We don’t need no water….. let the minicade burn. But I won’t.Whenever you work on sunday it is the same. Shops are closed and you are missing a little part, in order to carry on: Today, I wanted to install the cheap travelspeakers, I got from ebay. They run on 5V and I intended to go with a molex y-adapter, the common ones, you will find in every pc and also in my xbox. Down in the basement I found about 50 molex plugs, all female! So I will have to wait till tomorrow.Well, no molex so what now?

I ended up abusing my fathers all new weather station measuring the temperature inside the cab. Till now no fans or even slots or holes are made in order to get a better air circulation. After I put the external rc probe of the weather station in the cab and closed everything. I run it for aproximately two hours with mixed results.Whereas the CPU and GPU temperature of the xbox settled at about 60°c the overall temperature inside the cab was about 50°c. Probably too much for the old monitor and so I will make up my mind on adding a heat exhaust. I think I will countersink a fan into the top plate, like chris99 did it on his cabs.Sylvester and no molex… cross your fingers, that I will get one.

As stated before: I taped the monitor sloppy and two corners were coverd with tape. Anyway -I reckon on my marquee design, to camouflage the flaw. Overall the dull black fades well inside the cab, so you can’t see any monitor contour.

One thing that is obvious when it comes to cab building is the need to access internas from both sides. Mostly the cables, connections and plugs are located on the backside and so a service door/hatch, just like those in the big ones, is needed.I unscrewed the backplate and cut it in three parts. Using a buzz saw from Aldi left me with a big surprise. Although the cut was quite clean and accurate, the blade I used left a 4 mm slot. Hence I had a 8 mm slot when I puzzled the back together again. Fortunateley I had some brackets left and made a nice rim protection and filled the gap – almost. Maybe I will add brackets to the door itself.

Certanly a service hatch needs a lock. I ordered one from Arcadeshop.de, along with some other parts, like Sanwas stick and the long awaited t-molding. I had never installed a lock before and I had to do it three times on a spare mdf plate before I got it right. The tricky part was that the locks winding had exactly the same thickness as my mdf, leaving no space to put on the check nut. I drilled two holes. One that closely fits for the lock and a larger one from the other side, that is big enough to take the check nut. The result was quite pleasing.

Further, I finally installed 2cm big brackets to keep the marquee where it is meant to be, but I still think they are too fat and tanking away too much of the marquee graphic. Looks like I will have shorten them on the front.

In the end I couldn’t resist to test my creation so far. With no controls in place, yet and the xbox hidden behind the marquee, it is a bit of a torture to turn that thing on. I, for one had to do it and start a round of Metal Slug4.

That’s it for today.

As promised, I got the lighting up and running. I bought a relative cheap kitchen light, one with a energy saving tube, that would normally go under a cupboard. Energy saving, because it’s not producing so much heat and it is better for the enviorment anyway. Needless to say it was 1cm to long when the plug was inserted. I ripped it apart and added a new plug that would loom out of one side.

I used some shrink tube to fix and secure the new plug. Some addionalt ape in place and it was ready to go. But first I had to get the plexi ready. I wanted to see the full effect and not just simply light up the lamp.

Using some rought emery paper on both sides the second plexi plate so that it became a soft frosted look (once again chris99 had the idea).

Everything fit together and set in place and here it is…. tatatataaaa.

I am not quite content with look. The paper I used for this test is of a cheap nature, directly off my laserprinter at work. I think it is something like 80g/m^2. Maybe I will need to add some white vinyl on the back on the frosted plexi or need to go with thicker paper….

Last thing I did today was spraying the front of my good old, beloved Commordore 1084. This was the first real monitor I got back in ’88 along with my Amiga 2000. It has been down in the basement for all those years and was fired up occasionally for some nostalgia. Now it will get a new life and hopefully live on for another 20 years. Here’s the sloppy masked front.

Until the first layer of paint dries in my basement, I will take a nap and will go on tomorrow… nighty, night.

Last two evenings I spend down in the basement and worked on my minicade. After I put together the first three parts namely the right side, top and bottom, I tipped the wohle thing on its side and put everything in place. I got a good overview if everything fits in as planned. And yessss, it does!

Next thing was to attach the cp in a proper way. I used a small hinge to get the angel. On each inside of the cp I added a metal angle bracket that I had to shorten with a metal saw. Later those brackets will be held in place by some strong neodyne magnets. I hope that 15 cm distance to the screen is enough – but chris99 tested it with 10cm distance without any disturbance. We’ll see…Here’s the cab, completely mounted for the first time. Screws are still lose because I will have to take it apart at least one more time for applying the slot for t-molding.

The marquee and brezel had been made from a 4mm strong plexi that I cut with my old rusty fretsaw, a fine blade and slow revolution speed. For the marquee I will need another one to sandwich the graphic.Tomorrow I will take care of lighting and the marquee….

There was not much to do at work so I went on with my cab construction. Today: side panel graphic design. I was not sure about how to brand my minicade. The basic decision whether it should be a multigame design or a dedicated one seems to made today. The layout that I made is a univseral one. I had a similar graphic done last year, when gathering all the stuff for my first project.

Big thanks and credits must go to all the diligent people at localarcade.com, who do a hell of a job tracing all the good old artwork and releasing it as vector files. Well, I am not quite sure about the outcome of this days activity, but lets face it: It is always hard to be creative for your own satisfaction. I will not judge today and rather take a second look tomorrow.

Hardwarewise I am still after some small parts… not much though T-molding seems to be rare these days and mounting rails for the marquee have to be designed as well as the angle brackets for magnet fixed control panel. Time will tell…

Last year I spent some time and money in order to build a new arcade table. I had huge plans: four players, each one with trackball, spinner, 6 buttons and an 8-way stick. Instead of a PC, I was looking for something easier to setup. I had quite alot of trouble with real arcade monitors and pc in the past. In the long run, I ended up with a ready configured PC, a lot of input devices (four red LED-lit trackballs) and no idea how to fit it all into a table with a reasonable size. Needless to say, that the xbox with mameo-x and Vice was also in my stock. In the end I dropped the project, pretty frustrated and went back to photography and webdesign.

Recently a friend of mine was interested in buying one of our two Zaccaria cabs that we keep at work. I started to look for some parts that he might need and instantly got hooked again. Browsing arcade forums, I was flashed by the two minicades chris99 had build under observation from the people at arcadezentrum.com.

The very next day, I started to plan my Minicade. Instead of the 10″ VGA-Screens, I went for Commodore 1084 (the one thats up, there, in my banner), and the PC was replaced by M$ Xbox. For the controls, I got a 4in1 arcadestick, that carries plugs for xbox, playstation and standart usb. I took chris99 plan as basis and twiddeled around till all fit in – virtually, off course.

Last wendsday I went to our joiner’s workshop at stais&fy (the company I work for) and found a suitable MDF (medium density fibreboard) that I got for little money and they even cut out the parts that I had layed out (thanks Trögi). Best part about it: It’s already grounded with a special soil, ready to print or paint on.

Today was the day: I first transfered the sidepanel form to the MDF-board, usig a smooth pencil. I hatched the oulind of the back of my plan that I head plotet at 100%, taped it on top of the board and used a sharp pencil to tranfer (rub trhough) the ouline.

Than I taped the two sides together with some double-faced scotsh tape and used some additional clamps to make it firmly stick together, sure that it won’t shift when sawing both boards on one go.

Sanding was also done on the double assuring that both sides are shaped alike. It turned out that after I removed the clamps again I had big trouble to get the two sides apart – the tape was so strong I had to use a big metal ruler to get the job done.

From some spare parts, I cut out two board for the CP, keeping the ones from the workshop for the final version. I don’t know whether 4 buttons are enough or if I should fit in all 8. I also found a tiny mouse which includes a smalish trackball… mhhh… maybe I should go with less buttons and stuff a trackball in.

I think, I dawdle to the nearby hardware store and get some plexiglass for marquee and brezel.

Anyway, here are some pictures that show the step of today.