My First Mame Bartop "cabinet" Complete, Finally


D

DaveC

Internal Development
Joined
Mar 4, 2004
Messages
9,208
I wanted a MAME cabinet with real controls especially for Centipede and Tempest. Fullsized ones are great but take up more space than I wanted for something I would only use once in a while. Bartops are cool too but are not convienient to store when not in use and are cumbersome to take to a friends place. So my "barhop bartop" was born. It is built into a tough equipment case and stores away nice and is easy to take to parties, friends, etc. It has the normal stick, trackball, and spinner. The buttons on the right can also be used for directions in a pinch (Robotron, etc.) The CP is made from Corian so it is tough and won't wear easily.

Oh yeah, when you see only a red "X" that is because of bandwidth, try again later ;)

arcade.jpg
 
Amazing job - nice one!

More details though please .. what's inside the box & did you design/make the screen surround? Looks very cool btw. You should hook up a car battery to make it the ultimate UMPC :D

Any step by step instructions for those interested in replicating something similar?
 
sataniC Virus said:
Amazing job - nice one!

More details though please .. what's inside the box & did you design/make the screen surround? Looks very cool btw. You should hook up a car battery to make it the ultimate UMPC :D

Any step by step instructions for those interested in replicating something similar?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I made the bezel. There is a used centrino HP laptop with a radeon GFX card in the box. I disconnected the hinge and flipped it back on itself. I found the comp needs a real GFX card and not one of those intel media extension chips, the performance is rubbish with those. It is good enough to run most stuff fullspeed.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Great job, Dave! I was a little surprised to see that you were using an LCD monitor (given the pixel interpolation issue), but there's really nothing else you could have used without sacrificing portability. I can't completely make out the details, but what I can see looks well-crafted. Awesome work. :D
 
Nice one! Looks amazing. I like how you set up the controls a lot aswell. Really professionally done. Also how you embedded those three little buttons at the top of the control panel (I assume that is the power, sleep etc buttons?).
 
saehn said:
Great job, Dave! I was a little surprised to see that you were using an LCD monitor (given the pixel interpolation issue), but there's really nothing else you could have used without sacrificing portability. I can't completely make out the details, but what I can see looks well-crafted. Awesome work. :D
Click to expand...
Yeah a CRT would be a bit better but portability would be an issue as you say. I did shut off the filter though as bi-linear just ruins the contrast as well as sharpness. Too bad there isn't a better filter algorythm used in MAME.

I used the I-PAC for controls, that seems to work pretty well.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Certainly an interesting design. Personally I wouldn't want it, it looks quite ugly and the controls are a bit strange. If you make another, I'd paint it a solid colour (maybe with a painting on it) rather than the speckle effect, and have the buttons at a slight angle rather than in a box shape parallel to the edge. Finally, if you look at a real machine, you can see the base of the joystick - they aren't meant to be set really far into the panel - I'd move yours up a bit so that the flat bit on the joystick is only is little below the top of the panel.
 
Orkie said:
Certainly an interesting design. Personally I wouldn't want it, it looks quite ugly and the controls are a bit strange. If you make another, I'd paint it a solid colour (maybe with a painting on it) rather than the speckle effect, and have the buttons at a slight angle rather than in a box shape parallel to the edge. Finally, if you look at a real machine, you can see the base of the joystick - they aren't meant to be set really far into the panel - I'd move yours up a bit so that the flat bit on the joystick is only is little below the top of the panel.
Click to expand...
Paint? No, that would wear and get pretty scruffy after use. The speckle effect is due to the material, it is made that way all of the way through. Corian has a nice feel to it, much nicer than paint or plexiglass. The Corian does look better in the flesh than in pictures. Ugly? well maybe but compromises were made to make portable and it does look better in person. I could have angled the buttons although alot of other panels I have seen are parallel too, oh well.

The stick is a Pac-man stick that was modded to work 8-way. They are made to be low profile. It really isn't set into the panel that far, maybe 5 mm or so. It does look like it is set in far from the pictures though, kind of deceptive. Not much that can be changed there except to use a different stick. This one handles good though and that is what is important.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Really innovative. I'd like to see you get that on an airplane. Reminds me of that age old Toshiba commerical, "I CHECKED MY NOTEBOOK! STOP THE PLANE! I CHECKED MY NOTEBOOK!" :lol:
 
I like the touch of having a quarter ($0.25USD) glued to the "add credit" button. Clever. :)

My setup uses eight black buttons per player, one green button for add credit, one red button for escape, and one each of one-player and two-player start buttons.

Edit: Did you do something cool and use a quarter from the eighties, or the year of your birth or something like that? ;) Neat-o torpedo, man. :D
 
slaanesh said:
Great Success!

Do you carry it around much?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I bring to a friend's house, get drunk, and then attempt to play MsPac-man, Centipede, Asteroids etc :p

It is also nice for storage. I just close it up and stash in a closet. The inside never gets dusty like that.

saehn said:
I like the touch of having a quarter ($0.25USD) glued to the "add credit" button. Clever. :)

My setup uses eight black buttons per player, one green button for add credit, one red button for escape, and one each of one-player and two-player start buttons.

Edit: Did you do something cool and use a quarter from the eighties, or the year of your birth or something like that? ;) Neat-o torpedo, man. :D
Click to expand...
I mostly play the classics that alternate players. I thought of a 2-player setup but probably not too practical on a bar-top. No one I know is a huge fighting game fan so i don't miss the 2 player controls.

Those small recessed buttons on top are for escape (red), pause, and I haven't assigned the other yet.

Yeah, I used a quarter from the eighties. It kind of looks like how players would put up a quarter to reserve their turn too. It is pretty intuitive, no imagination needed to figure out which button adds credits :p
 
Last edited by a moderator:
That is by far the coolest cabinet i've seen in a long long time!!!!! what a great idea / concept. You should post something on youtube or http://arcadecontrols.com/

Here's my fun to play but not as portable mame cabinet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DU9S1lX9A
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Fat Agnus said:
That is by far the coolest cabinet i've seen in a long long time!!!!! what a great idea / concept. You should post something on youtube or http://arcadecontrols.com/

Here's my fun to play but not as portable mame cabinet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DU9S1lX9A


That is a nice cab. Was that home built completely? Also is that front-end MAMEWAH? I tried that but it stopped recognizing ROMS after I added some so I switched to Mala which seems pretty easy to set up. I think MAMEwah is supposed to be better but is a pain to configure.

How do you put pics on Arcadecontrols,com without registering? I would do it but I couldn't see where to submit pictures. Some may like it others like Orkie would laugh, but at least it is something "different" that hasn't been done yet ;)

I also wanted to send it to that site where the guy bashes and makes fun of MAME cabs. I bet he would have fun with mine :p
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Nice cabinet...its making me think about gluing big-ass buttons onto my laptop (since its already scuffed up anyway) :)
 
DaveC said:
Fat Agnus said:
That is by far the coolest cabinet i've seen in a long long time!!!!! what a great idea / concept. You should post something on youtube or http://arcadecontrols.com/

Here's my fun to play but not as portable mame cabinet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DU9S1lX9A



That is a nice cab. Was that home built completely? Also is that front-end MAMEWAH? I tried that but it stopped recognizing ROMS after I added some so I switched to Mala which seems pretty easy to set up. I think MAMEwah is supposed to be better but is a pain to configure.

How do you put pics on Arcadecontrols,com without registering? I would do it but I couldn't see where to submit pictures. Some may like it others like Orkie would laugh, but at least it is something "different" that hasn't been done yet ;)

I also wanted to send it to that site where the guy bashes and makes fun of MAME cabs. I bet he would have fun with mine :p


Thanks. I'm ashamed but the cab was purchased from someone who purchased and modified one from slik stik. The only thing I've done is setup the front end and replaced the Wells Gardner D9200 monitor with a D9400 since the blue gun was dead on the D9200. Heavy and expensive mofo.

Yes, I'm using MALA. I think it's v1.07 or 1.0 rc7. something like that. The reason it looks like mamewah was I used MALA's mamewah template conversion utility to convert some of the default mamewah ones and tweaked back in MALA. Yes, mamewah is supposed to be better and more stable. I have a few tech issues in the current build that annoys me but not enough for me to go to mamewah. Have you checked out that maximus front end? Lots of nice prebuilt templates but cost $.

I don't know how to post on arcadecontrols.com without registering. I don't know if there's a standard form for submitting projects. But I just know that this will be one of the most unique and coolest mame cab projects they'll have in their database. About the only one that comes close to yours is one someone embedded into dry wall. Some guy took out the sheet rock, built in a CRT and control panel and sealed it back up.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

T
Upgrading A Mame Cabinet
Replies
3
Views
965
Fishbong
Fishbong
Fzero
I'm building a bartop - Please help!
Replies
7
Views
8K
Fzero
Fzero
R
Hotrod PC arcade controller (for MAME) - $100
Replies
2
Views
4K
jot2b
J
Q
My Fetish Dos-mame Hybryd Cabinet
2
Replies
23
Views
4K
Iorgy77
Iorgy77
J
Anyone Tried Building A Mame Cabinet Yet ?
2
Replies
20
Views
3K
joyrider
J
Back
Top