WARNING: If you light the inside with bright cathodes, you stand a good chance of getting unwanted light in the screen viewing window. You don't want reflections or glaring retina burning lights where you look through that. Just my thought.
Green lighting? That's a little off if you ask me. The cabinet will be black (or dark gray, I can't tell) and the buttons are all blue. It's a great color scheme but I think if you add green lighting it will really throw it all off. I'd go white (just because I love white lighting) or blue. Outside of that, it looks pretty solid, it's a very interesting project.
Caj Darkmoon, that's a fair point, i'll keep it in mind thanks I can easily block the light from getting to the screen area though, i know the images aren't very clear (sorry again) but if you squint a bit you'll see the way i've mounted the monitor prevents light leaks from the sides, just blocking up the top and bottom in a similar way would work ok. Also, the lights will probably only be used when it's being used as an mp3 player during parties not really when used as a game / movie platform. Frink, the cabinet will probably be painted matt black, the sketchups are grey just to make the detail more visible. I see what you're saying about the colour scheme though Personally i love green lighting (especially on black) and have already ordered the ccfl's on impulse Guess i shoulda thought about it first. Since they're on their way now i might as well give them a go and if i don't like them order some blues later on. Alternatively, I might go for replacement green buttons... Dunno tbh, we'll find out soon enough i guess
You haven't mounted the monitor vertically have you? Surely it wants to be tilited forwards towards the player so they can see it better? Hurry up and get it finished
simon, the monitor is mounted flat when you consider the table's only 18" high and the position the player would be sitting when playing a game it's fine don't worry, i tested it also, i don't want to have the screen too obtrusive when playing mp3s etc and you're sat back slouching on the sofa with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other i think the positioning is fine tbh and hiren, as soon as there's enough 'playable' progress paul (ie ':: phat ::') will doubtless be round abusing it hopefully with his stupidly amazing digicam in tow anyway, no progress to announce atm as the managers at work have decided it'd be funny to give me a fortnights worth of serving drunks with beverages with only one bollocksing day off... // and we all know that my nights off are reserved for dirty booze (esp next week )
Yes he did mention something to that effect last night on msn How portable is this machine going to be? I mean willl you be able to take it apart or move it around easily should you move house one day?
-H- : 18in * 18 in * 3 1/2 ft, not too big, portable{-ish}. The amount of crap i have knocking about in the flat it'll probably get slung in the removal van without anyone batting an eyelid mate [when it actually comes to growing up and living in the real world that is] (if that ever happens )
Will you be putting a sheet of glass over the top of that table? That would be a good way to prevent spills from seeping into your electronics. It would probably look cool too.
The current plan is to cover the entire top surface with plexi. However, I'm kinda toying with the idea of having the plexi only covering the screen (mounted from the inside of the lid) I've cut out the screen area on the top section now, and think that only covering that bit might work well (no pics atm sorry) but i'm worried about spills. I'm also rethinking the lighting yet again. Half the people i've asked think the row of 1in diameter holes would look ****, whereas the other half think the full cutouts at the bottom would look bad. I dunno Suggestions welcome btw Oh, and i played marvel versus capcom and samurai shodown on the table last night. Oh such fun
Looks pretty cool if you ask me. There was a games shop in cambridge that closed down, but it used to have a coffee table like this, however it only played pong, which is still pretty cool though. Good luck
well boys and girls, another little update everything's fully operational now, just need a bit of paint and a plexi covering for the top surface. again, apologies for the crap quality fonecam pics: myhtpc opens on startup with this menu, everything has been configured to take joystick and button input to execute all tasks (games, movies, music) a view from the top i took apart an old case to mount the mobo and gfx card, the hdd and psu are mounted directly to the inside of the table i ripped apart some old speakers and mounted them here. thinking about relocating the volume control to the outside of the table. these speakers can be bypassed and proper huge ones can be connected from outside the table if we have a party and need reallyt loud music Running a movie file (invader zim ) The myhtpc interface when playing mp3s My mame frontend. This might be replaced later on. Marvel vs capcom baby A view showing my dodgy hashed together projector and the table. Those chairs will be replaced with a nice new sofa next week Our DRAGON! I guess as soon as i've painted the table, and got hold of some plexi i'll upload some better quality pics. Also, my 4x 12" ccfl's are going to waste at the moment, don't know if i'm going to be lighting the table anymore, though i might give it a go. So, wotchoo think?
omg omg omg your sober enough to mod Case looks amazing! What colour you going to finish it off in? So need to nick Paul's camera methinks and get some better shots of the table.
thanks guys hiren, i was thinking of finishing it off in matt black with a large plexi panel covering the entire top surface. though a friend suggested some kind of groovy graffitti stuff for the sides? hazza, it will be hooked up to the projector, as soon as i fix it
Looks like a certain well known enthusiasts magazine may well take care of that for me As an aside, I've bought some more materials for finishing off the insides (big thanks to simon w for car usage! [quite a sight 3 lads, 2 large sheets of mdf, a sheet of plexi, and two huge metal bars packed into a metro ]) I've sketchuped my plans, but typically my connection at home has gone tits up and i dont have the images here with me at uni The inside will basically have a far tidier panel for accessing the i/o gubbins, along with some rather spiffy lighting. I'm also thinking about having a handy cubby hole built in to keep fags/wallet/keys/etc out of the way under the top cover. Trust me, this'll make a lot more sense when i upload the pics (pro'lly tomorrow) I've bought the plexi too as i previously mentioned. Sadly I'm being a bit of a wimp atm, and haven't had the balls to cut it to size. Worried that I'll mess it up horribly, and have to go through the whole getting to and from b&q palarver again (i'm not so sure that si would be quite so accomadating this time round ) Anyway, expect another 'half update' (sketches etc) very soon, and an update with real photos of actual progress soonish
WOOHOO!! MORE MAMERS!!! yo man nice Box...a little small for me...i like to have the whole arcade machine feel....meaning giant....hahaha that dragon on your wall is really bad ass too dude. Well good luck with the painting and such. I am interested in your MP3 player interface.....i might be interested in downloading it so i could use in my machine. I also was wondering some stuff about the games....have you gotten tekken to worK? or any of the metal slugs? for some reason they won't work on my machine. Also wondering what version of MAME you have, i have all the ROMS for version .86 but i have .88.....i don't know if this is the reason for metal slug not working or what. Nice project though
Yeah, the original plans were to be a full sized upright cabinet. That was well over 6 months ago though, and I have since moved from a 4 bedroom house to a 2 bedroom flat. We needed a decent coffeetable in the kitchen anyway, and I had a pc up to media and mame lying around so i decided to remodel the initial plan into this badboy The main interface i'm using at the moment is myHTPC. It's an excellent app, fully customisable, has built in media player (well, it kinda uses windows media player invisibly) and can launch external progs (such as my mame interface). There are a couple of niggling issues with the software, but i'm trying to work around them atm (myHTPC loses focus when i launch my mame frontend meaning when i exit mame i have to press two button combos to get back into myHTPC properly, no big deal but i still wanna fix it ) Personally i dont have the tekken or metal slug roms, i'm using mame78 at the moment, and have about 1,000 roms. I'm gonna download the whole set as soon as i can be bothered, but since i have the games that i really want to play i'm happy. (however, if you have a fully working rom of 'die hard arcade' aka 'dynamite deka' PLEASE let me know!!) Anyway, thanks for posting and letting me know what you think. Thousands of views and only a handful of replies can be quite disheartening at times. On a side note, nice work on your project too Good to see you work a lot faster than i do
If you do manage to tit up the plext do not worry too much about it. Cut the plexi as close as you can to the edge of the table, then either use wood or aluminium L plating around it. This will hide the Plexi edge, and stop stuff from rolling off the table... I.E. Sacred individual fags?
Well, here's he mini update i promised a few days ago. Everything's been going wrong recently (well in the internet world at least, real life is going swimmingly at the moment ) First my internet gateway machine died on me (but has since been ressurected ), then i find that i'm being denied ftp access to my usual image hosting space. Uploadit.org to the rescue though Now i was quite happy to leave the insides looking horrible, and simply having the top panel locked in place, but an enthusiast magazine has shown interest in running an article on the project and i'd be a bit embarrassed having photos of the dodgy insides in print. I would like to do something very different as far as the i/o panel is concerned, but i'm running out of time, and tbh would like to finish the project quick as i can. I can always improve it later on Here's a couple of sketchups of what i intend to do: This is the table with the top panel removed. The reddish bits are the parts already in place. The blue parts are what i intend to add to clean up the insides a little. You can see that the required i/o ports will still be accessible (left). The cutout section on the right serves no particular purpose, other than i'd like a handy place to keep the crap that i usually have in my pockets (ie keys/phone/wallet/ciggies etc) Here's a view from the front without the actual front panel and control panel in place This view doesn't really serve much of a purpose, but i screengrabbed it and thought i may as well upload it Now this is the view that'll probably make most sense Again, a few panels have been removed so you can see what's actually going on on the inside And here's a close up of the left section i need to build: With top in place And without the top Those crappy green bars represent my ccfl's. I really couldn't be arsed modelling them any better than that, but the sizes are accurate (well, maximum outer dimensions anyway) so you get an idea of what's going on in there I'm not sure if i'm going to go for the whole 'cubby-hole' thing tbh. Maybe a post or two off you guys saying what you'd do if it were your project could help me make up my mind? Come on guys, a bit of constructive criticism is a good thing Anyway, construction of the left cover has begun, but my housemate is too damned lazy to download the pics from his phone for me so no real-life pics for a little while sorry. I expect the project to be finished within a week or so, so any local members who wanna come round and have a go let me know (how does 10p/credit sound? )
