Scrimping and saving and begging and borrowing, I've finally been able to raise a little cash to start my bartop project \o/ I bought a flatpack bartop kit from a guy on eBay, called "Rich's Bartop Arcades" for £50. Members of a MAME/builder group I'm part of helped me source some other parts, like a stick/encoder/buttons set (£36 w/shipping) for these - 18 buttons, 2 Happ Super sticks, a Xin-Mo joystick encoder (shame it's not a keyboard encoder, those are far more versatile) and a complete set of pre-crimped wires. I then picked up a 40w stereo amp for £5
I'm not content to leave the front panel with only two buttons, so I've marked up and cut holes for three more so as to give more admin control. The Xin-Mo is a joystick encoder and not a keyboard one, so it only appears/functions as a joystick and is limited in emulators without keyboard functionality. It also doesn't support shift keys but MAME does with a hacky workaround so the extra few buttons will certainly come in handy. Ideally I'd like to get a KADE or an Mini-Pac for keyboard encoder support but I'm on a ludicrously tight budget, so a joystick one is the best I can do.
So far I have the wood, controls, amp, 17" 5:3 monitor and most of PC internals; Core2 E7200, 4GB DDR2, 450w PSU, 500GB HDD - all I'm missing is a low-profile CPU cooler and a GPU capable of running SF4 at 1280x1024 and 60fps, so I'm aiming for something like a Radeon 5570 or GeForce GT220, low-end and cheap yet both of which are capable. After that it's a couple of case fans (putting a PC inside a wooden box? That's going to be toasty!), MDF primer and latex paint - roll or spray, I've not decided yet. Need to find perspex/plexiglass for the marquee and monitor bezel. No artwork this time, except the marquee if I can, as I'm on an incredibly tight budget that will stretch this build over several months no doubt and I can't even begin to start building until I've got the money for primer/paint.
It's nice to finally have a bit of good luck, so let the good times roll! =)
Last edited by sabin1981 on Sun, 7th Sep 2014 23:25; edited 2 times in total
man im jelly, i been a member on pleasure dome for years with various rom sets, and man i have wanted to build a bartop for so long, but like you funds are just not there for it..
Thanks guys! It's going to be a long process but now that it's finally started I'm really hyped I know exactly how you feel about the funds, Mad, it's not exactly the cheapest thing to do, which is why it'll take a while yet.
I am not knowledgeable about these things but if a keyboard encoder is so much better than a joystick one, why dont just wait a little more to save up and get that? Is it that much more expensive?
Anyway, nice project! I wish you many many hours of joyful tinkering! I'll certainly follow this thread.
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
Now that's a serious build project. Looks very well done so far. Just a bit surprised you chose to go with a PC instead of all the new neat FPGA-solutions out there. However, if you're not a "puritan" that plan to stick with classics (arcade games, consoles etc.), instead going for a machine that can also play modern PC games, that's fine as well.
"All you need is mame, ratatataaa, all you need is mame, ratatataaa, all you need is... mame.....etc."
That's the plan, either eBay or our local selling site Finn. I saw a 5570 on there for 150kr (£15) a couple weeks back but, of course, no cash to buy at the time. Sadly shipping has a flat rate here and it will be another 150kr on top of that .. but it's better than UK<>NO shipping, that's for sure!
@couleur
I got the joystick encoder, wire set (oh man, that alone makes it worth while. Cutting, crimping and daisy-chaining 50+ wires? Not fun!) Happ Super sticks and the buttons as a set deal; $25 for the lot.. which is an absolute bargain. The same set with a KADE or MiniPac (or *any* keyboard encoder really) would have doubled in price and then some. Not to mention you can't buy keyboard encoders from AliExpress, they only sell the Chinese cheapy ones.
As for the KADE? It's a homebrew Minimus AVR devboard solution made by Degenatrons, an indie developer/designer that made an Xbox-powered bartop. You can get those for £21 but they only have 20 inputs (4+4 for the sticks and 6+6 for the buttons) so that means you have to either buy two for a proper 2p cab, or use shifted-keys for basic functions like START or COIN. Buying two KADEs? That's £44 I *do* have a Minimus AVR lying around somewhere from my old PS3 dongle days, but I'd need a soldering iron and a breadboard to convert - neither of which I have.
I could always buy a KADE in the future (or convert my Minimus) and use the current encoder solely for player 2 (which doesn't need keyboard functions like ESC/F1, etc) and use a KADE for player 1. Hmm.
@Frant
What FPGA solutions? SoCs? Naw, too weak and the Android kits are really cheap but then they're limited to what emulators and software is available for Android. With a PC I have enough power to run every emulator out there (at 3.6Ghz it's even enough for PS2 mostly) and still having some standard PC games, like Street Fighter 4/Double Dragon Neon
However, the main reason I'm not buying anything extra is lack of money. I'm simply using what components I already had in my "tech box" When I build another, I'll aim for getting an AMD APU, an A10 Kaveri or Athlon Kabini, since they come with R7s built in. Dirt cheap too
@Guy_Incognito
I want to keep the power down as much as possible anyway, just as a matter of course, but I don't need to worry about heat. Most people building cabs use decent cards - anything from 8800s to one guy that built his with a GTX460. As long as the airflow is good, and I'll make sure it is, there's nothing to worry about. Besides; I won't be playing BF3 or anything, mostly MAME/SNES/etc with some PC stuff like OMF or SF4 thrown in.
@dingo_d@difm
Thanks guys <3
Last edited by sabin1981 on Sat, 6th Sep 2014 16:17; edited 1 time in total
From scratch with no parts/components in your collection? Around £300 or so, maybe more. It depends on what you want out of it and what your skill level is. I'm buying prefab kits (£50+£30 shipping) but if you're a handy carpenter or have access to a CNC router, then you could knock that down to cost basically by doing it yourself - and a 1200x2400mm sheet of 12mm MDF is less than £30 even here in Norway. Internals vary so much, from dirt cheap to really expensive, but even that depends on what you want.
Just want some classic emulators? Buy a £25 Raspberry Pi B+ ... that will run SNES/MD/GBA/MAME etc though it won't be sufficient for high-level MAME titles, like SF3/Killer Instinct or any of the 3D games. No PS1 either, not unless you want slow gameplay and no sound. You could even use an Android HDMI stick, some fancy high-end quadcore SoC that will play everything nicely. Modding a classic Xbox 1 is another option and those things are emulation powerhouses.
To break it down;
Wood. Either a prefab or a sheet.
Monitor.
Internals. Take your pick; PC, Android, Raspberry, Xbox, even a pure arcade JAMMA solution in one of those dinky little XXXin1 bootlegs that are usually built around Pentium 4 systems but converted for use in standard (JAMMA) arcade cabinets.
Audio. If you've got some PC speakers lying around you could cannibalise those, but most prefer an amp and smaller speakers.
Inputs. You'll need sticks, buttons and an encoder that can make sense of the inputs. Price varies depending on quality .. and hey, this is something else you can even knock together yourself if you're handy. Cut apart a USB gamepad and solder wires to contact points; cheap/free Joystick encoder. Cut apart a keyboard and use the encoder board to do the same; cheap/free Keyboard encoder
Marquee/Bezel. Most prefer to use plexiglass/perspex but you can also use a proper pane of glass if you want. Or none, if your monitor is nicely flush with the cabinet and you don't need a protection screen. Marquee lights are a simple strip of LEDs but you can even forego that if you want. You'll need some way to hold the bezel and marquee, so either cut slots in the wood or buy rubber retainer strips.
Artwork or Paint. This, this is the costly part. If you want artwork then expect to pay lots as printing this onto adhesive vinyl is *not* cheap, look to spend £60+++ and multiples more if you commission non-stock artwork. You can save money by doing what I'm doing and simply buy MDF primer (oil-based) and some vinyl/rubber paint. It will be a more "stock" look rather than fancy artwork but that can look great too.
Nice, this is going to be interesting! Had a friend at work that built an arcade machine, and it looked great. You're going to have a lot of fun, Sabin!
Bloody Minus, looks like they're having some server issues Rehosted on Tiny, thanks for letting me know. I won't be able to do any purchases/changes this month as my HDDs are becoming temperamental so I need to replace -- getting an SSD (finally joining the PC master race!) and consolidating my mechanicals into a single 2TB drive. Next month I'll pick up my GPU/cooler/paint and start on the cab.
Woo!!! Paint, finally! My wife and I popped into our local Fargerike (a paint/lighting specialist store) and picked up a couple of cans today, I got some white acrylic primer and then we mixed a nice cherry red gloss oil-based paint for the top coat. We wanted something that would look good in the living room, rather than dull brown/black, so hopefully this looks good We've got friends coming up this week but I'll try and get around to painting it all up in the next couple of days, then it's construction time! Modesty blocks and plastic spacers/risers turned up so I can just start fitting immediately and I'm pretty sure I'll use my new Kingfast SSD as the bartop drive, along with a 500GB lappy drive for storing the large ISOs.
Still need a GPU, CPU cooler (can't have the Noctua u12p inside a bartop ), perspex sheet for bezel/marquee and a pair of speakers. Oh and an LED light bar for behind the marquee, though that can wait until I get some marquee art.
That's a really good offer thanks, but sadly won't be of any use to me.. my proc for the bartop is an LGA775 Core2 Duo I've also got my 2500k stock HSF but can't use that either, hehe. Thanks though! I've got my eye on the RaijinTek Zelos. It's a low profile HSF and only costs £15 - either that or the AC Freezer 11 LP for £12 Unless someone knows a better cooler for a similar price?
Yeah but those are *big* coolers, not suitable for a small bartop cabinet which is why I'm looking for a low-profile one. My u12p certainly wouldn't fit
Only £25! Will have no trouble with basic (read, non-Crytek ) PC titles.. will handle Ultra SF4, MK9, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, KoFXIII, Skullgirls and Double Dragon Neon, so it's perfect for my bartop I managed to make some nice profit selling Alien Isolation Deluxe gifts, so I could buy this and also have enough left over to get a low-profile 775 cooler for my cab. I'm only missing perspex, speakers and marquee artwork/light, but they're not essential.
Graphics card, HSF (settled on a Zalman CNPS-80f) and screws turned up \o/ I also ordered and received a KADE Encoder since, after a lot of umm'ing and ahh'ing, I came to the conclusion that a joystick encoder simply wouldn't be good enough. I'd be constantly struggling with emulators that don't allow mapping system functions to joypad, so yeah.. £18.50 for the KADE and it works like a charm. It's a Minimus AVR (the same thing we all used to hack our PS3s a few years back, hehe) soldered to a snazzy breadboard and had some screw terminals attached.
I've got it running a customised MAME input right now with 20 keys that can be mapped quite fine in any emulator, even absolutely fine in the Hyperspin frontend. 14 inputs for P1 (up/left/right arrow keys, buttons 1 through 8 are LCTRL, LSHIFT, LALT, SPACE, Z, X, C and V + 1p Start and Coin which are 1 and 5 on the keyboard) with a further 6 "admin" related functions. Defaults are Select (Enter), Pause (P), SaveState (F7), Reset (F3), MAME menu (Tab) and Exit (ESC) which I think I'll keep as-is. I can set up SHIFT functions too, so those 20 inputs actually become 40, but I genuinely can't think of any other buttons I need to map. So I've got the KADE as P1/admin and my cheapy joystick encoder as P2
Just waiting on the postie to bring me some speakers now, then all I need is wood glue, piano hinges, perspex and marquee lights/art. Wifey and I are going shopping tomorrow so I'll pick up glue and piano hinges and I can finally start construction \o/ So for now I've been playing with Hyperspin and getting it set up, it's a RIGHT ROYAL BITCH, but surprisingly satisfying once something actually works and you think "Ahhhhhhh, nice!"
~edit~
Right now I have one 28mm hole cut on each side of the cab and 5 cut on the front panel. That gives 7 possible admin/emulator functions (usually the side buttons would be "flippers" but I have no desire nor intention to play pinball titles... even less so on a square 5:4 monitor ) but I'm considering getting one of these;
That way I wouldn't have to cut the control panel and possibly affect the stability instead concentrating on the free space in the front panel - which would have 1p+Coin (which work as Start/Select in non-arcade emulators) on one side, 2p+Coin on the other and finally the middle tri-button could then have *three* functions, such as ESC(Cancel)/ENTER(Accept)/PAUSE(P) ---though that still leaves F3/F7/TAB. Hmmm.
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I *do* have a Minimus AVR lying around somewhere from my old PS3 dongle days, but I'd need a soldering iron and a breadboard to convert - neither of which I have.
When I build another, I'll aim for getting an AMD APU, an A10 Kaveri or Athlon Kabini, since they come with R7s built in. Dirt cheap too 
