Atari VCS Arcade Cabinet

[Uncle Duke]

I am beginning construction on a VCS Arcade Cabinet and just wanted to let you all know. I know alot of you were interested in doing that and lots of people said they were going to make one. Has anyone else completed one?

 

My design for it will be in a Tron"ish" sort of look to it. I plan on getting a neon lit gear shifter to attach to the joystick to give it a TRON look, and paint the cab. all black and stencil in some circuit board looks with flourescent paint. And I will also rig up some neon lights to it also. I hope it comes out looking like I have planned it to be. If anyone else has some ideas or questions about it, please post.

[christianscott]

its a great idea, i basically have one but thats not what i started out to build. i took a gutted taito lime cab (jungle king) and rebuilt it. i used all origional parts for the outside (except i used a 4 button control panel) and gave it 100% new guts based around a dreamcast. i wired the controller boards wires onto the board of a dc controller with solder and used a VGA box to connect the DC to my giant monitor (from a university's trash). a small powerstrip and a pair of self amplified PC speakers complete the cabinet. tilting the monitor back to match the cabinets angle was probably the hardest part of the job, it was pretty tricky to fit the bezel over the screen as well but the end result is very convincing.

the idea was to have a mame cabinet running the dcmame ware (perfect for classic games, choppy on the newer stuff) and it worked, it plays an awesome game of stargate. recently though i have been popping the DCstella disk in for a spin. even a medicore game like space jockey seems a lot more intense with the sound and screen right up in your face, standing up a gripping the controls feels right. yar's revenge in particular really benefits from this!

 

good luck with your project, my advice: use wico sticks for your controllers, no way a regular atari stick could take the hard use.

[ATARIPITBULL]

That sounds great Pyramid-Studios, I made a blue print of a cabinet just for my boxed games but never made it. Be sure to post some pictures of your cabinet when your done here.

[Uncle Duke]

Thats sounds cool, I wish I had more knowlege for the mechanics and electronics to make something REAL great. So mine probably wont be that fancy looking or anything.

 

By the way, where can I get DC Stella and DC MAME, and how do they work, do they have all the games on the disc or do you have download the games to VMU? (If thats possible)

I really want to get DC MAME, then I would my DC to put in the Cab.

[christianscott]

all your questions about dcmame should be answered here, there are two versions of this out there. the emulation is quite smooth for many of the older games but is not up to speed for the later neogeo fighting games.

http://www.geocities.com/bigmykes_site/mamed/faq.html

 

all of the games for both the stella and mame are stored on the disc, no need for the vmu there. there are a few bugs, like on the mame ms pac man for example the bottom of the screen gets lopped off but there is a seperate arcade perfect version out there as well. there are also decent emulators for the NES and colecovision. as with any discussion of emulation i should point out that there are issues with playing roms you dont own. big mikes site should cover what you need for burning, be sure to use the self boot buddy.