MAME Tenttop

[fastbilly1]

Monitors arrived today, picture as soon as the camera is charged. Mount experiments should begin tomorrow night.

[fastbilly1]

So December 08, February 09, same thing right? New additions to the family and other family moving in town do that (the workshop had to repair children toys and build furniture instead of retrofit adult toys), so even though the kids werent mine the shop got filled. We finally got it cleaned out enough and I had the drive to finish this yesterday.

Spent three hours building one of those monitor mounts today, the second one will be done in an hour or so. As of tomorrow paint and a bezel are all that will be left for the monitors.

Leaving:
Controls - need three more joysticks, a host of buttons, and a probably just hack a usb controller.
PC(s)- need a kvm and to get my geode board up and running.
Plate - to fill an open hole on one side - just gonna use a scrap piece of word.

Pictures forthcoming

Moved to Hacks and Mods - where it should have been since the beginning

[fastbilly1]

Due to a recent issue, I have had time on my hands to finally start working on the cab again. If you’ve been keeping track, this should have been done two years ago. The only excuse I have is that I am lazy, have other projects that demand my attention, and most of the documentation I could find on the tent was in Japanese so I had to do a lot of trial and error – Ive not found another tent conversion anywhere.

So, due to my normal parts providers getting out of the game, I decided to just sit down a couple days ago and take one of the joysticks apart. Last night I took apart, cleaned, and fixed all four of the sticks and they work perfectly. I also ordered the rest of the buttons and new lever switches (for the sticks) and will have the cab 90% operational on Christmas day (when I get the buttons)

The sticks are mounted, one of the pcs is going to be mounted tonight as well as the wire for the common ground and interfaces. I don’t have a speaker system yet, but that is one of the reasons itll be 90%. I am just going to put some crappy speakers in it for the short term. My little brother came into the workshop last night and was excited that it was almost done. Well his words were actually “You, me, Contra, now.”

So what is left to do before Christmas day:
- Mount PCs
- Run wiring
- Mount interfaces
- Fabricate kick plate
- Lobby card mount - cutting plexi and printing the instructions/controls
- Test setup

To Do on Christmas day:
- Connect new components
- Play

To do in the future
- Mount KVM – currently both interfaces are PS/2 so the dual view will be in the future. It will be setup as two NES’s for the time being.
- Strip and repaint the entire cabinet

Pictures forthcoming

[CRTGAMER]

That is going to be a great Christmas present!

A mod tease.
Maybe incorporate a basic VGA transcoder and a VGA switch box? An Aux input of SVideo/Audio or even a VGA input port for various game consoles to easily plug in.

A step further is aux output cable wired up to the Arcade controls to the console of your choosing. Sony PSX might be a good choice, has a wide range of adaptors to support various consoles. Since the Arcade controls are all digital, an easy to wire up to a gutted game controller PCB. Should be able to work in tandem with that Ipac board. Only limitation is the games on the console will be limited to the direction pad and buttons.

[fastbilly1]

The only console I would ever put inside of it is a NES. But the cost of two VGA upscalers just makes that silly. A good enough computer inside and it can run most any game released I could play on it - I am tempted to build a new pc for it so itll run Bionic Commando Rearmed. The issue is that not many games are released that only need two action buttons. My list of post NES/TG16 games that use a stick and 2 buttons is only about forty. The list of four player games like that is much smaller.

Now that said, if Battle Block Theater only uses two buttons, I am so hacking four 360 controllers and getting a VGA splitter.

Really I see this currently as a way to play Bubble Bobble with my girlfriend, NES games with my brothers, and random beatemups/hack and slashes with my friends. But in the future I might get more adventurous with it.

[CRTGAMER]

Four to Six button games.
I don't know how far you want to deviate from the original look of the cabinet. Maybe additional smaller buttons on top of the white ones, staggered to fit between mounting screws and the existing buttons.

[fastbilly1]

There is not enough space to put stock sized buttons. Also it would mean I need a drill press and metal cutting bits.

[CRTGAMER]

Oh crap, a shame no room. If you wanted to pursue smaller buttons you could use a corded drill with a good step drill bit. The unibit is very aggressive, thats what I used to poke additional holes in my Zaxxon Controller.

[fastbilly1]

Will the unibit cut steel? I thought it was wood and the like only?

[CRTGAMER]

Unibit is a monster, an electrician's dream bit. I have one made by Greenlee, pricey but cuts like butter! It will even fit a small ⅜" chuck, though that smaller drill motor may strain.