Friday, March 15, 2013

Game over


Well, the cabinet is somewhat finished, really :)

This week I've been busy with the inside of the cabinet, hooking up a nice 60-in-1 multigame board with some great vertical arcade classics.
Since the screen I used is a stripped scart television, it was an easy choice to use a supergun setup inside the cabinet. That way I can plug Jamma pcb's in it (or an original Donkey Kong board with a Nintendo-to-Jamma converter board). I chose to get a cheap multigame board instead for this project, and use the DK board as a spare for my "real" Nintendo Donkey Kong machine which I'll pickup in about two weeks.

Superguns work plug and play with standard computer ATX PSU's (power supplies). But those large bricks have a lot of additional wiring looms I don't need. So after playing with an ATX for a while I decided to use a cheap switching power supply I bought on eBay some time ago. Made a custom wiring loom for it like FrancoB did here on www.arcadeotaku.com. It's superclean this way. No wiring clutter and no problem of how-to mount an ATX PSU to the wooden floor of the cabinet :)

On the picture you can see the supergun (MKIII by Vogatek) on the left.
It has the scartlead attached which goes into the tv, the white 20-pin ATX connector coming from the switching power supply, control panel wiring and a mini-jack connected which goes to the speaker behind the grill. On the right you see the 60-in-1 arcade pcb.

To switch the TV automatically in AV-mode without having to use the remote, I attached a 12v wire coming from the PSU to pin 8 of the scart connector (TV-side). That's the red wire which is hanging along the scart cable. I followed Level42's (Andre's) guide as published on www.arcadecontrols.com




Above, the switching power supply with mains going in on the right side (2 x AC and FG=ground). And on the left the output (12v, 5v, -5v and ground).

Below, a view of the wiring. Sorry, have to rotate these two pics really.
But you can see power going in the cabinet on the left, going to a multi socket with three cords plugged into it. One for the PSU, the light fixture and the TV.





Just a shot from the control panel area as seen through the backdoor, under the monitor.

Here are some glamour shots of the finished cabinet. Or the cabinet so far, since I still have a couple a small things I want to do.

- Maybe cut the power cords on the inside to the right length, so even less clutter.
- Touch-up the black paint on the front. I was a little messy with the blue on the edges.
- Cover the "air-vent" on the back door.
- Do something about the missing coin mechs, return buttons, bucket etc. I have just the plates installed right now.






Oops, a little black touching up needed on the back as well :)











The speaker with grill installed. Only a bit sad that the grill doesn't cover the entire slots as you can see on the outer edges. But it's not too bad.



Coin door with missing parts. I have them lying around but just need to install the parts.





Thanks for reading! I you have any questions, just place a comment here or e-mail me!

Speaking of questions, quite a lot of you are asking me about the 2-player control panel overlay I designed (and didn't use myself) a couple of years ago, sadly I only have it in Coreldraw files (.cdr) and use Adobe these days so I can't convert the files myself. But I can send you the files I have for free if you do want them, no problem.


Thursday, February 28, 2013

Update february 2013! :)

Hi there and thanks for still checking back here!
Over the last couple of weeks I have been dragging my arcade cabinets out of storage (thanks neighbours!) and into the brand new (heated) garage with gameroom.
As you can see in the corner, the Donkey Kong kabinet is somewhat finished, albeit it empty inside at the moment.
Still plan on putting in the DK boardset I have lying around. But need to build a proper wiringharness for that.


My girls checking out Puzzle Bobble on Neo Geo MVS and the DK in the corner

Joni helping me "clean" the row of Sega's

Nice and shiny Sega New Astro City, Astro City and Blast City.

Enough space for (near) future expansion :)

AND NOW SOMETHING REALLY EXCITING!
In about two weeks from now I will go on a roadtrip from the Netherlands to Germany to pickup three (!) arcade classics.
Maybe one of them is easy to guess. But I just had to get it's brothers too :) As I am writing they are together with 50 other cabinets on the way to Germany.

53 coinop's on the way from Coinopwarehouse in Maryland, USA

A little spoiler of what's to come :)
Googled this image. They're not my cabinets, but you get the idea.