/diy/ - Do It Yourself

sup op!

I've been researching this a bit. Here's the link I found useful.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/how_build_kickass_mame_arcade_cabinet_old_pc?page=0,1

>>347554
Awesome, thanks

Do you plan on making one as well or was it just research for the sake of research?

>>347555


I'd like to make one as a project for my local music club. So far I've got the CRT screen and an old PC that can run mame. I need the joysticks and a coin acceptor which i plan to get via ebay.

>>347546

Can't believe this topic arose! I'm actually doing the same thing, well nearly. I bought the materials for framing this summer but never got around to it. I have an old tube television to put inside it permanently. However to run the arcade games I was just going to use an old NES.

You've got me thinkign about PC though, clear advantage: every single game ever made for every console. With the physicl NES I am limited to my current game collection. Big bonus though, I already own 2 laser guns as well as 2 arcade designed joysticks and buttons to be installed.

I got this for mine, it has everything you need for your own custom button setup and its not difficult to figure it out. Just cut the holes with a spade bit, fit the buttons, wire em up to the ipac and plug it in the USB port. Sorted.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370508411372

>>347595

MAME does not allow itself to be used for commercial purposes. IE, ditch the coin mechanism. Will the FBI bust down your door? No, but if you mention you plan on doing that on another forum, like the BYOAC forums or something, they will rip your nuts off about it. Oh and its illegal to play ROMs you down own, but no one gives a shit about that. Just keep it on the down low.

>>347597
What guns do you have anyway?
The ones I was thinking of getting are pricey, but they seem perfect for an emulation setup because they emulate a mouse instead of the old way of flashing the screen white and I want to get it going as smoothly as possible

>>347628
WTF? I would fucking have a coin collector mech and everything purely as a fucking cool way of saving/sorting/counting all my fucking loose change. It's already a fucking drag cracking open the piggy bank and sorting it all out into little bags and weighing in at the bank every six months.

Also, it adds to the Nostalgia.

Fuck those self righteous BYOAC twats.

Besides if it's all donations from club members then it all goes into the club coffers anyway so what's the problem?

>>what's the problem?

Its against the MAME license to profit off of their work without even asking them first?
Its illegal to have ROMs you don't own?
Its kind of a dick move to charge people to play games that you paid nothing for?

>>347716
Legality in my opinion is moot, morality is something more relative for me (Not the guy doing the club machine)

And he isn't actually profiting off of it, it's a donation box for a club. Although I do see your point, maybe if you just hook it up so that it accepts, but you don't need to pay to play could be a workaround for this?

also, he may not have paid for the games, but do you know how much it costs in materials?

>>347729
Like I said, I would have one as a glorified coin sorting machine for my own use.

Again, the odd friend / club member who donates will probably not generate any profit compared to the build and running costs of the machine and club environment it is housed in.

They make arcade style joysticks with buttons, gut one.

Alternatively, gut a keyboard, set key bindings for you games based on a few chosen keys, and rig the buttons through those key's input wiring.

Get an ipac to use with the buttons. It emulates a key board. Using them in an arcade and a jukebox I'm building.

I have a coin mech in the cab I built. It takes brass tokens.

Nobody pays for them, they're just in a bucket next to cab. I want to feel that token and hear the plunk when it drops.

>>347729
>just hook it up so that it accepts, but you don't need to pay to play

I've considered doing this but never bothered since I can just dump the coin box back into the bucket.

I can tell you from looking though that the plunger on the coin reject mechanism in a Happ coin door extends just far enough to press a standard microswitch if you glue it to the back of the housing. You can just splice that to the coin drop mechanism and it'll register a credit either way.

>>347753

Mapping a keyboard controller is a pain in the ass and you need to add diodes if you don't want button ghosting.

If really you want to cheap out you may have an easier time gutting old USB gamepads.

>>347787

The KeyWiz controllers are a decent and less expensive alternative to the iPac, provided you either don't need to remap the keys or don't mind waiting a few more seconds during each boot to reload a custom keymap, since they reset to factory default on power off.

If you really want to make custom controllers, get a Teensy and look some info on USB HID (human interface device), like the guys at NYC Resistor did.

>>347852
I am a lazy fucker, so I got the ipac. No time wasted re configuring. also, see my cab. dual screen, bitching cardboard button panel for now.

>still looking for a better screen. thinking 32 inch LCD.

>>347834
For the ultimate in realism, the coin mech should be easily defeated with one of those curly plastic wire things that were sold with a nod and a greasy palm to bunking off schoolkids outside the arcade in the 1980s and you had to have your mates all standing around you, smoking and acting cool, so the coin change guy didn't see you cheating the slot mech.

You can provide these to your guests to ensure you do not make a profit and not breach the T&C.

>>347926
>two control clusters on a 1P cab

Oh man, that is not going to be comfortable any way you arrange it.

>>347935

The old mech I'm using can be defeated with slugs too.

>>347941
I know. Im considering expanding its control panel, but the whole project got put on hold for a while. I have tried it out like that with two big guys, and they were fairly comfortable. the cab is almost 36 inches wide.

>touch screen jukebox I am working on

>>347926
>dual screen

Speaking of which...

I'm not sure how you'd handle tilt though. Mercury switches?

>>348029
I hadn't even thought of using it as a pinball machine. I was just using the upper screen to display time, videos, RSS feeds and other miscellaneous stats.

>>347987
what software are you using anon?

>>348029
>tilt
An accelerometer would be the obvious choice in my mind. They're pretty cheap these days.

>>348029
>tilt
An accelerometer would be the obvious choice in my mind. They're pretty cheap these days.

>>348240

The problem isn't cost so much as interfacing with the application. A switch you can wire to the controller like any other.

You'd need to interface an accelerometer with an analog input. Say, an optical input controller or a stick axis on a reclaimed gamepad PCB.

Or get a pre-built 3-axis USB accelerometer of sufficient sensitivity, I guess. Not cheap, but certainly easy.

>>348243

Looks like that problem has a very easy fix after all.

The gamepad I'd be dismantling to serve as a control board is already motion sensitive. It would just be a matter of mounting the PCB somewhere it'll detect nudges properly.

Which gives us the ultimate cheapass option for virtual pinball controls: fish a $2 motion gamepad out of a thrift store.

>>348247
Is there a complete beginner's guide to making an arcade control setup out of a gamepad like this?

>>348250

I don't know of any off the top of my head, but that's only because I haven't looked. I'm sure there are many.

It's all obvious stuff if you've dabbled in any electronics.

Rip apart the game pad, solder to the button contacts and run those and a ground to your switches. You plug the pad into the computer like normal and it has no idea anything about the pad has changed.

>>347787
I bought a J-Pac for my ultimate mortal combat 2 machine, Fucking love it and the software that comes with it is awesome.

>>348260

Those really aren't that expensive either given that they also have a proper video converter on-board so the signal doesn't blow the 15KHz monitor.

>>348263
Eh the video thing diddnt work with my monitor but I'm not really that sad, just put a tv tube in its spot.

>>347698

I have 2 of the original Zapper guns that came with duck hunt on the NES. Mine are the original ones I've owned since the NES was new, but you can buy them off of eBay for like $10 a pop.

I remember being at a party at my friend's house and a bunch of people couldnt figure out why theyre guns didnt work. Funny watching them struggle for a few minutes then I told them why they couldnt use an LCD TV. Those old Zapper guns work off of original TV's built with glass, so it has to hit the glass to work.

>>348497

It's not the glass. You could get a glass LCD panel and it still wouldn't work.

LCD/plasma doesn't work because their light/dark contrast isn't good enough and their response times are an order of magnitude too slow.

There's a photodiode in the gun that looks for a strongly contrasted light. If it sees one, it registers a hit. Timing is critical since the game flips between different white target boxes on the screen a bunch of times for only a few milliseconds each when you pull the trigger. So if the gun registers a hit while duck#2's box is on-screen, the game knows you shot that duck and not duck#1.

The NES Zapper has no idea where you're actually pointing, and you can fool it by firing directly at the sun or even a light bulb.

>>348778

yup.

th elight gun photodiode generates a hardware interrupt, which read the video scan position, so the software could know what was being drawn at that time.

here's a cooler light pen than yours (no offense meant). the coolest thing about SAGE terminals is that they all had ashtrays and automotive cigarette lighters in them.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/SAGE_console.jpeg

>>348826
>which read the video scan position

I've heard this explanation before, but it's bunk. The NES is not capable of reading the video scan position.

All it does is rapidly flash a white square in place of each target on a black screen in turn and take a reading each time. If the diode has a strong signal (ie: looking at white on a CRT) while a target is being flashed, it registers that target as hit.

>they all had ashtrays and automotive cigarette lighters in them

Between smoking everywhere and using radioactives in consumer products it's a wonder anyone from that era has lived to old age.

>>348884

i do not know about NES, but the CRT/lightpen/interrupt thing is canonical technique. what-ev.

>>348916

*was

>I found the light guns but at 95 dollars each they're a bit pricey

Yeah, not a whole lot you can do about that. They're niche items with little competition. Even just a spinner knob for Arkanoid is like $70.

>I don't know is what I should do about the controls.

The big names are Happ, Sanwa and Seimitsu. Sanwa has very smooth and precise controls, while Seimitsu's stuff feels like cheap Sanwa. Less expensive, but almost as good. Happ's gear is the American standard. It's less precise than either Japanese brand and fuck-off huge but a lot less expensive ($9 for a Happ joystick vs $24 for Sanwa) and far far more durable. You know what Americans are like with "public" things.

>Should I drop money on an xarcade pad?

God no. They're built with some shitty no-name parts. They look like Happ but they're not. The buttons feel hesitant and the sticks are sloppy. The plastic is cheap and non-reinforced, so they lack durability too.

If you're doing up a cab, do the control panel right.

>>348235
I have it disconnected at the moment... i will get it out tomorrow and see what it it. All my arcade projects got put on hold a few months ago when family health issues popped up. I know that it is free for personal use, but it has commercial licensing if you want to make money off of it. Its a pretty neat system.

>>348973
>If you're doing up a cab, do the control panel right.
And I intend to
This cabinet has been kind of a dream I guess since i was little, and I want to do it right and make it something that will last for quite some time.
I know it's going to cost quite a bit, but it's worth it in the end

I didn't know the XArcade stuff was that bad though, thanks for the heads up
Also, American here, we have a tendency to get sticky shit in cracks and pry/smash/bend anything we can

>>349063

Just don't use lit controls. They look awesome at a distance but they glare right in your face when you actually try to play on them.

I guess you could rig them to automatically shut off when a game starts, but then why waste the cash and effort on them?

>>349610
yeah, I plan on getting opaque, normal buttons. Not sure what color though.
I was thinking of doing something black and blue but wasn't sure if I should, it seems kinda tron-like

What material is everyone making their cabs out of?
Aren't the old ones made of particle board or something like that?
And would it be cheaper to gut an old machine and remodel it, or build from scratch?

>>349721

I went with yellow/blue/green/red for 4P because I'm a sucker for a certain game.

>>349728

They're made of everything from chip board to MDF to plywood. The really heavy motherfuckers that got all warped at the bottom over time (spilled drinks?) are the MDF ones.

Depends. You can remodel an old machine but cost will depend on demand for that model, whether you need it shipped and whether you can reuse any parts inside if it hasn't been gutted already. Cost will go up the more work that needs to be done. If you can pick up a non-working/unwanted cab locally for $100 that more or less fits your design, you're laughing.

For building, just the wood and fasteners alone will run you around $300 for something decent.

Speaking of fastening, avoid screws unless you're using plywood. They don't take well to chip/fiber board. You should use bolts for those instead. Also MDF will devour glue and primer by the gallon.

>>349797
Holy shit, What's the name the game in pic??

>>349821
Sunset Riders.

>>349728
Most are made from 5/8" particle board, but old Nintendo cabinets (Donkey Kong, et al) were actually made from a fairly thin, light plywood.

For all you people making your own arcade cabinets, don't forget about Hyperspin. It's a front end video game loader that has graphics, boxart, sound effects, and videos for thousands of games and roms. Almost every single game that can be emulated has some sort of graphics and/or video for it and every game imaginable is supported. It really is a beautiful thing. Here's a video demonstrating it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XVYoeuARAw

>>348235
Its called album player. Its pretty nifty.

>>349967
I had so many problems with that frontend back in the day lol.

>>349936

Yup.

It takes a shit all over setups using low-power hardware though.

>>350342
Oh actually the one I used was "ultrastyle" Looks really fucking good, could never get it to work.

>>350351
This one actually works pretty well. has options to remove the cursor for touchscreen computers. look into it. it's got a free trial. it's pretty good, it includes some music samples so you can see what an album art view would look like.

Also I'm posting from my phone, that's why I'm not worrying about punctuation.