The Avrus Arcade Project

I eat Green Berets for breakfast. And right now, I'm very hungry!

2011-08-14T13:01:00.021-06:00

It's been far too long since my last update. The cabinet was playable (albeit without any artwork) for quite a while. What's the best thing to do when your cabinet is in a perfectly playable state?

Tear it apart and redo parts of it, of course.

The original planning and design on the control panel was done quite backwards. Instead of properly laying out the control panel in a digital template and then drilling from there, I drilled and worked backwards. This created a number of accuracy issues.

Close probably won't cut it if I decide to get artwork done, and then spend a hundred dollars or more to print it. With that in mind, I spent close to a month playing around with different layouts to ensure I could still fit 3 trackballs on the control panel.

It initially started out as a way to find a better design, and resulted in a significant reduction in the size of the massive control panel.

I shaved 8" off the horizontal and more than a full foot off the vertical. It should still provide more than adequate shoulder room for playing, while bringing the panel in closer to the monitor.

It keeps the same general feel of the panel, but removes a lot of the empty space. It also reduces the feeling of being oversized.

My friend did a great job of a very precise fit and finish to the panel and the panel box. At one point he was 1/16" out on one of the sides and scrapped the entire side. I probably would have been fine with it, but his attention to detail shows.

Once I got it home, I taped it and prepped for painting. I used a roller and a brush to apply multiple coats. Bondo was applied at any imperfections.

The finished look is a nice smooth matte without any brush strokes showing through.

I've managed to move over all the controls and as of this date I'm 50% of the way through wiring. The wiring turned out to be a bit of a headache because I didn't do a proper wire map to begin with.

Fortunately I followed the Mini-Pac wiring guideline in order, which maintained my sanity if a connection had pulled loose and I wasn't sure where it belonged. More updates as it is completed.

So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did... Do you want to know which of them are cowards?

2008-07-28T17:51:00.001-06:00

It seems like I lost my focus with this Blog. It was intended to provide some insight and tips with things that I uncovered as I progressed.

So in keeping with that theme, I'm listing the repairs that were done to my monitor.

The repairs that were done to my Betson/Kortek KT2914F Multisync monitor were:
A 33UF 50V Radial Cap was replaced.
A 2SC5584 was replaced by an FJL6820.

Perhaps that will help someone down the road.

We'd better get back, 'cause it'll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night... mostly.

2008-07-03T18:23:00.000-06:00

Its been a while since my last update. The monitor board has come back to me repaired. In its absence I managed to blow off Vista and put XP back on.

In order to accomplish that I had to purchase a 500 GB hard drive to store all the cab files on. During that process I accidentally snapped the back off the hot swap bay. $50 down the tube. I ended up getting a non rack style bay so I can just pop the drive in and out.

Hopefully my main PC motherboard will be back to me next week and the electronics in my house can return to normal.

Still no luck with artwork. I have no idea what I'm going to do about that one.

This weekend I'll try and get the neck-board reattached and the control panel back on and functional.

I'm requesting national authority command override; Angry Man is unsecure. I need everything we have at my command in order to stop his movement.

2008-04-15T11:20:00.003-06:00

Good news, of sorts.

My sales rep from Betson replied promptly and advised the monitor comes with a 1 year warranty. Called the technicians at the contact numbers she provided, and I'll need to grab the p/n off the neck board.

So tonight's task will be to disassemble the cabinet, pull the monitor and obtain the p/n without damaging the cabinet or myself.

I never did mind about the little things.

2008-04-12T12:48:00.002-06:00

I've been a big supporter of Microsoft products for a lot of years, and I've been using Windows Vista since the RC1 without a problem. Without a problem, that is, until I attempted to install SP1 on my Vista Home Premium. That was almost two weeks ago, and I finally got to the point that I've given up on Vista.

I'm going back to Windows XP.

That is until I realized that the forces of the universe were aligning against me. First off -- going back to Windows XP after having Vista on your machine is not an easy task. You can't simply just reinstall Windows XP. I forgot that Vista installs a new 'boot loader' which has to be removed by destructive or sneaky ways first.

In my initial attempt to reinstall Windows XP, during the install process I hit one of the buttons on my cabinet, which apparently was a shortcut for c, and that prompted the install to attempt to create a new partition over top of my existing partition.

Did I mention I don't have my cab files (all 250 GB of them) backed up?

Thankfully I didn't panic, and found this amazing tool called TestDisk. It allowed me to completely recover the fubar'd partition, with all my files intact.

Praising myself for my calm demeanor (I should have known better) I proceeded to determine that the way to remove the Vista bootloader was to boot off the DVD and run a bootsect.exe /nt52 command from the recovery console. This would remove the Vista bootloader and replace it with the XP NTLDR.

The universe, sensing my impending victory, decided that this would be the optimal time to have my Betson 27" arcade monitor fail. The monitor that has less than 50 hours of logged time on it. The monitor powers on to a 'ticking' sound which sounds like either the monitor is trying to change resolutions or degauss itself. Either way, it is non-functional.

My initial reaction is to go to the local Canadian Tire, purchase a sledgehammer, and bring all of my anger and frustration to bear onto the cabinet. Unfortunately J has informed me that there will not be a second cabinet constructed in his garage. As such I will be forced to vent by destroying something else, and venting my rage on the Internet.

I've left a message for Betson. Everything I've read indicates their service is great. However I am several thousand miles away from them, and this only reinforced my original fear of buying an arcade monitor. The fear that something would fail on the monitor and I would be left hanging with the choice of having it repaired locally (costing several hundred dollars), or shipping it back for repair (costing several hundred dollars more than local repair).

I'm not willing to invest several hundred dollars into a monitor that has hardly any usage on it. So at this point I'll have to wait and see what Betson's response will be.

I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs. I play video games, which I think is a far superior addiction to any of those other ones.

2008-03-06T17:39:00.001-07:00

Making real progress now. I'm almost at the point where I can call the project 'done'. The only major thing that's left, is the artwork. My albatross. My white whale.

Here you can see the 25 cent stickers and the admin stickers applied. All of the admin buttons are wired and functioning now.

One of the things to be aware of with the small momentary contact buttons is that they're very shallow. I had to route out quite a bit of the backside of the 3/4" panel I had. Even then the nuts didn't seem to want to hold all the time.

Wider shot of the admin buttons.

The power button, when unlit, seems hardly noticeable with the labels in place.

This shot shows the labels reflecting off the glass. Again, the glass is so dark that you don't see these types of reflections unless you're hitting it with a camera flash.

Nice close up of the 25 cent vinyl. Looks much better than just a plain black button.

The more I look at the admin buttons, the more I'm glad I went with the smaller momentary contact buttons as opposed to a regular push button. They just look ... more admin.

What would any project be without some pimping here and there. I decided to spice up the inside with some cold cathode tubes. It also helps if I'm doing some work inside, as opposed to using a flexible work light.

The edges of the cabinet now have this eerie blue glow to them. It's also a nice effect when opening up the coin door.

Managed to take a stabilized shot without the flash so you have a better sense of the lighting.

Just a reminder that I was able to get the vinyl admin buttons from Pongo in the BYOAC forums. It's a great resource for artwork and other arcade related goodness.

What's worse, thinking you're being paranoid or knowing you should be?

2008-03-03T18:33:00.002-07:00

So I took the admin panel from J's garage and brought it home to mount the buttons. I originally went out looking for a 3/4" nut for the Bulgin Vandal power button. I should have been more observant, because it already comes with a half height 3/4" nut on it.

Lots of driving around wasted on that.

After mounting the admin buttons and the power button the paint ended up getting scuffed up, and the paint had some indents in it from behind handled.

Sanded it with a 120 grit sand paper, put a few more coats of enamel paint on it (after taping off the buttons. It's now nice and shiny.

Very difficult to get a good shot of the button. The button doesn't come with the 'power' symbol on it, I ended up getting a sheet of vinyl decals from Pongo in the BYOAC forums. I'm very happy with the results.

I had originally planned on 2 inch spacing between the buttons, but I was concerned about the vinyl labels overlapping. I increased it to 3 inches and I'm very happy with the results. All the buttons are vertically aligned and the net resulted is a very appealing look.

J came over to look at the progress I was making, and I managed to leverage him to help me install the glass. The L brackets I was using were too large, so we ended up putting a slight bend in them so they wouldn't cover the control box bolt holes.

I'm very pleased with the results. The glass, as you can see, is quite dark. It adds that missing element of 'arcade feel' to the cabinet.

The challenge with taking a picture with a dSLR is that it's constantly trying to increase the light levels. The net result is light reflections off the glass, when in reality there is very little reflection at all.

Here is the heart of the machine. Motherboard on a Lian-Li motherboard tray, with a Vantec hot swap drive case, and the power supply. I used some beefy panel clamps on the top and bottom and they hold very securely.

Another angle.

I need to practice taking more shots with my camera. This is with the ISO turned up and the flash turned off. The effect doesn't quite come out like I wanted, but you get the idea.

This is the back of the control box with the admin panel securely mounted. I used 4 x 1-1/2" L brackets.

A picture inside with the motherboard mounted securely. Looking much more tidy now.

The admin panel serves to fill the gap at the top of the control panel, and add that little bit of polish.

I can't wait to see the control panel with some artwork applied.

My Pac-Man 4-way reunion stick came in. Now I can mount it, and use it on the games I need to, rather than trying to struggle with an 8-way.

Unfortunately the mount is slightly different from what I had routed. As you can see there's some damage to the wood that requires some bondo to repair.

I finished the afternoon by taping the underside and applying bondo liberally to fill the holes and the notched areas. I'll drill new holes tomorrow, and securely mount the 4-way.

Well, we kinda face to the north and real subtle-like turn left.

2008-02-25T13:14:00.005-07:00

Well the admin panel is mounted to the control panel box, and it fits into the space it needs to. There was some serious concern on my part I wouldn't be able to mount it properly the first time around, but I marked out the edges with chalk and that seemed to do the trick.

I also mounted the motherboard and associated computer equipment to the board I wanted to use. I'm using large panel clamps on the inside, and that seems to hold with a significant amount of force.

After years in the computer industry I figured it would be a walk in the park. I couldn't have been more wrong. For starters, I decided to dust the motherboard a bit. At that point I realized it looked like someones scalp was stuck in the heat sink. I disassembled the heat sink and fought back my gag reflex. It was pretty nasty. Put some new silver thermal paste on there, cleaned it up and reassembled. (totally expected it to boot with beep codes but had no issues).

The challenge became when I attempted to mount the motherboard to the Lian-Li tray I had purchased. Two brass stand offs broke off (yes, broke) in the mounting holes. I was pissed off and took an 1/8" drill bit and expanded the holes. That seemed to work perfectly.

Just need to finish mounting the hard drive, wire up the admin panel, and attach the wood piece that will keep the glass in place.

That will finish things until the artwork is done.

I just blew up a hotel. How the hell do you think I am?

2008-02-23T21:22:00.006-07:00

Well I've been busy. The cab has gone through some serious play testing, and it's clear that setting up all the games with all the controls is going to take some time.

The trackballs had to have the y wires reversed, as it was functioning like a flight stick. Down was up and up was down. Easily fixed by reversing the outside wires that plug into the Mini-PAC.

It's alive! A beautiful sight indeed.
Here's Lyle playing some track and field.

Here's Darcy playing some track and field.
The camera doesn't do justice showing off the greylite #14 glass. It's dark. Very very dark.
Had to load up joust, because it's a classic.

Here is the glass outside of the cabinet.

Spent 2 days applying bondo, priming, sanding and painting the control panel box. It looks significantly better if you check out some of the older pictures.

Nice curves to it now.
The admin panel, waiting for the paint to try so I can install it.

The diamondplate came in, after I ended up going to the FedEx depot to pick it up. FedEx claimed they attempted delivery, yet no truck appeared in my parking lot and no one rang the door bell.

Tomorrow I'll take pictures of the work I've done mounting the computer onto the wood panel. I'll also take pictures of the admin panel mounted, with the cool illuminated Bulgin Vandal power switch.

Also, the cab has a name;

Conquest.

My CPU is a neural net processor, a learning computer. The more contact I have with humans, the more I learn.

2008-02-18T23:39:00.001-07:00

I'm tired.

My goal was to take the cabinet apart to do some work on it (it's fully functional, Canuckles played a few games).

My initial plan got screwed up when my buddy J came over and I was unscrewing the lag bolts and realized I had cross threaded one of the lag bolts the entire way up. Needless to say it took the two of us to get it apart, and the bolt was about 200 degrees by the time I was done.

Took some bondo, patched up some of the parts I didn't like. 80 grit sandpaper on it and threw on some Tremclad primer.

I'll have to use a 160 or higher sandpaper tomorrow and then put another coat of primer on it before it'll be ready for paint.

We also managed to cut the admin panel, and the piece that will hold the glass in place. On Saturday I cut up the piece that I'm going to mount the motherboard, hard drive and power supply to.

I'll post some pictures in the next few days.

Also, the cab has a title.

This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then - explode.

2008-01-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

Interesting weekend.

Saturday was supposed to be the day I finished wiring my control panel, configured the buttons, and finalized my cabinet so it was playable for Sunday.

The reality was a bit different.

To start with, I encountered all manners of issues with the buttons. It turned out that the ground and signal crimps weren't tight enough for the leaf-style micro switches I had installed on some of the buttons. It was causing them to disconnect intermittently. Once I compressed the end very tightly, they were reliable.

Then I ran into an issue with the coin door. It turns out you can't ground the coin door switches to a second Mini-PAC, they have to be grounded to the same Mini-PAC that the signal is connected to. Important lesson learned.

Then the button configuration. You have to make sure you've unplugged all but the Mini-PAC you intend to program, otherwise you're going to drive yourself nuts.

So I finished at 11pm on Saturday, got up at 7am on Sunday and worked until about 3:30 pm to get it up and running.

I'm still going to have to remap some of the keys, as the CTRL and ALT keys seem to cause all manners of conflict in Windows. As well, I have an issue with the blue trackball not wanting to reliably detect a spin on the X-axis. 'Fozzy Bear' on the BYOAC forums suggested it might be a trackball spindle that needed more oil, and after disassembly I'm inclined to agree. The spindle seems to have far too much friction.

So tonight I'll be focused on putting some oil on the 2 spindles and 4 bearings that seem to need it, as well as re-configuring the key map.

If there's a world left when this is all over, I'd like to buy you a beer.

2008-01-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

I settled on 4 x 1/2 inch bolts to secure the control panel box to the cabinet.

I couldn't find a 1/2" drill bit, then I remembered that I had the 1/2" spade bit that hadn't been used yet. I pre-drilled with the largest bit I had (3/8") and then used the spade bit.

Here all the joysticks and buttons are installed. I wasn't completely certain on the color scheme, but after seeing it assembled I'm very happy.

Once the artwork is in place, the joystick base will be hidden nicely.

Some of the internal wiring.

You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. Come back when you're worthy.

2008-01-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

Managed to get quite a bit accomplished. Sat down with a few bad movies and started wiring.

Player 1 buttons. The wiring won't be tidied up until the artwork is applied, as I need to take the entire thing apart to apply the artwork.

This is the Happ trackball X axis connector. They have a AMOA plug in place with a harness. You unplug the X axis connector and Y axis connector and the Mini-Pac plugs directly in.

These are the Mini-Pac trackball connectors. Y-axis on the left and X-axis on the right.

Spinners installed. Had to countersink the bolts for them to fit flush. I probably could have used a #6 screw, but I went with a #4 as the mounting holes seemed quite small.

Player 2 buttons.

A start and coin button. The coin button is black.

The control panel is a monster and I wasn't able to reach from the bottom of the panel to the top to attach the coin buttons. I purchased some male quick disconnects and used those to plug into the Mini-Pac wiring.

Here is a nice shot of the Mini-Pac wiring.

Can't we just like kick this old school. You know, like I stick the baby in a basket, send it your way, like Moses and the reeds?

2008-01-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

So it's been quite a while since my last update. I was hoping against hope to get artwork completed, spent some money and a lot of time making sure the digital template for my control panel was correct.

Unfortunately artwork is not happening anytime soon.

So I started to continue assembly on the cabinet, and it turned out I misplaced the mounting equipment for the coin door. (Whoops?)

Some paypal money to divemaster127 from the BYOAC forums, a few weeks of impatiently waiting and I'm back in business.

Hard to believe these little guys held me up a few weeks.

Installed some buttons, and the trackball mounting plates.

Coin door in the process of being installed.

Coin door installed, finally

Coin mechs in place.

You can see how the clips hold the coin door in place.

Unfortunately another snag when I attached the coin box. Turns out one of the wood frame pieces blocks the door from closing with the coin box attached. So I relocated the frame piece.

Red LED lights installed in place of the stock bulbs. Wasn't sure which polarity to go with, turns out I got it correct on my first try.

12v power on the top (+) and ground on the bottom (-). Since I'm just using a spool of yellow 18 gauge wire for various components, I put some black electrical tape to identify ground.

Without a tripod, it's difficult to take pictures of the coin door with the lights, but it looks sweet.

Trackballs, joysticks and buttons installed. I have more pictures of more assembly, but it's late and I'm tired.

Alright. On a scale of one to ten, what would you consider the likelihood you might be assassinated?

2007-11-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

Managed to be productive on the cabinet. Installed the bezel, as the only things remaining now are the tinted glass, and coin door.

Bad news on the control panel artwork, unfortunately the person I had in mind won't be able to do it for me. That means I'm left designing the artwork myself which means this could end in disaster.

I was at a bit of a loss of how to attach the bezel, as it sticks out slightly from the monitor and doesn't sit flush to any mounting surface. I settled on a 2x4 block cut length wise, and some industrial strength velcro.

The difference between regular velcro and industrial strength is night and day. I'd feel completely comfortable hanging 10 or 15 lbs off of this without it pulling loose.

Needless to say, pulling the bezel off the blocks and aligning it squarely was a challenging task.

The finished product neatly hides the mounting material behind it, and when the tinted glass is installed you won't be able to see the bezel at all. Some original arcade cabinets had artwork on the bezel as well, but given my difficulty with the marquee, side art and control panel overlay I'm not going to push my luck.

Once it's assembled, this should give you a pretty good sense of what it will look like. The t-molding on the control panel will go on after the overlay is applied giving it a nice finished look.

It's getting exciting now, 2 and 1/2. Think of everything we've accomplished, man.

2007-11-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

Well it's been some time since my last update, and I've managed to do quite a bit of work. The first thing I did was to mount the fan grills. I ended up going with 254mm fan guards and they turned out fantastic.

After that was done I turned my attention to getting the marquee light mounted. I didn't think I'd have an opportunity to easily mount it and do the wiring if the monitor was in place.

Then my attention was turned to mounting the monitor. I used 2 1/2 inch bolts through some 2x4 spruce cut to 26 inches. The bottom part of the monitor was screwed into some blocks that were angled to get the correct position of the monitor.

The spruce was then attached to the cabinet with corner brackets.

Then on Saturday and Sunday I focused on getting the T molding installed. As we used a 3/32 inch slot cutting bit, I ended up using silicone to hold the T molding in place. J suggested this, and although it was a bit more work the results turned out well.

Then after the T molding was in place I installed the 4 corner protectors. The results are nice, and it adds a completed touch.

Now I'm waiting on the control panel artwork to be finalized, and I have a friend printing off the control panel template on a wide format printer so I can ensure all the holes line up.

How are you going to run the universe if you can't answer a few unsolvable problems?

2007-10-22T12:03:00.001-06:00

Well I've managed to get quite a bit done since my last update. I mounted the speaker shelving, the front door, wired the speakers, wired the back and top fans, and wired the marquee light.

Tonight I'll likely be mounting the marquee light and the coin door, and spending the next few days wiring the coin door and control panel.

Once I get the monitor mounted I can start working through any play bugs, and polish up the software side of things. At that point I can also order up the smoked glass for the cabinet. Those are all minor details, however.

This weekend was very productive. J and I managed to get the control panel fabrication completed. On Saturday we spent the first part of the day looking at my layout, and then laying it out again to make it as consistent and clean as possible.

Once grid lines had been set out, finding the spots I needed to drill for the joystick holes and buttons was quite quick. We had a bit of a dilemma when it came to top mounting the joysticks, but in the end we solved it by using carriage bolts, and I'll simply remove the cherry switches from the bottom of the joystick prior to mounting. Otherwise we would have had to make the hole quite a bit larger to accommodate the switches sticking out. Doing so would have weakened our mounting points.

Sunday was largely spent finishing and routing. Several hours of routing the trackballs and joysticks left both of us covered in dust and exhausted. We had a small incident while routing the T-molding groove, but nothing that some silicon won't take care of.

Although it's a bit faint, you can see the angled lines we drew to lay out the joystick, button and trackball mounting points.

Each of the intersections of the grid lines represent a point I need to drill for buttons. 1.5" spacing between the buttons and 3.5" from the center of the joystick hole to the center of the first button.

More pictures of the grid lines we used, it probably looks like a complex series of lines to anyone who wasn't involved in drawing it.

More examples of our layout.

The template was taped down to the melamine, which allowed me to drill every single joystick and button hole precisely. As you can see, there's not even 1/16" error on the holes.

A close up of player 1. The thumb button is offset 1 3/4". Originally I started with 1 1/2" like the rest of the buttons, but it left the thumb button too close to button 4. I played around with a few measurements but 1 3/4" ultimately seemed correct.

This is a close up of player 3. Player 3 and Player 4 are a 4 button configuration as that is the most number of buttons required.

This is a picture of me drilling what seemed like my millionth hole on the control panel. My Dewalt drill has a bubble on the back to ensure that my hole is going straight down. 1 1/8" spade bit was used for all the joystick and button holes.

Drilling all the holes created an enormous amount of dust.

This is a side shot of the Player 3 trackball. J routed out the center, where the trackball needs to fit up and through to point to the flush plate.

This is a correctly oriented shot of the player 2 trackball above the player 4 joystick.

This is a shot of the player 1 trackball, mounted to the left of the player 2 layout.

The end result. Everything is nicely lined up and symmetrical. Buttons are used for multiple controls wherever possible.

A nice perspective shot of the control panel.

A close up shot of J's fine routing skills. Each of the holes was taped, then traced around the required control, then a razor blade was used to cut the tape and provide a guide for the routing area.

Do you know the Tristan Rêveur quote about bad art? It's "bad art is more tragically beautiful than good art 'cause it documents human failure."

2007-10-08T19:59:00.000-06:00

I'm currently working through the control panel layout. J was gracious enough to lend his time to do a mock up in AutoCAD. I did a test layout and it looks like we're going to have to rework some things.

My fan grills came in, after I decided to go with another company. I'll need to update my cost page to reflect the cost of the molex connectors for the power supply, the fan grills and the speaker covers.

I managed to mount the fan grills, as well as the speaker shelf. I think I'll need to mount the monitor to get a better sense of my control panel layout.

I won't be able to post pictures for a little bit, as I sold my camera. The intent was to replace my camera with the Nikon d40x. Unfortunately in that time span the project has left me a little cash deprived.

Updated the project status page.

A thousand nations of the Persian empire descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun!

2007-09-30T17:48:00.000-06:00

The cabinet is finally assembled. Well, almost.

The speaker shelf needs to be assembled, and the base piece and casters need to be attached. Other than that, you are looking at a project well along it's way to completion.

Slight accident when insuring all the pieces fit snugly in the cabinet. The angled back piece fell with a tremendous crash, damaging the edges. Some wood filler and enamel paint touched it up nicely.

This week I'll be concentrating on the control panel mock up. By next weekend I should be good for the remaining cabinet pieces to be attached, and to start construction on the control panel.

The blotching at the back is the enamel paint seeping through the crack at the back. You can see the wood frame on the inside that provides more stability and will ultimately support the monitor.

The pieces sitting on the bottom are the corner protectors. MDF has a bad habit of folding easily. The T-molding needs to be installed first though.

Full size shot.

Side panel shot, nothing new here.

Lower back with the fan installed. The edging will be covered by T-molding.

Top back fan. It will look much better with the 254mm fan grill installed.

This is the lower fan, again will look much better with the 254mm grill installed.

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't. Not without your help.

2007-09-27T12:28:00.000-06:00

The cabinet cutting, routing and fabricating is complete. All the pieces were moved over to my house for assembly. We'll likely be putting this beast together on Sunday.

That will pave the way for me to start focusing on the control panel. With any luck the control panel will be a fraction of the work of the cabinet.

I completely underestimated the amount of hours and work that was involved in the cabinet construction.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the European door hinges required a section to be routed out. The space had to be 1/2", keeping in mind we only had 3/4" of material to work with in the first place. To make matters more complicated, it was only 5mm from the edge, which we had already used a 3/32 bit on. To say I was concerned about punching through the side of the cabinet would be a big understatement.

J did a great job.

No wiggle room on the hinge at all, nice and snug.

My house, now filled with pieces of arcade cabinet.

The back piece of the cabinet upside down, with the angled back piece and speaker shelf resting against it. You can see the amount of MDF dust all over it.

I had assumed the Midway speaker grills were plastic. They are, in fact, some sort of aluminum. The pictures don't do them justice, they look great.

You can help me. Whatever comes out of these gates, we've got a better chance of survival if we work together. Do you understand?

2007-09-25T23:00:00.000-06:00

Another productive evening.

J and I managed to complete all the major cutting we need to do for the cabinet. There will be some minor frame support pieces tomorrow night, but they shouldn't be more than a few minutes.

The top, back, front door with coin door cutout, speaker shelf with cutout and all the fan cutouts are complete.

The coin door was the most difficult piece, it required some careful routing to ensure that the coin door fit properly. J touched it up a few times and now the coin door fits nicely.

Tomorrow we bring all the pieces to my place for assembly.

From there, my focus will be the control panel.

Using the 200mm DC fans to get a sense of size for the cutout.

Close up picture of the Antec 200mm fan.

Used a 1 1/2" spade bit to cut a hole for the router to fit into. The spade bit made short work of the melamine.

A few odd edges on the fan cutout, but it will be completely masked once the fan is mounted and the fan grills installed.

45 degree cut for the top back piece that sits at angle. Done with a circular saw, not a bad job.

Same technique as above used for the back panel. Another Antec 200mm fan will be installed to provide air intake from the back.

The layout for the coin door cutout. We were a little sloppy when we used the spade bit to cut the corners. We should have used the router to cut the corners, or more carefully measured. In the end it worked out fine because we had a 1/2" of play on either side of the coin door.

Cutout completed. As you can see, it's not exactly precise. Luckily the coin door hides any ugliness on the cut job.

With the coin door installed, nice and snug. As you can see the router kicks up tons of MDF dust. Breathing protection is a must.

No traces of gaps around the outside edge. It really looks great.

Speaker cutout. The book wasn't exactly clear on the inside dimensions of the cutout. In the end we used the dimensions of the Klipsch 2.1 speakers and simply subtracted 1/2" from either side to cut the inside dimensions.

Not exactly a thing of beauty, any imperfections here will be covered by the speaker grills.

They call it the Enterprise Room, man, because it's for people who wanna be beamed up to Scotty.

2007-09-24T13:04:00.000-06:00

It was a shorter work day on Sunday, but not any less productive. I can see how practice and experience with the tools and the melamine makes every session more efficient.

J was poking fun at me, because during the last work session I was almost OCD about checking the underside (the side that will face outwards from the cabinet) to ensure that we hadn't drilled through the wood and perforated the outside edge. It got to the point where I was doing it with every screw.

We didn't have a lot of time to work with, so the goal was to be as productive as possible.

The goal for the evening was to finish the major cuts for the cabinet. We did complete that goal, although there are some finishing cuts that will need to be done.

What remains now is to attach the top, top back, back and front pieces to the cabinet. We'll need to finish the internal framing and attach the sides to the bottom, as well as attaching the casters to the bottom. There will also be some routing to do on the top back, lower back and front sections to accommodated the fans and coin door respectively.

I took a couple days off work (Tuesday and Wednesday) to recharge and get some painting done around the house. Tuesday and Wednesday evening J and I will focus on completing the cabinet assembly so I can put my energy towards the control panel.

A nice side view of the frame attached, as well as the shelving and top piece that will be installed.

What the side piece will look from the outside view.

Nice view of the marquee cuts. J is concerned about the angle but I think once it's assembled that nice sweeping angle is going to look great.

These boards will serve to mount the top of the cabinet as well as the speaker shelving.

Me hard at work measuring, measuring again. Starting over when I realized I measured incorrectly.

Keeping the Project Arcade book close at hand helps me to visualize the cabinet in 3 dimensions.

Measuring out 26" sections.

All the pieces cut, set against the wall so J can park his car in his garage.

We've made living biological attractions so astounding that they'll capture the imagination of the entire planet.

2007-09-16T10:59:00.001-06:00

Well major construction started yesterday. Most of the morning was taken up with the layout and running around to get various tools and minor items that I missed. That just goes to show; no matter how many lists of supplies you make, you're going to have to do running around to get some items you missed.

My recommendation would be to either take a half day for planning and getting those items, or to start earlier in the day to minimize downtime.

Originally we had planned on laying two pieces of melamine together, and cutting them with a router. It turned out the bit required wouldn't fit into the router we had, so I ended up having to purchase a jigsaw. It was probably for the best anyway as cutting out the coin door, fan holes and speaker holes are going to be considerably easier with a jigsaw.

I ended up purchasing some 8 tooth blades, and they didn't do too badly. If they had a better selection I would have purchased 10 or 12 tooth blades and I think they would have minimized the thrashing at the edge of the melamine.

J had the perfect idea for cutting the melamine and I'd recommend it for anyone doing the project. Put your good sides facing in (lift, don't slide) and your bad sides facing out. What will happen is the tearing will occur on the outside edges which ultimately face to the inside of the cabinet and no one will see.

We also used masking tape on all the cuts to minimize the melamine edges being ripped apart. The circular saw did a nice job, and clean straight cuts. The jigsaw was a bit more challenging as it tended to flex on the edges of the MDF / melamine and bind at several points on the tape. Thankfully there were no major cutting errors and everything seemed to come together nicely.

Most of the major cuts were done by J with the circular saw, and the curve piece was done with a jigsaw. We used a 3/32 bit for the routing for the T-molding as I couldn't find a 1/16 bit at any of the stores we went to, including a specialty tool shop. J cut the inside support pieces with a double-bevel miter saw.

By the end of the day, we managed to cut both sides of the cabinet, and attach the spruce to the inside which will attach to an inside supporting frame. I know most cabinet builders don't go with an internal frame, but this cabinet will be moved as some point and I don't feel confident that bolts to the MDF will hold a 110lb 27" monitor in place. With an internal frame I can be reasonable confident it can be moved, and there should also be no shifting during game play.

When they say pre-drill the MDF / melamine, the reason for that is as you drill your 2" or 1 1/2" screws through into the MDF it's going to resist your screw. If you pre-drill it provides a nice anchor point for the wood (the screw will naturally go into the hole) and the MDF doesn't resist the screw. We tried two screws without pre-drilling and they wouldn't even go into the melamine, it simply pushed the board up.

We used 2" decking screws, which have nice chunky teeth on them, inside of fine teeth like a wood screw.

Today I'm going to have to do some more running around to switch out the door hinges and the casters. Two of the casters I purchased from the 3" bin turned out to be 2 1/2" casters. The door hinges I purchased were totally wrong and should have been cabinet hinges.

This is the saw horses set up in J's garage.

Close up view.

Two sheets of melamine laid back to back, bad sides out, good sides in.

You can see the 2x4 cross members providing center support for the melamine.

Showing the safety equipment we're wearing. J is quite pleased with me taking his photo. It was a toss up between these type of masks with carbon filters, or re breathers. Unfortunately the price tag on re breathers starts at $70 and goes up from there.

Using masking tape (in this case painters tape) to minimize the tearing at the edges. Even with the painters tape you can see significant chipping. Luckily this is the side that will face to the inside, while the piece that faces to the outside has zero chipping.

After fooling around with different router bits, it was decided I had to get a jigsaw to properly do this job. No cutting corners.

J made a slight slippage changing the router bit, and this is what it did to his thumb. This was the worst injury for the day, and hopefully the last.

The shape of the cabinet is taped out, and J measured it precisely including all the angles.

Better shot showing the tape and level.

J managed to do this sweeping round angle in one shot. Very nicely done I think it's going to look much better than straight cuts. You can see the nicely centered routed space for the T-molding.

There's a bit of a hump halfway down the cut from the jigsaw blade flexing, but we'll likely just touch it up a bit with the belt sander.

Attaching the frame to the inside pieces first, and then the frame will attach to that. Quite difficult as the glue acted like a lubricant and the pieces would move around quite a bit. We managed to get a system down and secure the pieces after pre-drilling into the spruce and melamine.

With both sides done, we call it a night and J tells me to get the hell out.

Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.

2007-09-09T15:21:00.001-06:00

So I have everything I could possibly need, except for some small finishing touches like the speaker grills and the glass / plexi-glass that will sit in front of the monitor.

Oh, and the artwork. The damn artwork. That's in the back of my mind for now.

Started out as a simple trip to Rona, but they didn't have the lumber I was looking for. They did however have a super sweet deal on a Dewalt power drill. My thinking is that I'll need a more powerful drill for a lot of the routing and countersinking. My cordless drill can be used once the hole is drilled and countersunk with the Dewalt. That way I'm not having to change out bits all the time as well.

I drove down to Home Depot, unfortunately picking a day where two of the major roads were closed and there was some big event involving road closures and police escorts. I unfortunately didn't realize this until I was on my way back, my car full of lumber.

So all the pieces are in place, time to start building.

The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.

2007-09-07T18:36:00.001-06:00

So other than some 2x4's and 2x6's I have all the required supplies to start construction. Had a few hours before my shift today, so I used it to be productive and swing by the Rona to grab everything I could possibly need.

Everything I could possibly need turned out to be a few dollars. Hopefully some of the bits and tools that I purchased can be used for future endeavors.

I didn't have enough time today to update my costs spreadsheet or grab the remaining lumber I need for the internal framing. The spreadsheet will get updated this evening and I'll pick up the remaining lumber in the late afternoon tomorrow.

All that will remain is to fire up some power tools and get cutting.

All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved.

2007-09-03T21:54:00.000-06:00

Well I managed to accomplish some big things today, largely with the help of J. We managed to transport my non-existent black melamine (after much searching in the lumber bay).

We also stopped at Home Depot on the way back and grabbed some 5/8" black melamine for the control panel.

'Hey where do you guys have your melamine, I'm grabbing some black 5/8's stuff.'

'Ooohhh black, yah I don't think we have that.'

'I already called ahead, you do. What aisle is your stuff in?'

It's okay, I managed to find the non-existent black 5/8" melamine without his help. Why the resistance to black? They have cherry and walnut, but they think black is odd.

Riiight.

The fourth piece of good (I'm glad I got 4 instead of 3) is messed up on one side with the melamine. I'm sure I'll use that as the back piece to the cabinet and just face it inside.

Major assembly should start this coming Saturday assuming no unforeseen complications.

J is finalizing up the control panel layout, and getting some decent plans for 2x4 frame to support the monitor.

I'm still screwed on artwork, I haven't received positive responses from the limited amount of Rampart owners, and I may be forced to change the artwork theme for the cabinet.

Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.

2007-09-02T20:17:00.001-06:00

I realized that I probably designed the website for a scope of people who already know what I'm talking about.

For those of you not familiar with how Mame or other emulators work:
What happens is the original circuit board of whatever game you're trying to play, is converted from a physical 'ROM' chip to software. It's a faithful exact reproduction of the original information. Mame then uses this to reproduce the game exactly as if you were playing it in the arcade. My intent is to have a cabinet that will have the controls to play as many of those games as possible.

Some of the most influential games from my youth:

Centipede. I can remember being at Owl's Nest resort in BC every summer and coming out of the lake soaking wet. I'd run into the arcade and blow a few bucks on centipede. (Probably not the safest thing).

Ms Pacman was pretty awesome as well, but I lacked the appropriate skills and usually only made it to the 3rd or 4th screen.

Gauntlet was a game that captured my imagination. One of the first games I heard in the arcade talking, I spent months recreating mazes on paper, and many hundreds of dollars playing it. It was a great cooperative game as well.

Street Fighter 2 CE. What can I say, the game that caused me to blow insane amounts of cash polishing my upper cuts and hadoukens. I can remember catching the bus with J and Coon to ride across the city to the 7-11 which was the only place in the city at the time that had it. Kids were lined out of the arcade every day, all day.

Mortal Kombat 1/2. Finishing moves, blood, gore. It was fantastic.

Saturday Night Slam Masters. This game captured me in university, and it was one of the first games that I truly dominated on. I managed to win a tournament playing it, mostly because of the 360 degree skills I had mastered playing Zangief on Street Fighter. With the character Rasta, I would make short work of my opponents.

You must become more than just a man in the mind of your opponent.

2007-08-31T13:21:00.001-06:00

Wood. In Calgary, the city is filled with it, and surrounded by it. We likely have 50 different building supply stores in the city, with some of the largest and most explosive housing boom any city has seen for a long time.

Why is it then, that I cannot order Black melamine MDF? I've spent the better part of 4 hours on hold with Totem. I've driven down 3 times. I've even paid for the product in advance. With all that, they seem incapable of supplying me wood.

At this point I think it would be easier for me to take a chainsaw, drive out of the city 20 minutes, cut down my own tree, bring it back to the city and make my own wood.

I can order electronic components from England, and they arrive in 3 days. I can order a 110lb monitor from the US, ship it ground, and it arrives in 8 days. Two weeks working on order my wood, and it's still not even on order.

Wood.

The guy at Totem said he'd look into it and call me back.

He won't be calling back.

I guarantee it.

Update:

Apparently I went Hulk a little bit too soon. He did in fact call back. What he meant by 'It's not on order in the system', is that it's arrived and has been sitting on a shelf for 3 days.

...

Right.

At this point I'm half expecting to get there and find out it's the wrong wood, or the wood isn't actually there.

After this much work I'll be taking pictures of the wood from every possible angle. If only to prove to myself it actually exists.

You always want to invest in things people can't do without. Water and cemeteries... pretty safe bets.

2007-08-30T11:42:00.000-06:00

Late yesterday the remainder of my parts order came in. Essentially I have a room full of parts just waiting on the wood to assemble them.

Cost page has been updated to reflect the latest expenses.

Once again, the L.A.P.D. is asking Los Angelenos not to fire their guns at the visitor spacecraft. You may inadvertently trigger an interstellar war.

2007-08-29T13:10:00.002-06:00

Still waiting on the wood, no call from Totem yet. Purolator 'attempted' delivery today. I think they were 'attempting' to deliver a new UPS battery I had ordered. The 'attempt' consisted of driving into the parking lot, looking around for 25 seconds and then driving away.

In the time it took me to get from the upstairs to my front door they had driven off.

Awesome.

I've updated my spreadsheet to include costing for Canuckle who's doing the opposite of my project. Reasonable, restrained, normal budget. You can access it from the cost page in the second spreadsheet tab.

General, what you see on these screens up here is a fantasy; a computer enhanced hallucination. Those blips are not real missiles. They're phantoms.

2007-08-28T23:55:00.000-06:00

I'm looking forward to actually starting work on the cabinet and control panel. With any luck I should be getting a call from Totem this week, and will be able to be productive this weekend.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Not quite as messy as when my bathroom was being reno'd but certainly takes up a bit of real estate.

During the week I'll take some parts out and take some nice macro shots.

Well, somebody's gonna have to go out there. Take a portable terminal, go out there and patch in manually.

2007-08-28T23:31:00.000-06:00

Come bust a move where the games are played, it's chill, it's fresh, it's Noah's Arcade.

2007-08-28T12:52:00.000-06:00

What the hell are you doing? I had the magic key. I got the cross. I was closing in on the barbarian!

2007-08-27T17:00:00.000-06:00

I think if I had to pick the most difficult thing to date about this project, it would have to be the planning and organization.

I had initially hoped that I would be able to source the majority of what I needed locally, saving on part costs and shipping expenses.

Exactly the opposite was the case. I found that ordering internationally, with the Canadian dollar being as strong as it is, even with the added expense of shipping various duty charges was considerably less expensive. In some cases by a factor of 50%.

It could be that the local arcade suppliers simply don't want the hassle of a one off cash deal which will likely generate more headaches than the profit they're make. Coming from retail I totally understand that, but be up front about it. Don't pretend you're going to give me a quote when you have no intention. Don't blow me out of the water with your quoted costs if you just want me to fuck off. Just tell me you're not interested.

Andy from Ultimarc has been awesome. His customer service skills are legendary on the BYOAC forums and he's certainly proven that with my transactions.

Dave from Starbust has been incredibly patient with me as well. He fielded all of my questions and even pointed me in the right direction when I had made a poor choice on some parts.

Randy from Groovy released some new products just as I was in the finalizing stage of some of the cabinet parts.

One of the hardest things to source, unexpectedly, was the black melamine. You wouldn't think that black melamine would be a such a rare item since every book shelf and entertainment unit in my house is made from it. The responses from the various hardware stores went from:

'Ohh black, sorry we only carry white.'

'Ohhh black, yah that's a special order, did you try Home Depot or Rona?'

'Well I guess we can special order it, are you sure you want to?'

I've never met a group of businesses more dedicated to not wanting me to give them money. It took almost 2 weeks to source the melamine and it's going to be 2 weeks before it actually arrives.

With any luck I'll have my cost page up soon, as well as some photos of my house full of parts.

Well, you may have thought it was a game, but it was also a test. Aha, a test!

2007-08-25T23:57:00.001-06:00

Current status

Artwork: In progress.

Cabinet: Still need to install panel clamps and front kick plate. Waiting on artwork to install marquee holder.
Cabinet parts: Completed.

Control Panel: Playable. Waiting on artwork to install control panel T-molding.

Wiring: Completed.

Can you tell me the name of the person who broke the record on that game over there, and where I might find him?

2007-08-24T17:22:00.001-06:00

This project was born out of having MAME installed on my home theatre PC downstairs. I originally started out by running it with a GameEX front end with two wireless game pads.

Game pads, unfortunately, do not lend themselves well to the majority of classic arcade games. Also, having spent a small fortune in my youth on arcade games, I had also wanted to reproduce the classic feel of all my favorite games.

From there I found the Project Arcade book on Amazon, as well as the BYOAC forums. Several weeks of intense research and discussion with my good friend J and I managed to finalize an order for parts and start the project.

I had originally intended it as a 4 player, 7 button each, 2 trackball and 1 spinner design. J reminded me of the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars we had spent on Rampart. The design was modified to be:
4 player
7 buttons for player 1 and 2 4 buttons for player 3 and 4
3 trackballs
2 spinners.

A significant amount of controls, to be sure. However it maximized the number of classic games I would be able to play. J has been the sole reason for the success of the control panel design with his AutoCAD skills. '

This blog will keep track of the project as it progresses as well as showing the costs, steps and learning curve along the way.