cabinet, I know that it's a piece of cake. Seriously, it's really simple...you get an ipac which maps the joystick movements and button presses to keyboard commands. I'l lbe rewiring this to be 4-player when I get motivation.
As for games, I have every possible MAME game ever made, 40GB worth of games. Some I don't ahve the CHD's for so some don't work, but most do.
I have a front-end called Hyperspin that lets me have SNES, NES, MAME, etc each in different wheels that you control with the joystick. So for MAME there's a master list of games, and then you can press a button to go to your favorites which lets you be as choosy as you want.
I donated to their site as well, so I have a theme for most of the games and a preview video for most of the games so that when you cycle on to say RBI Baseball in the wheel, it shows a preview video of the arcade game and some flashy theme graphics with RBI Baseball's title text bouncing on the screen...I move to Frogger, and it shows the theme and a preview video of Frogger gameplay. It's all really well done.
hardly worth mentioning in comparison to what you're making but there is a guy in St. Louis who sells modified xbox and wii's that he loads up with one of those interfaces, 2000 arcade games and every NES, SNES and Genesis game ever made and sells it for $175. As I know the MAME cabinet is a pipe dream, I'm thinking of pullling the trigger on one of these instead.
My next project is going to be an NES PC. It's basically what you're talking about. You stuff a mini-ITX motherboard inside an NES case and hook up all the emulators. It should be pretty cool for non-mame stuff, which I'd rather use in a standup unit.
I actually have a mini-ATX board laying around I just need a power supply for it.
Why is the MAME cab a pipe dream? What about a bar-top cade? Those things are nice, way less expensive...though if you don't care about the fun of building it, $175 for one of those x-box things is not a bad deal. Got a link to them? I'd like to see them...
My brother had a modded Xbox at one point - it had a huge hard drive that he could rip the full games to, plus emulators (although I didn't really see them in action) and a better media player than Microsoft provided. It was a pretty cool setup.
Whoever is selling that modded xbox with ROMs is going to get arrested quite shortly...
You fuckin narc.
:police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police: :police:
I was thinking it was just the case with a PC inside...the guy is actually modding the console to be allowed to play ROMs...taht's less interesting to me, especially considering the xbox controller sucks for NES/SNES play...
Quote from: Turd on 06/05/12, 03:07:30 PM
My next project is going to be an NES PC. It's basically what you're talking about. You stuff a mini-ITX motherboard inside an NES case and hook up all the emulators. It should be pretty cool for non-mame stuff, which I'd rather use in a standup unit.
I actually have a mini-ATX board laying around I just need a power supply for it.
Why is the MAME cab a pipe dream? What about a bar-top cade? Those things are nice, way less expensive...though if you don't care about the fun of building it, $175 for one of those x-box things is not a bad deal. Got a link to them? I'd like to see them...
To build the machine I want, a four person jobber, I'm thinking it would be at least a $2000 investment when you include the computer, TV, speakers and I'd probably order a custom made control panel and then the hours on top for labor just make it pretty unpalatable but I can order basically what I want for around $3400 from a few places I've seen on the internet. It's just a lot of scratch to drop on something when you've got shit like student loans that should get paid off, cars with over 100K miles on them and you haven't taken a real, honest to goodness vacation since your wedding.
there's always something....