Carleton Arcade Cabinet Comission
I'm building an arcade cabinet for an exhibition at Carleton College on Nov 5. The following is a journal of my progress, newest entry first.
10/8/03
This weekend went well. The cabinet is great, though there are a few things I'd do differently but I don't think anyone would notice except me. The pictures of this weekend are here. I will probably stop with these updates for now since I have a lot to do before the show. I will put up a final page describing the process afterwards.
10/2/03
Packed up all the stuff for my trip tomorrow. The monitor barely fits in the front seat of my car. I'm hoping it doesn't get damaged in travel. I also hope I don't forget anything.
10/1/03
Got my speakers today, along w/ my marquee retainer and speaker grills. The speaker grills rock, they're exactly what I wanted. The speakers themselves however, not so much. First of all one of them was totally mangled and bent to hell. Of course that one is going back. The other looked fine, but when I hooked it up the bass was all distorted when I turned up the volume, so I'm thinking the speaker is blown. I'm going to call them and see if I can get new ones, hopefully those are better, but I'm a bit disappointed at this point. Worst case scenario is that I have to use PC speakers, which wouldn't be horrible I guess. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of the stuff yet, I'll have to do that soon.
9/29/03
Got a pair of old speakers from work that we were going to otherwise throw out. This is a great find because they are powered speakers and have volume control. I could really care less about the speakers themselves, all I'm really after are the insides. I took them home and hacked them apart. Now I have a volume control I can mount inside of the cabinet, and I can hook them up to the speakers I should get sometime this week. Nice!
9/28/03
Today I edited my MP3s for the frontend into 26 5-minute long MP3s. I was having problems before w/ the sound cutting out, I think it was because of the length of them. Now they work fine. I have the frontend graphics basically set now, and am starting to tweak Windows so that the frontend launches on startup, etc. What I really wanted to do was change the startup screen in Windows, and I tried it, but it didn't work. Oh well.
9/27/03
Did a lot of shopping today. Got some Piano hinges from Fleet Farm, got a florescent light and Velcro from Home Depot, and got wire, connectors and Lucite from Menards. That's a lot off my list. Then I ordered marquee retainer, PCB feet, speakers and speaker grills from Happ Controls. So I pretty much got everything I need.
I'll be taking off work on Friday to go home and help my dad w/ the cabinet. Hopefully we can get it done while I'm there. I'm curious to know what it looks like.
9/25/03
I talked to my Dad today. Aparently he already did a wood trim to the edges of the cabinet, which I didn't want because I wanted to use t-molding (like every arcade uses). At first I was mad, but then I thought about it and realized, he's a master carpenter and he's doing this on his free time for me, I shouldn't bitch. His thinking was that t-molding was a cop out for inexperienced woodworkers. I can see that.
He also told me he baught Formica for the CP. At first I wasn't thrilled about this because I was going to use black vinyl. We decided that we'll see how it goes when I get there. He also baught paint, so I hope that looks good too. I'm a bit worried about how much he's rushing the project along and making decisions w/out me, but I just need to let go. It was never going to be the perfect cabinet anyway.
I went to Home Depot to look for a few things I wanted, and found basically nothing. I need to go look around some more it seems.
9/24/03
I worked on setting up a different look to the frontend today. I think it looks good, but it may need a few tweaks. I still have no idea what to do for graphics for the cab, even if I'm just doing the marquee. So I just put the default MAME logo in the frontend for the time being. I think that will be good enough for now at least.
9/23/03
Spent more time setting up everything today. I wanted to tweak the monitor settings to see what I could get to look best. I was leaning towards SmoothMAME yesterday, but today I've decided to go back to MAME. After adjusting the monitor rez's everything looks so awesome. There are only two small things now that are a bummer. One is some vector games don't look the greatest (a little fuzzy), and that on others, the refresh rate is a tad low and I can start to see it a bit. For the most part these are limitations of using an arcade monitor. They also affect very few games. I am more than satisfied with the results.
I also started setting up my frontend today. I am using MAMEWah as my frontend. While it's not perfect, it is pretty damn good. It has a neat feature where you can play MP3s while you're looking for a game to play, and I happened to find some MP3s of general 80's arcade abience, and it sounds really good (if a bit hectic). Should work great in the installation. Right now I'm in the process of tweaking the colors and the layout, etc. That needs some work. The default is sorta ugly.
9/22/03
Got my arcade monitor today!! All I can say is this thing weights a TON. Well actually the packaging says 92lbs, but damn I can't lift it by myself. I had to cut open the side of the box to drag it out. I got it all set up where it's going to stay until the cabinet is done. To see pictures of the box and the unwrapping, check here.
Then I decided to put the computer downstairs and plop my ArcadeVGA card into it and try this whole thing out. Installed everything I needed and rebooted windows. Immediately the screen looked good! Then I tried out MAME. Wow. It's an arcade monitor alright. The only issue was that the different games were off kilter a bit. I was told to use something called SmoothMAME to reduce stuttering that regular MAME does. So I tried it. Even better! Now everything is centered properly. The only issue now is that vertical games (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, etc) need to use hardware stretch to display properly. This wouldn't concern me normally but it seems in the Windows version of MAME you can't turn off anti-aliasing when the screen is stretched. This is fine for computers, it looks better, but on an arcade monitor it makes it look a little blurry. So I need to figure out if I can turn that "feature" off. If not, I may have to see if I can get regular MAME to center properly. A lot of tweaking to be done, but when it looks good, it looks great. Check out SF2:
9/21/03
Got a call from my dad today. Said he needed to add an inch to the cabinet to get the monitor at the right angle. No prob I said. He also meantioned that the birch plywood he got is a lot lighter than MDF, which is nice. He asked about the width of the cab, and I said I needed to figure out my control panel setup before I knew for sure. So tonight I went ahead and measured that all up. Looks like I'll have to add another inch to the width for it all to fit. Which makes the cab 28" wide, whichis 3" bigger than the Monkey Ball cab. I figure that's ok. Then I went and figured out the measurements of each control panel part to each other. Here's what I came up with:
The colors are like so...Black is things above the CP, Grey is things below the CP. Dotted red is a hole cut through the CP and green is an area that needs to be routed to a certain depth. Not every measurement is there, as I'm not sure on some of them, but we'll figure it out when we lay it all out later.
The other good news is that I got my check from Carleton for the cabinet. Which is good, since my credit card has a quite hefty bill right now.
9/20/03
Today I set up the BIOS on my computer and then installed Windows. Man that takes a long time. Anyway, Win2k is up and running. Installed all the latest patches from MS, and all the utilities that came w/ my mobo. Then I hooked it all up to my home network and downloaded all my ROMs onto the computer. I also went ahead and downloaded MAME and a frontend. I actually got the frontend up and running real quick an selected a game, and it all worked great! Things are going so well right now I'm just waiting for something bad to happen. haha.
9/19/03
Got my ArcadeVGA in the mail (my video card). It supplies video to the arcade monitor which I'm still waiting on. I noticed in the instructions of the video card that you can't use it with a PC (unless the PC is a second monitor). So I had to find myself another video card. Luckly I had some old Nvidia laying around. So I went ahead and wired everything up, so I could get started. And hooked it all up to my PC monitor. It's a big mess!
So I'm all ready to start the thing up to see if it works and I notice, I have no power switch! Usually they come w/ cases, but since I'm not using one, I didn't get one. I didn't want to run all the way back to Microcenter to get one so I was a little pissed, but then I had an idea! My power supply has some Molex connectors on it, one of which fit nicely over the power switch pins on the motherboard. So I cut one end off my power supply. I just needed a switch, which was easy enough, since the buttons on my control panel have microswitches on them. I just spliced the microswitch up to the Molex connector and put it on my motherboard. Hit the microswitch and it powered up! Nice! Next step is to set everything up w/ the computer. Here's my hackjob:
Also got an email from my Dad. He couldn't find MDF, so he got Birch Plywood. Cool! He said he saved $100 on it by going to Green Bay to get it. Amazing. Looks like that's what this baby will be made out of.
9/18/03
I got a shipment of most of my stuff today. Got my coin box, bezel, PCB mounting feet, CPU, motherboard, RAM, hard drive, and power supply. Lots of fun ahead of me! Of course I can't hook anything up yet because I need my video card, which is on its way from London. I spent some time putting the CPU together and on the board and installing the RAM. I also tried out the coin box, just inserting a quarter though. But it works! I've figured out how to hook it up to give me credits (though I haven't tried it yet), but I'm still uncertain about how to light the lamps that light up the coin returns. More research is needed. You can view the shipment images here.
9/16/03
Lots more work done today. I made a page with all the images to my cabinet in it and descriptions about each part to my dad. I also then went through and drew up all the measurements and wrote them up as well. A sample is below. That all took a LONG time, but it's nice to have it all done. Now my dad can run w/ the measurements and get that process started. Now I just need to wait for my parts to arrive, most of which shipped out today and I can start putting the hardware together.
9/15/03
Huge day on the cabinet front! First, Eric and I went to Gameworks for lunch to measure and take pictures of the Monkey Ball cabinet I want to replicate. There was basically nobody there. It was sorta hairy since I didn't want to get caught measuring up this cabinet, so we had to be a bit sneaky, but I got most of the measurements I needed thankfully. We also got a bunch of pictures and a few videos. There's one below, the rest can be found here.
When I got home tonight I ordered a ton of stuff. I had talked to Mouser today and he liked the specs I told him about, save the memory. Ordered all the PC parts I had on the list except the memory, which I got from Crucial (never had a problem w/ them before). I also ordered the arcade monitor ($$), and a bunch of other misc parts like the coin box, monitor bezel and PCB mounting feet. Dropped a good amount of cash, but I gotta get it sooner or later. The next step is to draw up a diagram with all the measurements for my Dad so he can get going. Needless to say I feel MUCH better about this project now than I did just a few days ago.
9/13/03
I ordered the ArcadeVGA video card today. I'm still trying to figure out if this hardware is what I want, but I know the video card is, so I just went and ordered it. Since it's coming from the UK it'll take a little bit longer anyway. I'll get all the hardware on Monday if I don't change my mind before then.
Went to Microcenter today to find some PCB mounting feet, but they didn't have any, but I did find them on Happs Controls. So I'll have to get me some of those. I also looked at keyboards and mice, because I'll probably need them in the cabinet. Though I may hold off on them, because I think I can find a couple spares. It depends if I find myself having to use them a lot or not, in which case I'd foot the bill and go wireless on them.
9/12/03
I did some research in computer parts to piece together this PC. I also sent them off to my buddy Mouser to see what he had to say about it, since I trust his judgement (he's also building a MAME cab). Here are the parts I'm thinking of:
Motherboard:
ASUS A7V8X-X AMD Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron Socket A
CPU:
AMD Athlon XP 2100+/266 FSB Thoroughbred Processor CPU 2100+/ 1.73GHz -Retail
Power Supply:
Antec 380W Power Supply TRUE380
Hard Drive:
WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 80GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD800JB - OEM, DRIVE ONLY
Memory:
CORSAIR 512MB PC2100 VALUE SELECT. DDR RAM - OEM
Video Card:
ArcadeVGA
If anyone has any opinions on these parts, drop me a line. Hopefully I can get this stuff soon and start doing something constructive. :)
9/11/03
Heard back from my dad. Looks like he thinks MDF is the way to go, but there seems to be some confusion on the dimensions. I think he's still a little big confused as to what this whole thing even is. I just need to sit down and talk w/ him about it. He thinks it will take 40 hours to build. I don't know where he came up w/ that, but it seems like way too long. I figured 12 hours max. He said they'd be willing to come out here to help finish it up if need be. 6 weeks left, and stress is really starting to kick in at this point.
9/10/03
I got a letter from Carleton College today talking about the exhibit. Apparently I need to sign off on a few things before they send me the money. Looks like I'll get it next week sometime, so I may start buying things early. Among the highlights in the letter:
- The exhibit it tentitively titled "State of the Art: maps, stories, games and algorithms in Minnesota"
- My project is going to be titled "Game Console"
- Installation begins Oct 28, and needs to be opperational by Nov 1
- Exhibit will close Nov 19
- Payment is $1300 upfront, $400 on delivery
- I retain any and all rights to the work (yay!)
- If/when it is shown (elsewhere), Carleton College Art Gallery should be acknowledged
I got no problem w/ any of that. :)
9/8/03
I've passed all of the measurement info on to my dad, since I figured he'd want that, since he's going to help me build the cabinet. It took me forever to write. I also wrote about what the cabinet is and a few ideas of things I'd like in it. Now I'm pooped. If you want, you can read it all here. It's much too long to post on this page.
9/5/03
Still trying to plan the arcade cab. I think I'd like to model the cab after the Monkey Ball cabinet . For the most part I like the design. There's also one at Gameworks in downtown Minneapolis, so I should be able to go there and measure it up (assuming they don't kick me out for doing so ;). We'll see if I need to do that.
9/4/03
Heh, so the coolest thing just took place. I'm getting paid to build my arcade cabinet!! So my old boss at the Walker, Steve (who got laid off in May), is doing this exhibit at Carleton College, and the theme I guess is gaming. So he asks me if I'll put my arcade cabinet in the show. I of course tell him that it's not done and I don't have the money to build it all, so I can't do it.
Then he says, well write up a proposal, and put down what it would cost to build it and I'll see what I can do. So I write it up, and figure it'll cost $1700 when it's all said and done (minus artwork). So I get email from him today saying it's a done deal, Carleton is going to front the bill for me to build it for the show in Nov!!
This is still a bit mind boggling to me. First of all, what is an arcade cab doing in an art show? And why would any college want to pay *me* to build what I was going to do anyway? Haha, I don't even care, this is too cool!
Of course it'll be a lot of work. I have less than two months, and I haven't been cut a check quite yet. They also do the thing of, pay some money now, pay the rest on delivery. So I won't get it all right away. But it's really nice because I can make mistakes on this and it's not a huge deal. The most expensive parts of the cab are the controls, monitor and computer. Those shouldn't change regardless of what cab type I build. I can always rebuild the cabinet if I feel like it, don't like it, or make mistakes.
I'm pretty hyped. Now I just have to get my ass in gear and start building. I got my work cut out for me, that's for sure.