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My Hyperspin Arcade bartop cab, finished.
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09-03-2012 10:58am#1Hi all.
I've finally finished my Hyperspin arcade bartop cab, after months of working on it whenever i could find the time. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and how it looks and plays. Now all that's left is for me to find some time to actually use it
Rear Panel with power switch, USB ports, and air filters & grilles for the cooling fans:
It's built around a P4 2.8ghz desktop motherboard with 4GB ram and a 160GB SATA drive, with just the onboard graphics and sound. The OS is windows XPsp3, and it's running the Hyperspin front end (hence the marquee) with MAME, NES, SNES, Master system, Megadrive, and N64 emulators. The monitor is a 15" TFT. I could have easily fit a 17" in there, but i wanted to leave some space for a bezel around the outside of the screen, which i think really adds to the retro look of these cabs.
Thanks to my good friend Cathaldublin for all his advice in the early days of figuring out Hyperspin and trying to make it work. It takes a lot of effort, but it's beautiful when it's up and running and properly configured. For my money, it's really unmatched aesthetically by any other frontend that's out there.
The frontend is running as the windows shell, and i've customised the windows bootscreens and shutdown screens etc, which means the cab boots up and shuts down without any sign of windows or explorer. The PC's power button and USB ports have been broken out and mounted on the back panel, so there's pretty much no need to open the cab for servicing or anything like that, just plug in a USB keyboard, mouse, HDD, flash drive, wi-fi dongle or whatever, and you can work from outside the cab
Here's a shot of the insides. Space was really tight in this cab. I ended up with less than a centimeter's depth to spare in mounting the motherboard, PSU, and fans and getting everything connected. Phew!
The back panel has 4 fans. One intake for the CPU, an exhaust to vent the power supply, and 2 exhaust fans mounted behind the grille on the rear panel to keep everything nice and cool. Thanks to the arcade & retro boardsies for their advice on this
The control panel hardware is 2x Sanwa JLF sticks, modded with octo gates, double springs for extra resistance, and american-style bat tops instead of the usual ball tops those sticks come with. I'm a beat-em-up fan, and those sticks are my favourites in terms of response, so i sprung for hardware that i knew would last the test of time and feel right for my favourite games. On reflection, i could have added a control panel overlay to give the panel a slightly more professional look, but even without it the white CP still looks well, and matches the overall tone of the cab.
The buttons are Happ Ultimates with vertical microswitches for a nice strong response and ease of removal for repairs, mods, etc, as well as a couple of Happ Competition pushbuttons for the pinball flippers on the sides. These also double as the "genre" and "favourites" buttons for the frontend. As well as the 1&2P start buttons, i also added a handy 3-in-1 button on the front panel to give me different functions for different emulators without drilling too many holes in the CP for dedicated buttons. This covers lots of functions like escape, back, shutdown, insert coin, pause, console select buttons etc, depending on the emulator that's running at the time and where you are in the menus or the games.
A couple of shots of of the underside of the control panel in mid-build:
The keyboard encoder is an ultimarc minipac. I've used minipacs and ipacs before, and if you're serious about building good functionality into your panel without too many extra buttons messing up the look of your cab, they're a great choice for ease of wiring and programming and their "shifted keys" function, which lets you build in a second function to each button is really handy for saving space. I've currently set up my 1P Joystick up/down to control the PC's audio volume when the IP start button is pressed and held, and can easily add new functions such as reset, tab, save slots, dip switches, task manager etc to any of the other buttons if i need to.
The shifted keys function was a great way to add volume control without drilling holes for extra knobs etc. There is a master volume knob on the speakers inside the case, but it's much handier to be able to change or mute audio on the fly during games if needed.
The marquee: This is the work of my local printers, and the result of my basic skills in Photoshop. It hides 2xUSB speakers hacked and mounted and the power strip i used to give the PC it's power supply. There's no built-in lighting in order to save space, which was tight in the cab, and because I'd never use it anyway:D
Behind the Marquee:
So there it is. Once again, thanks to all the boardsies who offered their help or advice over the course of the build. The cab wouldn't have turned out so well without your expert advice. Thanks also to my wife, for not strangling/divorcing me while i turned our kitchen into a games workshop over the last few months
Feedback, comments, etc are welcome. Hope you all like it!:D24
Comments
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Very, very, very nicely done. Love the neatness & finish on it. Normally we play Bow Wow I want Candy when someone here gets a new cab...but that song has become more of a harbinger of death to cabs so we'll play this, as its more apt.
Now two things. I take it your using XP x64? Otherwise the OS can't utilize the full 4GB of ram...
Secondly, it looks fantastic :cool:0 -
Very, very, very nicely done. Love the neatness & finish on it. Normally we play Bow Wow I want Candy when someone here gets a new cab...but that song has become more of a harbinger of death to cabs so we'll play this, as its more apt....
Lol...
Yeah thanks. I took my time on it, and i was really happy with the finish. The paintwork was professionally sprayed by a panel beater & sprayer (i have connections in the motor trade) and turned out reeeally well. You can't see it from the low res pics, but the paint is actually metallic auto-body paint, for sports cars, and has loads of tiny flakes of metal in it that catch light and give the cab a translucent kind of shimmer. It looks fantastic up close.I take it your using XP x64? Otherwise the OS can't utilize the full 4GB of ram...
No i'm not, it's only 32bit, which made me a bit sad as i knew i wouldn't get the full 4GB, but i was limited in the choice of desktops i had available to rip apart, and it's got 2x matched pairs of ram in it, both running in dual channel mode, and is running fine, even with some of the hyperspin visual transitions and stuff active.
I'm geting about 3.5GB out of it, and thanks to the loads of fans in it it's running nice and cool, so my attitude is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.0 -
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Deleted User wrote: »Thanks also to my wife, for not strangling/divorcing me while i turned our kitchen into a games workshop over the last few months
What, you mean you had pasty faced folk, running around the kitchen, painting orcs and space marines on the worktops and making bolt gun noises as they attack each other..
Sounds intense!
Seriously, well done, it looks great.0 -
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Deleted User wrote: »Thanks also to my wife, for not strangling/divorcing me while i turned our kitchen into a games workshop over the last few months
I have to say my other half is great, I have my cab in the kitchen at the minute and the plan is to paint the back wall black, put a load of spaceinvaders decals on the wall and after we get married later in the year im planning on buying about 5 cabs to go along the back wall. all her idea!
:cool:0 -
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Amazing project
I'm building one that's almost identical in design, and was wondering if you could help me with a few things please.
1. With the chrome beading, what is the best way to apply this? Mine is currently curled up in a coil and does not look easy to use!
2. How have you mounted your monitor? I'm struggling with where to place the wooden beam and the angle at which to place it. My cab is also very tight on space, so think that getting a monitor mount that tilts won't be an option unfortunately
Thank you in advance 0 -
Amazing project
I'm building one that's almost identical in design, and was wondering if you could help me with a few things please.
Hey, sorry for the late reply, just saw this now. Thanks for your compliments!
On your first question, the beading is a right pain to install actually. There's no way around it, it's finicky and you need a lot of patience, but if you're using the same adhesive backed stuff as I have there are a couple of things you can do. Firstly, get rid of the sticky foam stuff on the back, peel it all off and don't use it. It doesn't hold on the corners and you end up having to glue it back on anyway. Secondly, use glue to hold it on, and use something like mixable epoxy resin (araldite) that doesn't set quickly so you can wipe up any spills and reposition it as needed before it dries. Use masking tape or duct tape to hold it while it sets, and have a few strips ready before you start to glue, it will make things a lot easier.
On your second question, actually that was fairly straight forward. I made a wooden mounting plate. The monitor Is an LCD (no room for a CRT in these tiny cabs) and there should be 4 VESA standard mounting holes in the back of it. Just cut a rectangular piece of strong wood, like 18mm MDF or whatever (I used laminated chipboard) that's as wide as the inside of your cab and at least a couple of hundred mm high. (VESA mounting holes for 15-17 inch LCD monitors are normally 100mm apart in a square pattern. So you'll need a piece of wood that's about twice that high at least, for strength). That's your plate. Then just measure out a template for your mounting holes on the back of your monitor and drill the same diameter holes as the mounting bolts into the middle (the EXACT middle) of it, making sure theyre level. Then get the right depth bolts (your standard VESA bolts + the thickness of your new plate) from a hardware, and bolt the plate to the back of your monitor.
To fit the plate in place, turn your cab over onto its front with its front bezel glass and the holding brackets for that installed, lie the monitor onto that, face down, where it will eventually rest, and mark the position of where the mounting plate is now sitting against the side walls of your cab. That will give you your position and your angle automatically from the angle of your bezel glass. You can mark your position a couple of mm back if you want too, so the monitor won't be flush right up against the glass when you eventually fix it in. Thats if you want a slight gap between your bezel and your LCD. This is good for protecting the monitor from impacts to the bezel, like angry thumps of frustration from the loser in a 2 player game, etc. but keep the gap small for the sake of aesthetics, any more than about 5mm is a waste.
Once you've got your position for the plate, take off your front glass, and unbolt the monitor from the plate, and fix the plate in place, ready to accept the monitor at any stage later on when you're ready. This method adds extra strength to your cab as the plate acts like a lateral brace, tying both sides of the cab together. You can add a shelf off the back of it to hold hard drives and wiring and the like if you want, but the cross brace/plate itself is the main support for your screen.
Hope this helps, good luck with your build! :-)0 -
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