Gameboy Color Coffee table underway! (updated first post)

[TheSegaSaturnGuy]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but I've had bad experiences with Wal*Mart mainstays furniture in the past. It's all made out of particle board. It swells, stains, snaps, and breaks in less than a year.

I'd like to suggest you find a different table before you start sinking a lot of work into this custom project.

I concur. I have a Wal-Fart bookshelf in my game room (it was the cheapest I could find) and the bastard is already sagging and leaning and falling apart in general. Time to upgrade.

I may have bought the same bookshelf, mine has 3 shelves, I noticed that it was very unsturdy when I put it together but I found a cheap way to get it reinforced. I went back to WalMart and bought 8 of these puppies :http://www.sheetmetalfabrication.com/im ... cket-1.jpg and my problem was fixed. The shelf is very solid now and is holding up extremely well.

[jay_red]

had a pretty awesome breakthrough on designing the d-pad today! I was throwing around ideas in my head, and decided to make some crude prototype of what I had, I originally planned on using springs under each direction, and they would trigger a microswitch, but after some experiments, I found the springs to be not necessary, as the micro switches would do the job by themselves!

(Forgive the extreme crudeness of this prototype, its a mess of poorly cut pieces, and lots of hot glue! )

It will be a self contained unit, that I will attach to the table top with 4 long bolts and will be able to adjust the height.

Placement of the switches, I will be adding a center post of some sort to attach the d-pad to the bottom board, I might possibly have a spring on it


One downside to trying to have the switches sit like this, is that the bottom terminal causes it to be lop sided, so i grabbed a scrap piece of lexan in the garage, and cut little shims to even it out:




I am pretty excited by this, and cant wait to get the final part underway!

[CRTGAMER]

Looking forward to more pictures and info as this progresses, nice move on the lexan shimming for the switches. As others have mentioned, the particle board sag over time could be an issue in light of the additional weight from pounding the controls during a table lean on frenzied play.

1. Maybe add a couple center vertical leg supports especially in the middle underneath?

2. Or a couple horizontal slats of aluminum angle iron "X Framed" going all the way across the middle in both directions?

EDIT
Perhaps a gutted PS1 or PS2 controller would be a better route for the controller interface? With various plug in adapters available, you can easily expand the table to accommodate more consoles including the Gamecube GB Player and even hookup a Mame Laptop. The extra buttons of the PSX controller could be added inconspicuously to the side of the table if needed such as a "coin" button.

[jay_red]

This table is purely going to play game boy titles, i have a male cabinet, neo geo, cocktail, and plenty of other ways to play games, so I am not worried about limiting the functionality of this. I am positive that it won't even be comfortable to play on, but that's not the point haha.

[fastbilly1]

This table is purely going to play game boy titles, i have a male cabinet, neo geo, cocktail, and plenty of other ways to play games, so I am not worried about limiting the functionality of this. I am positive that it won't even be comfortable to play on, but that's not the point haha.

Well I certainly hope you have a male cabinet...

[jay_red]

This table is purely going to play game boy titles, i have a male cabinet, neo geo, cocktail, and plenty of other ways to play games, so I am not worried about limiting the functionality of this. I am positive that it won't even be comfortable to play on, but that's not the point haha.

Well I certainly hope you have a male cabinet...

Damn autocorrect! Or do I have a male cabinet....

[marurun]

If you want to add a kludge to make it more playable, you could also add a pop-out control panel with joystick and buttons.

[jay_red]

Got the final print out done, adjusted the size, as the scale of the new table was different, and my AV-VGA converter came in today! I am hoping to start tearing into it this weekend, but for now here are some teaser shots.


Viewing angle sucks on this monitor, hoping it will be better once its actually in the table. If it is an issue, its just a normal 17inch LCD and I will be able to get another easily. The quality from this converter is pretty good, I just used composite for testing, but will be hooked up to s-video when I am finished.

[fastbilly1]

That is gorgeous. I love that you are using a Gameboy Player

[jay_red]

Huge progress on the D-pad today, I have been worrying about trying to cut out the "+" shape in the tabletop, as well as the lexan without messing up either, so I came up with the idea to make the d-pad more "sega" like (ie: a disc). This way, I just need to use the hole saw in all the surfaces, easier, faster, and much less room for error. With that in mind, I went to creating a beta version.

The white area will be black, and the MDF circle will be the same blue as the gameboy.


There is a 2 inch screw, with a washer, then a spring, then another washer, a bolt, washer, bolt. This allows it to stay in place, and rock back and forth. I have an idea as to keep the disc from spinning, which I will implement in the next stage.