Arcade Cabinet - The good, the bad, and the ugly.

The arcade projected continued on today with a few updates.  Legacy Engineer, the company that I had ordered my Arcade32 interface card from, failed to respond to any of my queries or give me any kind of update on the product I ordered for the last 8 days. Finally today after half a dozen calls to their answering machines, they sent me a response via email: apparently they are "out of stock" and it'll be a week or so before they come in.

A company that takes almost a week and a half to find out they don't have something in stock isn't one I plan to do business with any time soon. I've requested a refund and will be using the money on an Ipac-2 interface from Ultimarc, which is the most recommended keyboard controller for this project in the first place.

For about three hours today I worked on the controller panel; it now has both joysticks and all 18 buttons mounted on it (1 and 2 player start buttons, and 8 buttons for each player).  The last two buttons will be installed on the left and right walls of the machine, to make realistic pinball buttons for games that use them.  When not used for pinball they can double as "coin 1/coin2" for people who don't have change to drop in the coin box.

Speaking of the coin box, I was able to snag a good deal on an over/under coin door complete with coin mechs and a coin box.  It should arrive Wednesday, so I'll have yet another things to upload pictures for (along with my Cantenna and my arcade control panel) soon.

Cutting the fiberglass was NOT easy to do, and there was a single crack that showed up before the job was done.  If I have time at the end of the project I may redo the top with a thicker piece of plexiglass, but for now the crack may be covered with a decal anyway (or depending on the design I may not use fiberglass in the final project) so I'm going to wait and see what time, my budget and my imagination suggests as the best course of action.

The next part of the construction will be the assembly of the arcade cabinet itself. It will be much thinner and a more streamlined design than the average arcade cabinet setup, and will hopefully provide a smaller footprint as well while still being above-average in features.  Pictures of that will follow as well (don't worry; I'm taking pictures--just uploading them doesn't always happen as quickly as I would like).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NARCAN: The danger of a "Three Strikes" policy

While speaking with a relative last week, the topic moved to the opiate crisis and the use of Naloxone (NARCAN) to reverse the effects of opiate overdoses.  He said something that I have heard all too often: "I think that once they've been Narcanned three times, we should just let them die."  It's a common sentiment, and one that quite a few people share. I understand where they are coming from.  Opioid abuse and the fallout thereof are a great burden on the EMS system.  Most people who are "brought back" by NARCAN refuse to be transported for further evaluation at the hospital, meaning that the ambulance service generally bears the cost of the medication, equipment, and manpower required to save them. But I hope that those reading will consider something else: rarely ever has anyone woken up and said, "I think I'm going to get addicted to Meth today."  A shocking number of people who abuse drugs of any kind got into it through fairly v
Read more

Arcade Cabinet - PICTURES!

Image
The control panel for the arcade project is nearly finished, and I finally have some pictures of the design.  I still need to add the joysticks (the mounts for these are already installed), and wire the micro switches from the back.  In addition, a nice graphic will be added between the plexiglass and wood, and trim will be added to the sides to give it a smooth, finished look.  Note: Picture taken with substandard camera in substandard lighting, but hopefully should be smooth enough to give a good idea of how it's coming along. The completed board, showing the P1 and P2 buttons as well as the joystick mounts and button configuration for each side. Detail view of the Player 1 side. The most difficult part so far was cutting the fiberglass.  One crack did appear in the fiberglass edge during the drilling of the button holes, but there will be a decal covering that particular part so it may not be necessary to redo the fiberglass entirely.
Read more

Arcade machine - ALMOST DONE! (Painted and Pictures!)

Image
The arcade machine is nearing its completion.  The following things are still on the list: 1: Finish etching the marquee 2: put the speakers, computer, and surge protector in the cabinet 3: Put the keyboard/mouse drawer in. 4: Finish the trim on the control board and add the luan to the front of it. 5: Mount the TV And that's it!  It should be one more full day's work and the project should be finally finished.  I've added a couple pictures of today's progress, one after the first coat of paint and the second after the painting was done and it was moved to our living room. First coat of paint on.  Still haven't added paint to the bottom trim for the door. Final painting is done for the cabinet.  I will be hand painting the controller board before attaching it permanently, but I need to attach the microswitches for the left and right paddle switches (for pinball games) and the coin door switches first.
Read more