Building a Tate Bartop Cabinet

[Nyukki]

I say I'm building, actually I found a guy locally who makes acrylic shop signs and showed him this thread and he said should be no problem.

The bits are comprised mostly of spare parts I have lying around, or otherwise bought cheaply online. It's also not going to house a PC/console/Pi etc., rather the cables will be dangling out the back so I can hook it up to my 360/HTPC as and when.

Here's what I'm working with:

Monitor: Think I got this from my office ages ago. 15 inch 4:3, picture is very sharp


Speakers: had some already but much bigger, so got these little guys online cheaply.


Joystick: reusing joystick parts with with an xbox 360 controller board I bought online. Gonna make it 4 button plus start, back and home. Unless anyone can recommend any 6 button tate games?


Light for the marquee:


Rough design I threw up in Sketchup with lengths and angles. Gonna take it to the plastic man today and ask his opinion and an initial estimate:



Measurements of some of the parts:


The power cables for the monitor, speakers and marquee light will all be plugged into a power strip inside the bartop, so only one power cable comes out the back. I also bought an SLG 3000 from arcadeforge.net which should arrive next week

Anyway, will update this thread with more pics and a total cost sheet when completed. Anyone else done something like this? Would love to hear any comments/advice/experiences.

Stay loose!

[Ghudda]

Nice!
Look forward to seeing this develop! That screen looks very low profile and slick. My only concern would be fingerprints on the acrylic casing but I can imagine this looking very clean.

[Nyukki]

Fingerprints, sure, but hey-ho. I'm mainly doing acrylic because I have no space or skills for woodwork, plus I kinda want a candy cab look so I thought white acrylic might to a certain extent replicate that.

Update: Went to see the plastic guy, his name is Mr. Liang. Just caught him as he was moving workshops, but he'll be up and running again next week. Ask him about a rough price and he said in any case won't be very expensive, but his only condition is that I help him build one too for him and his workers to play on in their down time.

His colleagues all seem like fun dudes too, they were all wearing cowboy hats ( ) when I arrived today.

[fastbilly1]

I have never built one out of plastic, I look forward to how yours is going to endup. Ive built a dozen bartops out of wood, and without mounting the pc inside, you will have no issues.

What 360 encoder is that? Double check that you can common ground it.

[Nyukki]

encoder? common ground? don't quite follow. 360 is.connected to the monitor via vga cable. already tested it out, works great!

What kind of bartops did you make?

[fastbilly1]

The encoder is what translate your button presses to the 360 console. I have not seen the one you are using, that is why I asked - it does not look like any 360 controller pcb (printed control board - aka circuit board in controller) that I have ever seen.

Every button has two wires going to it. Signal and Ground. Some encoders require isolated (individual) grounds for each button (stock 360 controller for example). Many encoders allow you to have a common ground, where you have one ground and daisy chain all the other grounds off of it.

Common ground:


Isolated ground:


Notice how on the isolated ground every wire on the right side for the buttons is in a pair.


As for my work, I came into a lot of 15-22inch crts and p3 pcs about a decade ago and had access to a woodshop. So I built a bunch based on plans on BYOAC. Sadly this was before I had a digital camera and several harddrive crashes ago so I no longer have pictures of them. They were not fancy, just horizontal cabs with 8 way joysticks and three or four buttons.

[Nyukki]

Ah right, I see. Mine are isolated grounds. It's a pcb specifically for building your own 360 joystick, everything is very plug n play and noob friendly. Here's the link from where I bought it:

http://tb.cn/aIKNQSy

Update 10/30: Mr. Liang says he won't have time to start working on the bartop 'til next Monday due to a backlog of work from moving workshops. I might get a little bit of Garegga on this thing, but should definitely have it in time for Dimahoo in STGT week 3.

Update 11/03: Mr. Liang says this Wednesday 12 o'clock sharp, bring all the guts to the workshop for measurements.

Update 11/05: Brought the guts to Mr. Liang's new workshop and went over the design again. He recommended adding pillars inside for extra sturdiness, especially around the control panel since that part will be taking the most punishment. He'll be working on it evenings so might take a bit longer than expected.

[Nyukki]

Finally got it done!














Basic, but works great. Family pics as marquee FTW!

Will be building a 2 player horizontal one with a bigger screen next.

[s8n]

looks fantastic Nyukki , you've got many good times ahead

[Nyukki]

Haha, thanks man. The long term ambition is still a proper candy cab (or two), but this will do nicely for now.