[CABINET] Cocktail Arcade Classics is evolving :D

[helpman]

Hi there!

It looks like a long time since I was playing games with mame with this setup...

But then my old gaming experience evolved and it became the Cocktail Arcade Classics!

I found the cabinet (just the cabinet) on a classified ad, then build my Arcade Classics from scratch. Even made a new control panel for it.

It had everything! The graphics, the sound, the controllers, even the coin slot was working!

It's core is a PIV 3.0ghz, 4gb ram with ati x1300 video card. It features a 1tb hard drive with mame, nes, snes, n64, master system, genesis, psx, vpinball and futurepinball, all running, of course, through gameex.

But it wasn't perfect.

I grew up with upright cabinets. Cocktail cabinets were rather... rare. Only used for soccer games, and not many.

But a couple days ago, I was lucky to find a great cabinet. Used cabinet. Half cabinet. Well, something I could fix at least ok, it was CHEAP

It's a generic cabinet from a spanish company called Covielsa. The arcade cabinet name? Greengold!

This is how it should look:

This is where they had it:

and finally at home! It was a huge effort to get it to the second floor where I live... as we have no lift. And it's heavy. and I mean HEAVY.

It's way bigger than my cocktail isn't it?

As I have no other computer, I'll get the computer inside the cocktail cabinet and place it on the new one

[helpman]

More pictures of it as it arrived:

It had jamma wiring, which is useless for my setup, so I removed all wiring.
There was a small 90W power supply inside. As I'll be using my computer's own power supply I don't need it either.

The marquee was broken. Fortunately, this model has a double marquee, and the inner one was ok. I would need to build something to hold it in place though.

There's no frame around the screen. Nor screen either, but I got a 22 inches photoplay touch arcade screen. Originally, this cabinet featured a 28 inches screen.

There's no glass, no marquee, the joysticks were rusty and useless and the buttons... although originals, they only have the button faces. No light bulb holder, no switchs... useless.

Time to clean it a bit

While cleaning it, some old coins appeared. Both are 25 pesetas coins. We used them back in the 80s-90s. The bigger ones are possibly of early 80s...

The screen was too bright, and a friend of me told me about possible humidity problem on the high voltage suction cup, so I cleaned it and adjusted the screen...

Looks great but as it's too small for the frame inside the machine, time to create a frame so it could fit...

Here's the frame

Now the marquee. It's like starting the house building the roof, but as I had no marquee on my cocktail table, I knew I had to do it first.

A cheap fluorescent tube, two car speakers and a couple stair's edge covers, and...

SOOOO BEAUTIFUL!

With the ligh on it's even better...

My work so far...

Now it's time to place the computer, fix all wiring, design where it all will be and connect everything.

I still need to buy some chair screws to hold the joysticks in place (hint: I kept the joysticks from my first arcade controller just in case ;D ) and wait for the replacement buttons to arrive...

More pictures soon!

[helpman]

Fresh picture for today!

I had to rewire some parts as my cats found a way to go inside the cabinet and thought it was a great place to play. or whatever they decided to do inside.

Anyway, I added everything inside. Sound's working fine, tested my computer screen to make sure it runs at 640x480 as it's the max resolution of the arcade screen I'll use later, and wired the coin slot.

Now I just need to wait for the buttons to arrive to wire them all and it'll be working. Then I need the frame around the screen, the glass, and...

It has no pinball buttons. As I made the cocktail have all that many buttons, finally I thought I wasn't playing pinballs, so no need to make new holes for that.

There's also just 1 service button on the middle of the control panel. I think I'll use it as switch with xpadder to run other commands with it.

Screenshots, mame menu, global exit...

[tthurman]

Man, that is going to be sweet when it is finished! I really like that style of cabinet.

Thanks for posting the pics, keep them coming.

[helpman]

Fresh picture!

Yesterday I built the frame around the screen. I had a bigger one that didn't fit and was made for a 28 inches screen. As mine is 22 inches, it was useless.... but it was great as skeleton for my own frame, as it would hold it in place.

I bought a pair of black cardboard pieces, used one for the bordes and the other one for the empty spaces around the screen.

Glued them to the frame I had, then reinforced them adding duct tape on the back.

Today I was able to get the chair screws I needed, and my old joysticks are now on their place.

I couldn't resist to add some spare buttons I had lying around just to see how it would look

About locks and fans. I need to replace all 5 locks, but here only found security locks, only 19mm long (and I need 4 of them, and one 28mm long) and they cost 27 euros EACH ($36,70) so... NO WAY!

I found some on ebay, and I can get all 5 for the price of 1 here. Ok, they're not "high security locks", but it's for my own home!

I also found a nice 220v 12cm industrial fan in ebay for 9.90 euros ($13,45). Both locks and fan will come from china, so it'll take a while for them to arrive (about 1 month usually). Anyway, I'm really happy

[GimmeClassics]

This is going to be such a cool cabinet

I'd love to see how this evolves into a kick ass arcade dream

Thanks for posting the pics helpman !!

[helpman]

I's always a pleasure to share my efforts with people that appreciate them

[helpman]

Update: The new buttons arrived!

And if they look great on that picture, when the cabinet is turned on...

This was a couple days ago... today I bought the dark glass for the front bezel...

To do list:

Replace the noisy back fan. (that gets warm so just in case, I unplugged it).

Add both control panel locks, back panel lock, coin slot lock and coin box lock.

Paint the coin slot door.

On the distant future (as I have no money to do it now), finish the recreation of the original bezel, print and apply it to the front glass.

[tthurman]

Coming together fast.

Looking good!

[stigzler]

Loving those ashtrays....

The tinted bezel glass works a treat Lookin great

[tthurman]

Yeah, this is the third cab in recent memory that had the trays on it. I suppose it helped, there are no readily apparent cig casualties, which is more than I can say for the control panel I bought off ebay.

It looks like those speakers really worked out well for you. That's one facet of mine that is causing me a lot of headaches.

[helpman]

The speakers are cheap car speakers, yet they sound way better than my computer ones

On most spanish cabinets there were ashtrays, although I never saw any being used with cigarrettes.

[helpman]

Update: while I'm waiting for the remaining pieces to arrive, it was time for a software update.

The theme I created for my cocktail arcade classics at 1024x768 wasn't looking good enought for my greengold at 640x400...

So I resized the theme to 640x400, deleted the scanlines I added as overlay on the video previews, recolored the frames so they look golden, changed the arcade classics logo for greengold, replaced background to show green and blue tints and replaced the font to be more readable...

[stigzler]

Very nice - ties in well..

[helpman]

So I was checking at random in ebay, looking for interesting gadgets...

And I must say the light on the marquee sometimes fails, and I need to switch it off and on again until it works. It's a cheap one, so I guess the...hmmmm don't know the english name. The "cebador" (the piece that shots a high current charge to light the gas) must be of poor quality...

And what did I find on ebay?

^^^^^^^^^^ THAT!

Really cheap, and I think it'll look awesome replacing my marquee light

As with the locks and fan that comes from china, it'll take 3-4 weeks to arrive, but... can you imagine that? I do! and it's great

[stigzler]

nice find! be interested to see how it looks behind defused marquee plexi

[Adultery]

That thing is called a ballast by the way.

[tthurman]

Interesting, can't wait to see that in action!

I've been looking for something similiar to that, something I could put at the edge of a 1/4 thick piece of plexi, so the light would radiate through the entire sheet.

[rtkiii]

Geesh that 2nd arcade you odd is just so odd shaped - I dig the last one. Nice build!

[Censored]

Nice work - looks really great!

[helpman]

which piece is a ballast on this machine? the "cebador" that lights up the fluorescent tube? I'll remember that *the more your know* hehe...

about the odd shape, should you refer to my cocktail arcade? yeah, and even cocktails were not very common in spain, so I'm proud of this little one

anyway, I tried the led strip on my cabinet...

I made a video and uploaded to my facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204023462931784&set=vb.1379973022&type=3&theater

The outcome is not what I expected... as the leds "as they are" light up all the marquee so it looks like it's flickering and it's time to change the fluorescent tube...

I had some time to try a different approach, and made a light spacer using just black cardboard.

As there're LOTS of leds there (1 each 1,1-1,2cm) I just placed 1 spacer every 2 leds. Not that I'm lazy, I just ran out of cardboard

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204198032455913&set=vb.1379973022&type=3&theater

Now the marquee lights as it's expected to... although some spacers were bent somehow and some of them (like the center one) looks a bit warped...

Anyway, it's way better than without spacers and for less than 1 euro it was fast and cheap

[Draco1962]

Very cool idea!

[helpman]

Just a quick video I made for my facebook group. You can see how Greengold looks now, with gameex theme (on the video it shows the highscore competition menu), how the marquee light looks, and the loading of a game (blazing star).

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204252735943466

(I'm speaking in spanish, but just talking about how it looks, saying that I use gameex, and inviting my friends to come in and try my arcade )

[stigzler]

Like that idea of the pulsing marquee lights. Good job!

[helpman]

This is a video I recorded BEFORE adjusting ledblinky. I finally disabled gameex' own led plugin as it wasn't loading my ledblinky's custom LWAX animations, and now I'm using CPWizard and Ledblinky. On my cabinet I'm using xpadder too, for button combos to exit games (I know I can do it with gameex, but xpadder is useful to set timer delays for those buttons... I don't want to exit any game randomly pressing buttons during intense gameplay ;D) and it also becomes useful to set the credits for each coin on my coin selector ;D

For screenshots, I have bandicam installed saving the pictures to my google drive folder, so it's always ready and synced on all my computers

I used to have fraps, but I like the clicking sound on bandicam to be sure the screenshot was saved ok

For remote control of the computer, I also have teamviewer unattended remote client installed.