In reply to:
Your's looks like the standard Defender style cabinet. I started with LuCiD's Defender plans, and customized the front
Everyone starts with LuCiD's plans *laughs*
Actually, I started with a set of plans that were modified from LuCiD's - the guy that redrew them was a honking big guy like me - I'm 6' 3" (you'll notice the control surface is about 4" higher than traditional arcade height - there's actually a stool that usually sits in front of it so the missus can play without her hands being at chest height) The body and surface were slightly narrowed from LuCiD's plans (to match a classic cabinet more correctly and so it would go down my old basement stairs) but the control panel bump out on the front is MUCH deeper (for the extra crapola at the top) and wider (a friend's a friend, but I don't want to be rubbing shoulders all night with one of my buddies).
The controls are pretty plain vanilla - two Happs Supers (8-way), 6 buttons per player (I never use the top row - I'm not a Street Fighter guy), there's a Oscar Controls spinner between the two players, a yellow "Esc" button, a black "pause" button, 1P and 2P start, and on the front there are buttons to fake coin drops (the coin door works too, of course, though the right hand coin mech has seen it's share of use!) and there are two middle buttons which work as TAB and Enter to get to the MAME menu.
The cabinet is scratch built from 11/16 MDF, the control surface is arborite, the marquee is back printed on 10pt. lexan backlight stock (I love working in print!) looks a LOT better than a paper marquee. The monitor is a 20" monitor/receiver (ie: a TV with a sharper mask and all connections are BNC), the computer is an AMD 550, the whole thing is cooled by two fans, an 8cm in the top to cool the TV, a 6cm in the bottom to cool the system. The interior is wired with a great "contractor-type" power bar in the bottom which utilized 3 standard sockets, which allowed me to pop some Romex into the last socket and install a box and plug up inside the marquee for the speakers (Altec-Lansing 5W powered) and the fluorescent. All the arcade lamps and fans are run off a separate AT power supply, I was afraid of asking too much of the ATX that powers the PC, turns out I had more trouble trying to create a big enough minimum load for the voltage regulator in the AT supply. The two fans and coin reject lamps barely hit the min. load. If a lamp burns out, the voltage from the P/S will go wonky I'm sure. If it becomes a problem, I can always cross the 5V and 12V lines with resistors. You want a load, I'll give you a load! *G*
The coin door was purchased from a local arcade (Magicland for Chess and Sid) - that was a bit nostalgic for me, for what I paid for it, I almost could have got a new Happ coin door, but I wanted a used Coinco one, a REAL, 80s arcade door that had seen action. And it had seen action. Took it apart, rewelded a few spot welds. Then wanted to strip the old finish. So I used some sandpaper, which just polished it... sandblasted it, which just took the shine off. Ended up working it with a coarse wire wheel for the better part of an afternoon (and using up two wheels!)... filled a small dent with some metal-to-metal filler, gave it a light coating with vehicle undercoating wit a shutz gun to bring back that dappled powdercoat look, then painted it with PPG DBU 9700.
The Rebel paint theme has nothing to do with the Confederate army, it's painted and named for the Forgotten Rebels - punk band out of Markham ON.
I had the parts and plans for another cabinet based on a Missile Command cab that would have had a 4-way stick for Pac-Man, Burgertime, etc and a trackball for Marble Madness, Crystal Castles, but decided to ditch the project and sold the parts to some guy in the states for his.
Bren R.
