Sunday night and I decided I can't stand to look at the coind door protrusion anymore.

I covered my exposed MOBO and lcd and started cutting and replacing.

A couple trips to Home Depot later and I have about half of the work done I need for the new front panel.


Not a great photo, but take a look. Once I mount the control panel, it'll look classic. Also, I salvaged the coind door, and since I saw it working before, there's hope that I can actually use mount it back in.

I need to fill a lot of holes and scratches next weekend, and decide what to use for paint, but... I should be good.

Also, once I add the T-Moulding, it'll be DAMNED fine looking PLAIN OLD CABINET.

I wash I could save my game right now in case I screw it up.

Picked up the used cabinet and was slightly disappointed. I looked it up, and it is a Defender cabinet. Someone painted over the defender side art, and the controls look horrific!

No worries, as I need to replace them and customize them anyway, but it was just dirty, smelly, and I hate the shape. Since I forgot to take a photo, here's what the Defender Cabinet looks like.

Notice the odd protrusion in the front, and the high mounted coin door? Looks like a gimpy cab.

With the new cabinet as motivation, I decided to sleep on any changes. To make progress, I measured the width of the cabinet and cut some 3/4" plywood to the right size for the motherboard.

Then I mounted the old MoBo tray onto the plywood (the case was a BTX style and the cpu fan really wanted to be attached to the tray, so I cut away the parts I don't need and moounted it to the plywood.

It actually worked out as a decent tray mount, and once connected, I installed the HD, CPU, RAM, etc...

Note that I did not install a cdrom drive. I plan to usb one only if i need it, or possibly add a DVD/BlueRay later, but I doubt I'll do anything like that to this cabinet. I'll save that for my 2nd Generation Sit-down driving Xbox media center flight simulator with the Kung-Foo grips.

Oh yeah... I'm lookin ahead.

Restored the Ultracade OS and MAME partitions to the new drive and rebooted.

After some minor hardware driver updates, and the video card updates, I now can play arcade games on my plywood mounted arcade game. Whoo hoo! and Lame... all at the same time.

Finally, as a treat, I added the wireless network card, and surfed the web a little bit just to feel like I belong.

Innards

Setup the insides, and tested it with my linux rescue USB stick.

Works great.

So many pieces arrived.
Also, I found someone fairly close by selling some cabinets. $50 for a “Street Fighter like" cabinet.

Turns out the cabinet is a total SF rip-off game.The Seller tells me they were forced to kill the game due to copyright infringement. He wanted to keep the board (working) but leave me the cabinet, monitor, etc.

No problem here.

Also, Jim’s comment was, “monitor works pretty well, too.” I disagreed, said it was washed out and faded, but he assured me that after washing off the dust and tobacco, I’d be surprised.

Don’t care, as I HAVE a 19 inch monitor to use in it, and if it works, I’ll keep it for a future project. We negotiated the price long before I thought there was even a monitor at all.

BTW – Jim’s basement was an arcade cabinet and pinball heaven, and I suspect I will be contacting him more in the future.

For now, cabinet number one will likely not be as big as I’d hoped, but I think for the 19 inch monitor, it’s going to be very nice. The cabinets, after cleaning, should be pretty damned good.

Unfortunately, I never took a photo of it before I cleaned it up! Damn it.

Starting the journal

Started the journal on March 14th, 2009. Already ordered a bunch of items.

Planning to make the cabinet by hand, but haven’t bought the MDF for the cabinet yet – Going to make the control panel first. I assume I’ll have to make it twice, so $7 worth of MDF isn’t a bad investment.

Design

Number one, I need to design my controller layout. That is easy and this is what I came up with:


Note: I will install light guns in a future add-on, so I need to at least allow for that. Fortunately, those controls are USB and can be mounted on the kick plate.

Considering flexibility, presentation, and space requirements, I consulted this great site:

http://www.klov.com/

I settled on the Mortal Combat style cabinet, as the control panel was already larger then average, the monitor angle appeared perfect for a CRT monitor (which I plan on using for the screen), and the cabinet has a classic look to it.

Click on the plans to get more details

I really wanted to start off simple, possibly restoring a broken cabinet, so I put feelers out on ebay and craigs list to buy or get one, and also visited local arcades.

It dawned on me that I’d need to break the cabinet down easily when moving it, and space is a factor so I decided to build my own regardless, but kept looking for a used cabinet.

I definitely wanted a custom one for myself with the following ideals in mind:

1. Easy to dismantle
2. Professional look and feel

And so the project started.

A New Beginning…

After proving I could complete the hardware and software installation, it was time to address my shortcomings… I started the plans for my own cabinet.

I made the decision to break the completed project into phases, with an immediate goal of getting a base cabinet running and see if I could complete it to professional quality.
Phases:

1. Cabinet Construction
2. Hardware Installation
3. Software Installation
4. Graphics and Themes

Resurrection

3 days later, the cabinet was resurrected, now with fresh new innards, power supply, and all the fixins. Total cost, about $250 – and I went over the top on hardware. For the price of a new video card, this puppy can compete with any gaming rig out there, if need be.

Doomsday

In March of 2009 while visiting the shack, just before going home I booted the Ultracade to find the motherboard blown. Since Ultracade is now out of business, I looked up some alternative approaches to replacing the MOBO.

Then, the idea. I asked the owner how aggressive he’d like me to get in getting the cabinet working again.

I got all green lights, and proceeded to gut the machine, and took home the controller and motherboard.

Initial Concept

I always had this dream of buying my own arcade cabinet. I was a child of the 80’s and further, lived for a few years within walking distance of 4 huge arcades. Needless to say, I was addicted at an early age.

A few years ago, while visiting a friend’s ski-shack I found that he’d purchased an Ultracade Arcade system. I was disappointed in the selection of games, but it sparked an idea that has now taken off.

In researching emulators, I found MAME and some decent front-ends for emulation and decided to implement my own MAME PC.