What are ya thinking about for the games you will emulate?

PacBot wrote:What are ya thinking about for the games you will emulate?

I will have "only" MAME, SNES, NES, Genesis and Future Pinball on this cab. Those are the consoles I care the most about. I'd have some classic Amiga games on there as well, but Amiga games are kinda hard to integrate into Maximus Arcade, plus many of them require keystrokes etc. which will only cause confusion.

Day 3 - Monitor mounting and control panel assembly

Sorry for the slow updates, but I've been sick all New Year's weekend, so I haven't had the time to party or work on the arcade.

I was actually going to use second-hand hardware, but I figured I could might as well buy everything new (since everything else on the cabinet is new).

The hardware specs are as follows:

- Intel Core 2 Duo E7600 @3.06GHz w. a Scythe Kabuto fan for maximum noise reduction (I might overclock this one a little)
- Some Kingston DDR2 valueRAM I don't remember the specs on
- Mist 500W ATX PSU
- Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM SATA 320GB HDD
- ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0 S-775 (S775 mb with AGP and PCI-Ex sockets)
- Ultimarc ArcadeVGA2 (AGP, they didn't have PCI-Ex in stock, hence the dual-motherboard)





The ArcadeVGA2. Too bad I had to get the AGP version (the PCI-Ex version were out of stock and I wasn't patient enough to wait)



As you can see, it's got regular VGA and DVI inputs.



I mounted the PC inside the arcade cabinet using bolts and wooden screws. Very secure.



Every arcade cabinet needs a powerstrip and this powerstrip was something I accidentally stumbled upon while shopping for some other stuff a few days ago. It is not an ordinary powerstrip and it's perfect for arcade cabinets. Why? - I'll tell you all a little later.



Top and bottom parts of the cabinet mounted. Had to get a little help from my dad on this one, heavy stuff!



Marquee light mounted. Fits nicely.



.. And here's a close-up to show that it is not interfering with the speakers in any way. Plenty of room.



Dad's working on a way to mount the huge 27" Wells Gardner.



It wasn't easy to mount the monitor to be honest. It's damn heavy and there's not much space on the sides for fingers/hands when trying to slide it inside the cabinet.



This might not be the most pretty looking way to mount a monitor, but I can ensure you that it's rock solid.



Securing the top frame of the monitor (I have added more screws and bolts after this picture was taken).



We had to build up the bottom part a little. Again, this doesn't look too pretty, but it is very secure.



Then it was time to start working on the control panel.



Attaching the artwork was painless and luckily, every hole turned out where they were supposed to be.



Plexi mounted and secured with a few buttons.



The last thing I had time to do that day was mounting the marquee. It's really starting to look like an arcade cabinet now and I can't wait until it's done! ;D

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So, that's all for now. Another update will follow shortly. Thanks for watching!

Day 4 - Wiring the control panel

So here goes another update. I am now finished building and wiring the control panel and I'm starting to see that the end of this project is not too distant.



I just had to power on the D9800 to make sure it worked. There is a weak blue shadow in the upper right corner (very visible on the picture) but I'm sure a degauss and a little OSD tweaking will take care of that, or what? :-\



I like circular restrictor plates on my 8-ways, therefore; off with the square ones.



The iPac4, strategically mounted in the middle of the control panel on four plastic feet.



All buttons, joysticks, spinner and trackball attached, ready to be wired.



.. and a few hours later the wiring is done! I know this is not the tidiest wiring out there, but it'll do.



.. and it got a little messier after all the switches were grounded. Still, not so messy that I can't live with it.



I attached hinges to the front of the control panel so I can have easy access to the wiring. Now I can just flip open the lid if I need to check anything.



So there it is, the finished control panel! The spinner knob was missing from the Ultimarc shipment but Andy told me he'd ship it right over, so hopefully I have it in a few days. I'm quite happy with the result on this one. Feedback appreciated!



So it finally starts to look like an arcade cabinet. What's next is to clean up the wires inside the cabinet, attach speaker grills and take care of some minor cosmetic changes.

What I'm not looking forward to is to haul the cabinet from my dad's garage to my apartment in the city, but hopefully it'll survive the trip. ::)

Stay tuned for the next update and thanks again for reading and commenting!

Day 5 - Transportation and configuring

Time for another update folks! I am 97% done with the cabinet now, only a few minor touches until the project is completed.



Speaker grills mounted. Looks a lot better than only having the drilled speaker holes.



Back panels mounted. I have attached the D9800's OSD-panel in the bottom part of the cabinet, so it isn't necessary to make the upper (monitor) part of the cabinet easily accessible.



I mounted hinges on the lower panel, so I can have easy access to the hardware. I have also drilled holes for the PC's power button and the electrical plug.



So, I was done working in my dad's garage and it was time to haul this beast home to my apartment! We managed to squeeze it into a Peugot Expert and we were 4 people in total, lifting it up two stories and into my apartment. Hell, it was hard! The cabinet weighs in at approximately 270 pounds (without the control panel).



I wired the PC's power switch to an arcade button..



From left to right: Power cable, PC power (to start the system), AC power (to turn on the monitor and marquee). A smart powerstrip is hard to get in Norway so I had to do it like this. The rightmost power button is wireless, which is pretty cool, so I could've attached it anywhere, but I decided to attach it on the lower back of the cabinet. Works great.



Time to start installing and configuring the system. First off was an nLite'd version of Windows XP Pro SP3. It boots in less than 10 seconds, which is great for an arcade cabinet.



Programming the iPac is as easy as ever. WinIPAC is truly a great application.



Every arcade cabinet needs an internet connection, right? I'm using a D-Link wireless-N USB dongle. Rock stable, wireless internet/network connection!



Copying over emulators ... sigh ..



.. and approximately 150 gigs of roms ..



.. then finally it was time to test the monitor. I've configured all MAME games using AVRes and ... IT LOOKS SO AMAZING! Seriously, you can't tell it's emulated. I'm so glad I went for the WG D9800 instead of a TV or PC monitor. It's definitely worth the extra cost!

Thanks to BYOAC user Epyx for his great AVGA2 video tutorial/review!



So that's it for this update. I am still working on configuring stuff and fixing bugs, but I assume I will be finished in a day or two.

The next update will most likely be the final one, where I will try to take some decent shots of the final cabinet and some video footage as well.

So, thanks again for reading and check back soon for the next update!

Mounting the plexi/bezel

Hey guys. A quick update here as I just finished mounting the plexi/bezel and it looks pretty good imho.

What I did last time was painting the bezel directly on the plexi myself, which worked okay, but this time I wanted it to look even better.



So, first I carefully measured exactly where I wanted the bezel to be ..



Then I took the plexi to a shop nearby who normally do car styling/deco and got them to laminate the bezel directly on the plexi with black foil. It was a little bit more expensive than painting with acryl paint, but it looks perfect, I promise. (The pic was taken before I cleaned the plexi, so it looks a little greasy).



Plexi attached and it fits the monitor perfectly. It's hard to see in this pic but I promise to take some better shots of the entire cabinet when it's 100% done (is it ever really 100% done?).



Another shot of the cabinet. The D9800 keeps impressing me.

So, there's not much work left to do now. I have some tweaking left and I'm still thinking of replacing the AVGA2 AGP with an AVGA2 PCI-Ex, as the AGP-version doesn't seem to run Future Pinball very good (and I love FP, so I need it to run flawlessly).

See you in the next update!

Just finished the intro video for Maximus Arcade!

I made the chiptune in SkaleTracker and the intro with OSDM (I don't have a lot of coding skills I'm afraid).

I love old cracktros and scene intros, so I wanted to make an intro vid that resembles an old Amiga cracktro.

Heya guys. Just a small update.

I just got the side art from mamemarquees.com and the print looks a w e s o m e !

Applied the right side and I had to take a quick photo to show it off:



I will upload some nicer pictures later when I'm done applying both sides of the side art + the plexi art. Stay tuned!

B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L

Congrats, this is truly one of the greatest Arcade Cabinets I have ever seen.

-=PacBot=-

This cabinet is now 100% finished. Please check the first post in this thread for pictures and video!