My MAME cabinet gets a PC upgrade.

So I’m off work this week finishing off the last room in the house and after applying the last coat of paint on the ceilings yesterday, it was time to do the walls today.  With the first coat completed and little else to be done until it dries, I sloped off to the geek den for a spot of fun. Today, I’m changing out my ageing PC which I currently have in my MAME cabinet for something with a bit more clout. I’ve been working this upgrade during the evenings as well as collecting all of the  relevant  bits and bobs and configuring a few more emulators that I wanted to add to my cabinet – namely, AAE for better vector game emulation, NEO GEO, Sega Model 2, Daphne, a few pinball tables via Future Pinball (for the time being) and ParaJVE for Vectrex emulation……because as you know, the Vectrex is cool.

Processor wise, there’s enough here to upgrade my current emulator frontend – MameWah to the media rich Hyperspin and  have all that eye candy artwork whooshing about.

I’ve also upgraded my Mame set from good old trusty .098 to a more recent .151.

I must say, Hyperspin certainly does look incredibly nice when running on a cabinet.  I’m still on the fence between all this gloss though and a simple gamelist/snapshot static screen but I’ll run with it for a while and see how it goes. I’ve also noticed that my iPac keyboard encoder’s shift function appears to have disappeared in this version of  MAME and so some of my keyboard mapping is a little off. Nothing that can easily be sorted out though.

Here’s a quick looksee so far although apologises for the camera wobble….Amidar seemed the perfect game choice after all this painting 🙂

 

Arcade and Pinball at Play:Expo 2013

The UK’s biggest Retro Gaming event Play:Expo is rapidly approaching and with just a little over a month to go, lists  of some of attending arcade cabinets are starting to appear on various community forums.  Play:Expo are hoping to showcase over 100 cabs this year.

The guys at Jamma+ have posted this WIP list –

BAGS!
Blasteroids
Bombjack Midi
Bubble Bobble cabaret
Capcom Tourney Cab SSF2 New Challengers
Centipede
Century Star Fighter
Chase H.Q.
Commando
Cosmic Alien
Cosmic Guerilla
Crazy Taxi
Criminal Termination (Chase HQ Pt3)
Cruisin’ World
Daytona 2
Daytona USA
Dedicated Neo Geo
Defender
Dig Dug
Do! Run Run DK Repro Cab
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Electrocoin ZX2000 Cockpit Konami GT
Final Lap 3
Gauntlet
Ghouls n’ Ghosts Mini
GORF
Hunchback
Hyper Sports/Track And Field
Ice Cold Beer
Indy500 Twin
Juno First midi
Killer Instinct
Lethal Enforcers 2
Lordsvale Neo Geo MVS Cabaret
Midnight Resistance
Missile Command
Monkey Capsule Vendor
Monkey Mole Panic
Mortal Kombat II
Mr Do! Midi
Operation Thunderbolt
Operation Wolf
Operation Wolf 3
Outrun
OutRun 2 SP Cockpit
Outrunners Twin Sitdown
P.O.W.
Pac & Paint
Pac Man
Pacland Midi
Pacman midway
Parrot Capsule Vendor
Pengo
Phoenix mini
Planet Harriers Cockpit
Playchoice 10
Popeye
Puckman
Punch Out
PuzzLoop 2
Ridge Racer
Robocop
Robotron
Royale cabinet with IGS PGM Knights Of Valour
S.C.I.
Salamander
Sega MegaTech
Sega Rally Twin Sitdown
Shadow Warriors Midi
Silent Scope
Silver Strike
Silverstrike Bowling
Space Firebird cocktail
Special Criminal Investegation
Spy Hunter
Star Wars Cockpit
Stargate
Subelectro Scramble cabaret.
Sunset Riders
Supersonic Blastman
Taitel Track & Field
Tekken 2 midi
The Simpsons
Thunderblade
TMNT
Turbo Outrun
Vendetta
Vindicators
Virtua Fighter 2
Virtua Racing
X-Men
Zeon Cab SF2 EX2

There’s a fair few of my favourites here  including the return of  those  Juno First & Phoenix midi cabs which I  spent so much time on them last year, Robotron of course and that awesome Missile Command cab which I haven’t played since it was on loan to RCM. Hopefully the Spy Hunter cab will be well enough to attend this year and I’m also hoping that it’s not a typo and that there’s actually a Star Wars Cockpit cab attending too.

Here’s a look back at the arcade cabs that appeared at last years event.

As a starved pinball fan, last years event was simply mind blowing and I got to play on some great tables. This year, main contributor Northern Light Pinball have stated they’ll be bringing with them an even bigger collection of machines than ever before!

Here’s a look back at last years collection.

Of course all this is just a section of Play@Expo you’ve still got the 100’s of classic consoles to play, browse the trade stores to hunt out that classic game you’re after or…well the modern gaming tournaments and Cosplay stuff doesn’t really interest me but it all adds the atmosphere of making of a great weekend.

Will you be attending?  Maybe I’ll see you there?

 

 

 

Mame arcade cabinet, last few jobs

hmm, I thought I’d posted this entry last weekend?…..obviously I didn’t press the thing that does the posting thing.

In contrast to the scorching hot summer days we’ve been having here lately, this morning got off to a cloudy start with temperatures only reaching the upper teens. It’s perfect really as i’ve been meaning to get into the garage…sorry, i mean ‘Arcade Man Cave’, to finish off the last few jobs on my arcade cabinet for which I need to keep the garage door shut so that airborne stuff doesn’t blow in and stick to the drying paint. In the heat of summer, it can get awful hot in there with the doors closed.

My first task was to give the coin doors and their surrounds a lick of hammerite paint after sanding off all the loose bits a few days ago. I went with textured paint in the end which appears to match what was originally used.

Next was to paint the monitor surround (matt) black and also the monitor trim to match. This mornings newspapers came in handy here…..who needs the Financial sections on a Sunday anyway?

I used automotive spray paint for this – nothing fancy, just the cheapest matt paint I could find as Gloss would have just bounced the light around and might have looked terrible especially through the glass bezel at the front of the cab.

Two coats applied and between drying coats, respite from the rising heat and on to a few odd maintenance jobs on the veggie plot.

When everything was dry, I fitted the monitor back into the cab and also took the time to fix a little issue with one of the control panel latches that kept catching on one of the control button cables and disconnecting it.

That’s pretty much everything done on this cabinet now and its been great fun putting it all together. Highly recommended!

Thoughts now turn to another arcade project. Maybe a Barcade? RaspPicade? Cocktail cabinet? Driving cabinet? or something with Spinners or a Trackball?…..but first, I need to open the garage door now as these lingering paint fumes are making everything look very trippy 🙂

Mame Arcade Machine: Door locks.

Only a quick update on the arcade cabinet today. I’ve now got two replacement locks for the coin doors and one for the rear back panel which I’ve fitted this evening. The removable portion of the back panel is practically held on with just the lock so it’ll be nice to have it in position again to shut out all the light bleeding in around the edge of the monitor.

Having had to source these from a gazillion online vendors and pouring over endless searches, I’m becoming a bit of a lock nerd and find myself talking about cams , tumblers, tubular seven pin, cam barrels, keyed to differ or alike, straight or cranked, 90 or 180 rotation. Also I’ve discovered that if you’ve accidentally ordered a straight cam instead of one that needs a slightly cranked end, one should simply whack it a few times with a large hammer. Perfect!

If there’s any lock nerds out there that are interested, mine are 27mm cam locks, keyed alike, 90 degree turn with 45mm straight cams….and one slightly bent one.

Also, if anyone knows how to cure lock nerdism, please let me know.

Mame Arcade Machine – New buttons

My order from Gremlin Solutions arrived today with a fresh set of buttons for the arcade machine.

 

I had no idea that they come supplied with switches so it was a nice surprise to find them included too. Most of the control panel switches were replaced last week but I think there’s one or two of from the original set that remain on the 2-up side. Now I’ve got a few spare, I  think I’ll swap these out for new too.

 

I really do like working on this flip down control panel. I wished my Phoenix cabinet was the same.

 

 

I’ve also swapped out the four (x2) joystick bolts. All were rusty and looked horrible. Note to myself….don’t misplace the 9/32 sockethead or you’ll have to undo them bit my bit with pliers!

Much better I think.