Project: Ultimate Arcade!

[Rankenphile]

Greetings, everyone.

It's about time I'm getting started on this mod and actually contributing some work of my own to these boards, so here we go - the Ultimate Arcade Machine!

As you can see here, I'm the lucky recipient of one awesome piece of nostalgia - an authentic Galaga arcade cabinet.

While not a true PC mod, I still think this will be pretty interesting to some of you that visit this board. My plan is to take a fully modded Xbox and install it inside of this machine, complete with a new controller, new screen, new speakers, custom marquee and paint job, new lights and more.

The cabinet was donated by the good fellow geeks at my local games and hobbies shop, Docking Bay 93, and I must give them props. They had this one in their storage unit and were kind enough to let me take it for free, as long as I hauled it off.

The cabinet itself is not in the greatest of shape, so a lot of the preliminary work will be restoring and remodeling it to fit my new vision. I spent some time yesterday measuring everything out for the box, and have drawn out a rough schematic of the current layout, below.

Below are some more photos of the cabinet in it's original state.

The rear view of the cabinet, before removing the monitor.

The side. What a shame to have to lose that great graphic.

As you can see, there is substantial damage to all of the graphics and the surface finish of the machine. This is but a small sample of the damage.

The speaker, which sits in the area above the monitor, behind the marquee.

The underside of where the speaker sits. This grill covers the speaker.

The particle board along the back is the most damaged, but this will be cut off and sanded down. The t-molding around the outside is in rough shape, as well, and will need to be replaced. At my work we use 1/2" T-Molding all the time, but unfortunately this stuff is 3/4", so I'll have to get new stuff ftom a hardware store.

This is the kick plate on the bottom. THere is substantial damage to it and to the wood above. The kickplate and the tray behind it will be removed, the kickplate itself replaced, and the rest of the wood in front will either get cut away or repaired, depending on how it fits with my overall plan.


So far, the only major progress has been removing the monitor and taking full measurements. I also removed the bar and metal grill that encircled the opening on the front above the kickplate. That and the plan drawing was all I was able to get through yesterday, as I had another appointment to get to and only had a little over an hour to do all this.

My plan for the monitor is to raise it up to a much more vertical position and install a television. The Xbox will sit below, where the coin door was originally. It will be connected to the house network, allowing me to connect to the file server and stream music, movies and television shows into this box, providing the main entertainment for the garage. I have old surround-sound speakers that I'll be installing throughout the cabinet to provide a much richer sound than the old mono speaker that is currently in there. I'm going to get the X-Arcade Dual Control stick (see picture below) and use it for the primary controls, but also have standard Xbox controllers available for use.

I've got a few other things up my sleeve, too, but this is the over-all goal. Work on it will be slow, especially at first, as we have a lot of work to do on the house and the garage (if you couldn't guess) since we just bought this house. It was originally owned by a bunch of meth-freaks who just let it go to hell. This is my primary concern, getting the house nad garage up to snuff, and this is a side project, but I will keep it posted with plans, questions and photos of my progress.

As my last step before leaving, I set off a couple flew bombs in the garage. I finally managed to kill or chase off the last of the rats (I hope) that are living under the garage, but I'm still working on the fleas. I'll keep you guys posted on my workspace, as well - heck, I don't even have electricity out here yet.

[crenn]

Looks like it's going to be a good mod. What I would do is actually install a PS2, XBox, PC and GC in the same unit and then have a switch that can switch between them all. It's only an idea but that in my opinon is the ultimate arcade machine

[Rankenphile]

Believe me, I considered something like that, and I do have a PS2 and GC, as well as my PC, but I don't want to take it that far.

The Xbox will run emulators of SNES, MAME, NES, Atari, Sega Genesis, you name it. Even original Playstation games. Plus it will be hooked to the network, so it really will be a full entertainment system. I'm thrilled with it as it is.

I may look into incorporating my other systems into it, but I want to keep having to fiddle around inside it to a minimum. As it is, I have to open it to boot the Xbox and have to turn the television screen on separately, as I can't just have them both power up with one switch. The Xbox requires a custom boot-up to get the mod to run - you have to hold down the power and eject buttons for three seconds or so for it to activate.

This way, though, I'll be able to back up my xbox games onto the hard drive (160gb, baby!) and run them all through the console there, so I won't ever have to switch out game discs. That's the real beauty of it all.

I should be getting my Xbox tomorrow, fully loaded. I'll definately post shots of it and any further progress as soon as I can.

Thanks for the comments!

[Rankenphile]

The Xbox just showed up!!

I ordered a custom-modded Xbox off of Craigslist, and it finally showed up! I'll post a couple screenshots and photos later tonight, when I get home, but now the agony of having to wait to get off work to play with my newest toy! ARGH!!!

[Aero]

Well, my parents are getting our basement finished, I really should build one of these as well. Not sure how though. I will be paying attention to this work log!

[TheGreatSatan]

Here's Yoshi's

http://www.gearlive.com/index.php/ne...-mod-09280209/

[[DGN]Nexus]

Heh... I was just talking to one of my firends at school about how cool it would be to have a Xbox and a PC in the same Case. The ultimate game station for where I live. Halo, Halo2 and PC games are the lead types here.

[GregoryJ]

Its a beautiful machine and really good starting canvas. Youshould try to save the artwork on the sides. I would tape them off with painter's tape and then do a whole new custom paint job on the rest and try to incorporate the colors and theme's of the oldschool grafix and look with the modern gaming technology. It would be a shame to loose that artwork (the side grafix). I do have to say that you got one heck of a deal and a great find too! Good luck and keep the pics coming.

[Rankenphile]

The more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to have to keep at least one of the graphics. They're not so beat up that I can't at least try to paint-patch them, but it will stil be noticeable.

I've been spending the past couple days drawing plans and configuring (and playing) with the Xbox. This thing is great - I've backed up about 20 games onto the hard drive, and have about 650 SNES roms already set up. I'm working on getting MAME and NES roms, probably a number of SNES and Genesis roms as well, and whatever else I end up cramming. I'm actually uploading music to it right now.

I've got a plan to widen the area aroudn the coin door, reinforce the area behind the top and sand and Bondo that area to smooth it off, replace the kickplate with a custom paint job, and pull out the old cointray box that was in there. I think I want to put a clear plexi door on it with an aluminum hinge and latch, and build a black box inside to house the Xbox itself. I'm planning on building a small pedestal for the Xbox to sit on, with a locking latch to fit it in to prevent shifting and theft. Inside the box, behind the lip around where the hole is, I'll mount 2 sound-activated UV CCFLs, and paint the inside and the Xbox itself with clear/UV-Green paint, so that it will look normal when it is quiet, but when music is playing or someone is playing a game, it will flicker with UV/Xbox green. Should be a pretty cool effect.

I've got a few other plans in the works, too, but I'm still working on them. One thing I may need a hand with is programming LEDs to light in sequence. Anyone have any experience with that? Billybob, I saw your work on programming the random LEDs on your R2 server, you know much about setting them to turn on in sequence?

Thanks. Pics coming soon, I just have to find my digital camera (I feel so bad! It's a great camera, and I have no idea where it is! All this moving and stuff is killing me!).

[crazybillybob]

Rock,

I'm working with a $9 Microcontroller to driver some other LEDs on R2Server. It has 8 Outputs so depending on how you them to light up it may work. The nice thing about it is that you can program it Via your Pc's serial port (Rs232) (to do this you need to order the Easy RS232 kit ($10)). The commands are easy to uderstand and the owner Mike S. answers q's on the forum there quickly.

Here's a Link to the Site I'm using the Athena HS (the HS is faster so the PWM out to the LED's are smooth, I need this because I'm makeing the LED's fade as well as flash)
Kronos Robotics

These Chips have shown up in Nuts and Voltz and Servo sevral times, As mike Writes some good articles for them using the chips.

Let me know if you need more info.

I'm also thinking that you could make 1 power button to turn on the whole system, you'd have to "Mod" the power switch for the TV and Xbox.. There would have to be a time deley on the Xbox power and Reset (for 3 secs). I don't have a curcuit yet but try searching the net It's been done before.
I'll let you know when I find it (I'll look as soon as work slows down a bit!)

Crazybillybob