Bartop Arcade

djsim101

Well lads, I am thinking about building on of these, had been thinking about building one for quite some time. Unfortunately, I don't have room for the full just yet, so this will do nicely. I am a complete newbie when it comes to arcade building, so any help will be grateful.

I would like to ask you experts for the following help:

1) Housing - Instead of making,cutting \ sourcing MDF materials the hard way, I was thinking of buying the flat pack kit from these guys:

http://www.arcadewarp.co.uk/

Anyone buy from the above or could i get them cheaper elsewhere? I would love to buy locally if possible, and I am on a budget. :-)

2) PC \ Monitor -This is the easy part, I reckon I should pick up these for nothing. I have been reading the min specs for Hyperspin and the following seems to be fine - Dual Core, XP, 2gig of RAM, on-board graphics. Would tha bring me up to PS1 level?

3) Buttons - what type should I be going for and where did ye guys buy from?

4) Hyperspin - Is it worth all the hassle \ cost to run? I see you can buy pre-imaged HDDs on ebay etc, worth doing?

I will have a lot more questions coming your way soon :-)

Thanks lads,:pac:

Skip the premade hhd for sure.
Consider a crt monitor too!
You'd be surprised how small a cabaret cabinet can be!

djsim101

The one I'm thinking of going for will be 60cm wide, 2 player with trackball, that's the plan. Don't think I will go for CRT, I would love to but that would make the thing darn too heavy.
Hyper spin looks like a right pain in the arse to setup, but looks the damn part :-)

Tomo.Murphy

I remember someone mentioning a guy selling bar top shells on adverts, but he said his supplier was in the UK. If I remember right, you paid him by card and he had it shipped to your door, so I reckon he's ordering them from there. I haven't seen any other Irish supplier. If that is the case, it would probably be quicker, easier and safer to just cut out the middleman.

You could put one together yourself if you had the tools or knew someone with the tools to do it, but if not that will cost you more than buying it flat packed.

CathalDublin

Hyperspins not that difficult to setup, just do it system by system and buy their gold membership so you can download the complete artworks in one go

Myrddin

I had a build thread for my bartop, see here - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=88627082 - The Last Bandit built the unit itself for me, & if he has the time to do another, definitely go with him

I'd really advise against a pre-built HS hdd. You won't have a breeze what you're looking at if you go to add something in, remove something, or fix something that goes wrong. There's a tutorial for setting up HS, follow that instead, it's really handy & you'll understand HS that way.

HS is definitely worth the setup. Get the best cpu/ram combo your budget allows, & if possible, use the best gfx card your budget allows as the HLSL effects in mame need a bit of grunt.

djsim101

Thanks Myrddin, I actually followed that thread with great interest while you were building the unit. I hope you dont mind me asking for some help along the way

May I ask, do you still use it and was it worth the time and effort?

Myrddin

djsim101 wrote: »

Thanks Myrddin, I actually followed that thread with great interest while you were building the unit. I hope you dont mind me asking for some help along the way

May I ask, do you still use it and was it worth the time and effort?

Not at all, ask away. I wrecked enough heads for help when I needed it To answer your questions, I do indeed still use it & it absolutely was worth all the time & effort. It's a learning experience from start to end, & every new thing you learn will feel like an accomplishment. Don't worry about Hyperspin, once you've added a few systems & games...it becomes second nature & actually becomes quite straight forward & easy.

Any questions about it just ask

Doge

Tomo.Murphy wrote: »

I remember someone mentioning a guy selling bar top shells on adverts, but he said his supplier was in the UK. If I remember right, you paid him by card and he had it shipped to your door, so I reckon he's ordering them from there. I haven't seen any other Irish supplier. If that is the case, it would probably be quicker, easier and safer to just cut out the middleman.

You could put one together yourself if you had the tools or knew someone with the tools to do it, but if not that will cost you more than buying it flat packed.

That's actually Mr Vestek on here thats distributing them.


Yeah of course its cheaper to do it yourself but when you're a bit of a monkey when it comes to skills like that, sometimes its worth paying for a professional job.