Spare Parts - My low budget Hyperspin cab project

[kb1ujs]

Hi all,

This is my first post here. I've been lurking for a little while and thought now that I had started my build I'd post a build thread. I've been wanting to build a MAME cabinet for years and the perfect opportunity presented itself when a friend with a partially finished cab decided to sell it during his recent move. He had bought a lot of the parts he needed to finish the project, but life got in the way and he ended up abandoning the project. I have a fair bit of computer experience but not a lot of woodworking skill, so remaking an existing cabinet was definitely the right choice for me.

Here's the cabinet. Not sure what it started its life as, but it had an F-X marquee when my friend bought it (anyone know anything about what that would be?). The box is mostly plywood. The coin mechs and marquee light are intact. My friend had tied a flat panel monitor in behind the glass, but I also have the original monitor shelf I may reuse to mount my LCD.

Like I said, he bought a lot of the parts needed to finish - ipac2, joysticks, buttons, wire - and had a custom marquee made. I don't know if I'm going to keep it yet, but it looks pretty good nonetheless. My plan, as it currently stands, is to get this cabinet cleaned up with a new custom control panel and get it working with a few emulators with as little financial outlay as possible. The control panel will probably consist of two player positions with six buttons each and flipper buttons on the sides to play pinball emulators as well. I'd like to have a removable center panel to have a swappable roller ball and 4-way stick for Pac-Man, but I don't know if I have the skill involved or the finances to make that happen.

I spent a good part of my Christmas vacation working on getting HyperSpin running on the machine that will live in the cab. It's a Core 2 Duo E8400 with 6 gigs of RAM, which is probably overkill for MAME but not for pinball and some of the other things I'm interested in running. Currently have MAME and Stella operational and will start working on installing art once I upgrade my forum subscription in the next few weeks.

[kb1ujs]

Well, I did a little research and I believe this cabinet was originally a Stern Berzerk cabinet.

[kb1ujs]

Spent some time the last couple nights cleaning the exterior of the cabinet and the monitor's cover glass. The previous owner hadn't really cleaned the cabinet before starting to use it, so it still has that hot dusty smell inside that results from decades of warm electronics running in an enclosed space. I found a tag on one of the wiring harnesses still intact that confirmed my suspicion this was originally a Berzerk cabinet.

The previous owner also decided to mask off part of the glass with electrical tape to better match the LCD he was using. It was cheap electrical tape, which left all its adhesive on the glass when I tried to peel it off. After attacking it with Goo Gone for about half an hour and getting nowhere, my wife suggested using a product called Sol-U-Mel. Three minutes later the adhesive was gone.

I also reinstalled the original monitor shelf after stripping the last of the original arcade monitor's guts off it. Unfortunately, the original monitor had been pretty severely burned in and wasn't a candidate for reuse. I'm not sure the angle of the shelf will work for the LCD I plan to install. I don't have it here yet to test.

I was also able to get my platinum membership here and a lifetime membership at emumovies earlier than I thought. I can't imagine trying to collect all the media available from these sources by hand.

[fireslayer26]

Keep up the good work, it will be a labor of love!

[kb1ujs]

Spent some time working on the cabinet over the weekend. The original Berzerk control panel was very simple and single player. I wanted to see how a standard 2 player, 6 button per player setup would fit in the original control panel's space, which measures about 21.5" by 8.5". I mocked up two sets of player controls on some foamcore to try it out.

The short answer was "not very well". I could probably squeeze a two player setup in, but it would be pretty tight quarters and there would be no room for a trackball or dedicated 4-way stick. I remembered standing in front of the cabinet before I bought it and feeling like there was a lot more room with the X-Arcade the previous owner had. I bought the X-Arcade with the cabinet, so I pulled it off the shelf and popped it on the front of the cabinet. I realized that the problem was the inset wooden box that supported the original control panel. Unlike other cabinets I've seen where the "ears" that hold up the panel are part of the sides, this cabinet has a box with the ears built inside the sides. The X-Arcade was just narrow enough to sit in this box, and the top cleared the ears so your hands didn't hit them when you were using the joystick on the left or buttons on the right. My plan is to tear this box out of the front of the cabinet and fabricate a new one to hold my new control panel and possibly a keyboard/mouse tray.

I also am now in possession of the 19" 5:4 monitor I'm planning to use. I may try come preliminary placement of that later this week once I get a chance to clean out the interior of the cabinet.

[kb1ujs]

It been a while since I posted, but I have been making progress. The cabinet is currently in playable condition using the X-Arcade. Work on the control panel didn't happen over the winter since it was so cold here. I have been steadily adding roms and emulators to Hyperspin. The kids and I have been enjoying the current setup, but a lot of work is still to be done.