Category: Mame

Rampage Arcade Cabinet

Original Project Thread: /https://www.aussiearcade.com/topic/30859-latest-mame-cab-project/

At the time I’d had this machine sitting neglected in my garage for almost 2 years. Had the parts just not the inclination but over Christmas the bug got hold of me and I started working on it.

The cab is an old LAI Rampage cab:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9261

There was no board, jamma harness, control panel, coin mech’s or artwork included. What was included was the original 19″ arcade monitor, power supply, fluro light and dodgy mame marquee.

I started by creating a new control panel. The original was a 3 player setup but I’ve built this with 2 players in mind and a centre spinner. As my art skills are non-existant, in the short term I built the panel out of ply and stained and varnished it. Sure not original or normal but it came up okay with the result below:

As you can see the player 2 joystick is a top fire as I wanted to be able to play Tron, Battlezone and Two Tigers easily. I’m sure there are other games with possibly doubling the top fire button as a push pull option for games like Discs Of Tron and Frontline.

The Top Fire is a normal 8way stick with a modified shaft and top button. I have to say that the joystick itself is a little sloppy on movements and the shaft feels is too short due to the flange at the top. For normal games it’s not so bad but I think I need to adjust it and put stronger springs in it.

The left joystick is a baton type which I’ve never used before. I’m a huge fan of MCA’s but I had no black ones left so used this out of a Mame pack I’d bought ages ago. I’m actually quite surprised at how good it is and would definitely use them again if I had to.

The panel has 6 player buttons each, Player 1 start, Player 2 start and Select & Escape buttons. The Select and Escape buttons are temporary until I grab some clear ones so I can print labels for them. Coin Inserts are supplied for P1 & P2 by using a custom made label and 12 volt LED rectangular buttons I had laying around.

The spinner is a Turbotwist 2 that I got for christmas 2 years ago 😕 It is a fantastic piece of kit. USB interface, engineered to fit into a standard 28mm arcade button hole and has a range of options for knobs and wheels. I stuck with a reasonable std blue anodised knob with room for an insert. Many have mounted BYOAC tokens of which I have 100. I’d like to use an Aussie Arcade one 😉 I also added the energy storage cylinder which is effectively a steel piece that fits to the base and lets inertia keep spin going for a LONG time. It works REALLY well. You can check them out here:

http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=86&products_id=268

The spinner really comes into it’s own for the games I’ve tried it on so far. Tempest and Arkanoid are simply awesome. Cameltry is now an extremely enjoyable game. Star Trek which I only ever play in Sydney’s George st arcades in the 80’s brings a tear to my eye 😉 Sure it’s not in the original environmental cab but I can now play it properly. Other games I’ve played so far are Blasteroids, Cosmic Chasm, a few other racers and finally Tron. If the Top Fire joystick was restricted to 4 way (it does come with a restrictor) Tron would play much better. Spinner wise though it’s perfect. What I need to do is wire in one of David’s digital restrictors…..a project for another day.

Bare Spinner

Blue Anodised Knob

6″ Steering wheel

The steering wheel is well made and works great but is limited without pedals. Works really well on 360deg driving games such as Pole Position, Sprint, Super Sprint etc but gear changes etc are an issue. What I’ve done is use the top fire as a gear stick and the top fire button as the accelerator until I get my Pole Position cab rebuilt. I mainly bought the wheel for unknown future uses and due to the fact that shipping separately at a later date was going to cost a bundle.

Here’s a shot of the bare bones PC components. Using a old GeForce 4 video card and Soft 15khz. Works great on this dodgy old arcade monitor.

You can probably see the mini amp up the back. That’s a $9.00 Ebay special and interfaces to an old set of car audio speakers.

Currently trying out Maximus Arcade as the FE but having a few issues with it. It works but seems to have a few niggles with extra buttons and long delays on exiting games :unsure I’ll see if I can tweak it some more and if not ditch it for good old Mamewah or Mala.

Still to be done on this cab, tidy the wiring up, new artwork/marquee and I need to purchase decent bolts for the control panel and joysticks. The ones I have used are rat-shit.

Oh and one last thing. Just a note to any boofheads like myself. If your using a laser mouse to setup your Mame Cab, stay away from using red cocktail stools as a platform. It took me about 5 mins to dawn on me why it didn’t work…….the damn mouse laser is also red and obviously the red laser was being absorbed by the red stool. I didn’t realise the spectrum was so wide.

This is a very old build thread and in fact the control have been changed. The horrible bat top joystick has been replaced with an excellent Mag Stick Plus and the Top Fire on the right has been replaced with a flight-stick version. The flight-stick has both a trigger and thumb button but is also an 8 way joystick.

I’ll get around to updating this post some day 😉

Arcade Machine Electronics Mame Uncategorized

Hard Waste Rescue Arcade Cab

Original Project Thread: https://www.aussiearcade.com/topic/56317-generic-aussie-cab-restore/

I picked this cab up from a Tip Shop a few weeks ago now when I was dumping a load of waste. I couldn’t believe it was there and it seemed no one else wanted it. I was hoping it was working but they would not let me test it so I bargained them down to $70.00 citing the potential cost of repairing monitors etc. So I it home anyway to rescue it!

I am told by ex operators that this type was typically a card machine frequently seen in pubs but someone in the past had converted it.

The locks had no keys so I had to drill them out.

Once I got it open I sadly discovered that the 19″ tube had been broken at the back and was not salvageable.

The upside was the discovery of a 1942 PCB. I have no way to test it but still a nice find.

I’m not sure I’m keeping this cab as I simply do not have the room so I might re-sell it after I’ve reconditioned it as much as I can with spare parts.

First was stripping it down. I took all the metal parts out such as the hinged monitor door, control panel, bolts, rear handles, hinge and any outward facing bolts.

A quick wipe down and vacuum got rid of all the old dust, debris and cobwebs from a long storaged machine.

I threw the old monitor, yoke and chassis away as effectively useless for me.

Stripped monitor door and control panel.

A light sand of all steel components with fine grit sandpaper and then 3 coats of satin black spraypaint to bring the components back to new. I also sprayed all of the bolts so that they blend into the black timber panelling.

The monitor plexi was held onto the door with double-sided tape which I had to carefully separate so that I did no damage or scratches.

Once separated I then had to remove the tape from both parts. The rainbow colour on the plexi has been sprayed on from the back so I had to ensure that I removed the residue without lifting the paint which was successful. I’ll put it back together using new double-sided tape once it’s all done.

The control panel was fitted with a single player setup. A black MCA joystick, 2 player buttons, Player 1 Start, Player 2 Start buttons and a small single button to the right. I suspect that this had been rigged as a credit insert button as it looks to me it had been sitting in someones home for years and there was no coin mech installed anywhere.

The MCA was rat shit, so I’ve replaced it with a spare (I have about 14 of them). Unfortunately I don’t have any black ones so I’m using a single yellow I had that matches the yellow in the panel.

All of the buttons I’ll reuse as they are all fine including the micro-switches. The credit button however will need to be replaced as the top has snapped off. I’ll need to try and source one as I’ve never seen one of these before and I don’t want to drill a bigger hole.

You can see the restored top unit below.

I spent some time wiring up a new power supply, jamma harness and 60-1 board. I decided to use the 60-1 as this cab was a vertical cab and the bezel and monitor shroud were being re-used.

I’m a real weenie when it comes to electricity so was concerned about wiring mains 240 power to the arcade power supply but 2 You Tube video instructions later and I re-wired a std power plug into the arcade power supply within 5 mins. Hooked up the Jamma harness to 5volt, 12volt and ground points on it and test-fired the arrangement. The power supply, board and monitor all turned on, the board initialised and after the 60 second startup (why so damn long?) I had the iCade menu displaying and running.

I tidied up all the wiring and used cable ties to neaten it all up. It always surprised me how much room there is in an arcade cab. Really the monitor takes up most of the room.

I’ve gone with an LCD as it’s the easiest for me to mount although I do have several spare 19″ crt PC monitors hanging around if I feel the need to change it to a CRT look.

I ended up modifying the monitor frame to accommodate the LCD. I also created a new internal bezel to suit using 3 ply and sprayed it black to blend it.

Once bolted together the monitor sits nice and flush to the front door.

I’m creating an instruction card to suit the unpainted space left in the exterior bezel that will fit flush. Unfortunately my colour printer is almost dead so I need to wait till after eater to print it at work before I can remount the exterior bezel. I’ll update this thread once done.

Thanks to www.aussiearcade.com members Homepin and DavidAVD knowledge and part I’ve also mounted a volume control onto the rear of the cab. This is wired in between the Jamma harness speaker output and the speaker inside the cab. I’ve re-used the single speaker that was already in the cab and mounted the control knob into a std button hole that a previous owner had drilled into the back. It’s come up pretty nice and fits really well.

The back of the cab also had a large square cut-out that gave access to the old monitor yoke but there was no cover. I bought a grill piece, sprayed it black and mounted it. It looks pretty good.

Front View minus exterior Bezel

Now with bezel, instruction card I created and running Time Pilot!

Not long after I completed this restore I ended up swapping it for a really nice 7 drive Thecus NAS which I still have as a backup to my XPenology headless server that I’m running.

Arcade Machine Electronics Mame Uncategorized

Space Invaders Bartop Arcade Machine

Original Project Thread: /https://www.aussiearcade.com/topic/84069-space-invaders-bartop/

Another instance of checking an unfinished project off my list. I still have the pinball to go but this one is easy and that one is hard 😉 This one should be real quick.

I bought this ArcadeWorx cab off www.aussiearcade.com member namastepat back in February 2018. It’s surprisingly large, taking up a lot of space on my garage floor so time to get it working and sitting somewhere else.

Cabs is a little banged up with a few nicks but over all pretty good.

All black and I love the Space Invaders cut-outs in the marquee area.

So I thought I’d continue with the Space Invaders theme and keep the cab Black and Red. It didn’t hurt that I had a pack of both red and black buttons 😉 I’d also bought a power supply and jamma harness to match the Pandora 4S I bought back in April.

I installed the buttons and joysticks. Will need to check the controls for the Pandora to see if I need the other 3 holes. I’ll use what I need and try to find some of those caps to cover any not used. Also the top row holes are smaller than the player button holes 😞

The P1 and P2 buttons I used (STD size) will never come out again LOL!

Installed speakers inside the audio cut-outs.

The IEC socket I have is not round like the hole that had been cut out 😞

Traced around and then did a little free-styling with my jigsaw. The flange on the socket hides the shoddiness 😄

Wired mains socket, power supply and jamma harness power. I then fired it up to see if smoke would come out. Success!

Damn I love how fast these Pandora’s boot up unlike those shitty 60-1 jobs.

It was getting late so I’ll finish wiring in the joysticks and buttons next weekend. One last thing was to mount the fan cover into the top. The Alien one I had suits the theme.

Now an idea I’d had was to install an LED chaser light coloured red behind the cut-outs in the marquee area so they’d light up and travel across just like in the game. My circuitry skills are not even close to being capable but another www.aussiearcade.com member VERY generously stepped up, designed it, built it AND personally delivered it to me! thanks Kaizen!

The circuit design

Whats even better is that Kaizen modified it so that I could adjust the speed!

Whilst I awaited the completion of that component I went ahead and finished off the rest.

Finished connecting up the jamma harness to all of the player controls. I then mounted the monitor. I created a bottom rail and attached a piece of angle the hold the monitor in place. I then used some metal strapping to hold the top in place. Easily removed with a screw in each corner.

I then fixed the PSU and Pandora into the base, tidied the harness with cable ties and used brackets to attach to side. Actually took this photo before tidying and mounting harness

Here is is all fired up. The Pandora has a couple of annoyances though. The games list are not sorted alphabetically and you have sequels pages before original etc. Also they included Ms Pacman but it scaled to the widescreen and plays super fast. No doubt there are others so I disabled that game. A bit of reading and it seems it may be an SD card running xmame so I might take it apart, image it and see if I can tweak it somewhat. Others games that I’ve looked at run really well.

I definitely would not put a 60-1 or one of these in a full cab. PC all the way imo. They’re just handy for small spaces.

Attached the back door, barrel lock to come.

Kaizen dropped his circuit off to me at least a month ago along with a strip of opaque red perspex. Thanks again mate, truly appreciated!

As the perspex was see through I needed to block it out so that the lights and wires were not visible when lit up. I looked at a few things and ended testing AND going with some heavy duty tracing paper/plastic. An off-cut from a large sheet another member Illawarra Steelers sent me for my EM restore. I affixed it and did a little test and it worked perfectly!

I then lengthened a few of the wires in the circuit and screwed each of the 4 light arrays onto a piece of 3 ply. So the perspex is hard up against the space invaders cut-outs and the light mounted ply is horizontal behind it. I have angled it up somewhat using a scrap piece of timber so that the lights are brighter without individual LEDs strobing though the perspex. I think it looks excellent! I will need to trim some of the tape I used to fix the paper as it’s slightly encroaching on the bottom.

Arcade Machine Electronics Mame

Galaxian Bartop Arcade Machine

Original Project Thread: https://www.aussiearcade.com/topic/79032-galaxian-bartop-project/

I’ve had this bartop carcass in my garage for about 4 years now. Like many of us, too many projects and not enough time and/or motivation. As is normal with me I get to a point where I want to complete a project that I’ve put off for some time so I pick one and work on it until done.

The biggest kicker for this is that I bought an arcade pack off Ebay pretty cheaply knowing it would suit this. It included 60-1 pcb, power supply, jamma harness, 12 player buttons, 1 & 2 player button, 2 joysticks, 2 speakers, speaker grills and 50 PCB mounts.

Bare carcass here which didn’t come with a back or control panel.

So using a 19″ 4:3 LCD monitor as the template I measured up to see how I could fit everything in. The 19″ just fits vertically so I measure up some timber rails to mount both the control panel and rest the monitor on, then glued and screwed.

Measured up a control panel and dicked around with control and button layout. Test fitting here.

Made a rear door and fitted with a barrel lock. Also cut out a hole for the IEC power socket.

Now most people opt for a Galaga based bartop or some sort of custom job. Me, I’m more partial to Galaxian so I’ve elected to go that way. Overall colours will also match so I’m going gloss white and then I’m going to get original artwork sized and printed.

that will include Marquee, Control Panel, Side Art & Kick Plate. Not sure I’ll bother with a bezel as it would only be the width of the monitor bezel which is 10mm.

Now I suck mightily at graphics but I’ve managed to use Adobe Illustrator to modify the original Galaxian control panel artwork to suit my bartop. Everything else will remain original, just re-sized to fit.

Original

I printed off a sample on plain paper to ensure it fit and to my great surprise it fit perfectly, down to the button holes.

Next up was painting the cabinet. True to the original dedicate cab I painted it gloss white.

I also received the reproduction artwork scaled to size I’d ordered the previous week!

I wanted this cab neat and tidy so installed and IEC power socket into the cab. Marked it out, used a spade bit to cut and then a jigsaw for the shape. It turned out really nice.

Once completed I then applied the artwork and installed the controls.

I then installed the green t-molding!

Space inside this thing is REALLY tight so I’m trying to save by using as few space stealing parts as possible.

The monitor is a 19″ 4:3 vertically mounted LCD. Now this of course requires 240 volts.

I have an arcade power supply. I wired it up and mounted the PSU onto the bottom of the cab. The PSU has 240volt inputs which is wired to the IEC socket I’d installed previously.

I’m using a 60-1 game board which uses a Jamma interface. This only requires 12 volts which is fed from the Arcade Power Supply. Wired all up and then gave it power.

I then fired it up and of course I just had to play Galaxian on it!

It’s alive!

Arcade Machine Electronics Mame

Italian Arcade Machine Restoration

Original Project Thread: https://www.aussiearcade.com/topic/97314-italian-arcade-machine/

Been a while since I’ve posted an arcade project so here’s my latest.

This cab has been sitting in my garage for years as a long non-started project. I recently took a couple of days off (in lock down) and decided it finally needed some love. Originally a container import out of Italy, it arrived non working.

Empty Italian Arcade Machine — Starting Shell

There was no life in the 35 year old Hantarex Power Supply rattling around loose in the cab and the Orion tube/chassis would also not fire up. Knowing virtually nothing about the electronics on those particular parts, combined with the age and state of them I ended up removing them from the cabinet.

I gave the cabinet a thorough clean as I’d never seen one like this and I loved the artwork and style of the cabinet.

I had to repair the front frame of the monitor mount. Its made out of MDF and in glued and screwed into the sides but has started to collapse. I ended up filling it with MDF glue, clamping it back into shape and letting it set overnight. I think its stronger than new now.

Unholy of holies I have a stash of 19″ CRT PC monitors so I de-cased one and slotted it into the chassis frame. A little diligence in cutting some of the plastics and it fit like a glove. Yeah yeah I know Arcade Tubes are far and away better and several of my other cabs sport them but I was in lock down with no access to any other parts so sue me 😉

The control panel is covered with a sheet of acrylic now as the original underneath has many marks from cigarette burns. Notice the cigarette holder on the right. That’d never fly in Australia.

I gave it all a good clean, removing the rusted bolts and giving them the treatment. The treatment being locked into a cordless drill and spun against some finishing paper. Then undercoated and sprayed black. As usual they came up really well. The cigarette holder was removed and polished. The bolts for those were also rusted but I sanded them and then clear coated to prevent them rusting up again.

I re-built an old Dell PC I have a few of. Windows 7, Mame and MalaFE all configured and ready to go then interfaced it all with a J-Pac. Hands down the easiest way to get your controls running. Some test drives, configuring a few of the controls at a global level and everything is working as expected.

Note I was cheeky and edited the original MalaFE layout I’d selected to add my own description at the bottom.

I’d retained the Jamma harness and all of the micro-switch connections had been soldered on. Good practice but a bitch for replacement and maintenance. I was lucky in that there were no broken connections.

Another advantage of the J-Pac is the Shift Key function so I don’t have to drill holes and add extra buttons for Exit and Coin Inserts.

Further to this the coin mechs were still all wired up to the harness and dropping a 50 euro cent coin into the slots triggers a credit. Love it although I only have 5 of the coins. Thinking about modifying them to use the 100 custom tokens I have but with the J-Pac’s shift keys it would purely be a novelty.

Note the Price on the Inserts. I do need to replace the bulbs in there so they look nicely backlit. (Note this photo is before I cleaned it all)

Italian Gaming Licence ID:

I’ve configured the PC to start up after power loss and MalaFE to start up with Windows.

The cab has an IEC power socket on the top with a fused switch. I wired that into a 4 port power board that I mounted inside the cab. This powers the monitor, PC and eventually a fluorescent tube for the marquee. The original was practically disintegrating.

Unfortunately the marquee (glass) was broken. So I scanned it with a flatbed scanner and have restored the image after I vectorized it. It’s now complete and I’ll send it off to be printed on a new acrylic marquee to fit. See my short instructional process for doing this. I’m easily an amateur but it got the job done.

Original Marquee Scan

Restored Marquee

I’ve replaced all 3 locks (coin slot, coin box & rear access panel) with brand new barrel locks that are keyed alike for convenience.

I also purchased a low powered LED light to replace the original fluorescent tube and batten fitting. This has been plugged into the 4 port power board I’ve mounted inside the cab.

Note the recessed bottom edge above. This is where the glass marquee sits and there would have been a metal bracket to hold it in. Alas this was missing so I had to reproduce one myself. I measured it up and a piece of 30mm x 20mm angled aluminium does the trick nicely.

I cut it to length, pre-drilled the two mounting screw holes then undercoated and painted satin black to match the rest of the cab colour.

There is also a mount for a volume control. I’ll be installed one of DavidAVD’s in-line volume controls into that in the next few days which will allow me to control the volume on the original single Jamma powered speaker.

There is a chunk of chipboard missing from the top. I’m of two minds on whether to repair it or not. Like the coin door, I may leave it alone so it retains battered Arcade Cabinet patina.

As stated at the top, this machine is powered by a Windows 7 computer. It’s an old Dell machine retired from work that I’ve re-purposed.

It now has Windows 7 installed along with Mame and a number of games. Since Mame now emulates 10,000’s of games probably more since they’re merged with Mess and other systems the list of supported games is both overwhelming, cluttered, near useless and in many cases unplayable. This is especially true when you consider the fixed control panel options. This cabinet whilst 2 player only has two 8 way joysticks, 4 player buttons each and a Player 1 and Player 2 start button.

Not nearly enough to be able to control all those console, computer, gambling, pinball and other devices that this software can now emulate and lets be honest, who would want to.

So I cleaned the available list down to ONLY arcade games that use 4 buttons or less and joysticks where appropriate. This cut the list down to a manageable though respectable roughly 3000 games. You can refer to my page on List Filtering for detailed instructions on how to do this.

All up I’m very happy with the result and since the cab is not large, it now sits in my study instead of the garage arcade which is embarrassingly full.

I still need to replace and power the bulbs for the coin slots but after that I’m calling this project complete!

I recently completely the scan, stitch and repair of the Smashed glass marquee image. Once done I sent it off to be printed onto an acrylic replacement. A week later it’s been delivered and installed and looks fantastic, especially when backlit.