Mr SaLTy's Arcade - Mame Controls page 3

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Arcade

Cabinet

Interface

Controls

Panel Construction

All panels were made by first cutting a piece of 3/4" particle board to the correct size. Then after a lot of planning, I drew the layout on the panel. I cut all the button holes with a 1 1/8" hole drill bit. I also used this to cut the holes for the joystick. Because the panel is 3/4" thick I wanted the joystick to stick out a little more so I used the body of the joystick to trace its' shape on the bottom of the panel and then used a router to route out about 1/4" of wood so the joystick mounted flush against the bottom of the panel. This makes the jpystick stick out of the control panel the perfect amount.

I used contact paper on the panel to make it look 'nice' so I wanted to protect it by using a sheet of Plexiglas on top of it. Plexi can be a pain in the ass to work with so here is what I did. First I got a saw blade for a jigsaw that is for plastic. Then I cut the Plexi to the correct size for the top of the panel. MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE THE PLASTIC PROTECTIVE SHEET ON IT. This will prevent scratches when you are cutting and drilling in it. I then made sure that the marking were nice and dark in the panel. When drilling into Plexi you want to be very careful to not push to hard or the plastic will break. To prevent this I first started with a very small drill bit. It drills through no problem. Then use the hole as a guide for the correct size bit and rotate the bit in reverse. This will melt/cut through the Plexi without cracking it.

I first drilled the four corners and put screws in them to hold down the Plexi. Then I used the 1 1/8" hole drill saw/bit to cut all the button holes. I cut through the Plexi and the panel all at the same time. This will make the holes line up perfectly. I then cut a thin 'trench' on the front edge of the panel so I could put a piece of T-molding in it.

After all the holes were cut I sanded the panel real smooth and cleaned it off with a tack cloth. This is a very good idea because even the smallest particle will show up a a big bump under the contact paper. Then I cut a piece of marble pattern contact paper and stuck it to the panel folding the edges all the way onto the back. Then I used an X-acto knife to cut out the holes and the trench on the front edge. Next, I removed the protective coating on the Plexi and cleaned it on both sides with Plexiglas cleaner and secured it to the panel. Then I just screwed in all the buttons and the joysticks. Finally, I cut a piece of T-molding the correct length and pushed it into the front edge of the panel.

Terminal Block

Then I started wiring the panel using .187" quick connects on the buttons and joysticks. Each button or joystick was going to have a 'A' or 'B' wire and another wire attached to it. See interfaces I treated the 'A' and 'B' wires as ground. I needed all the wires to fit into the 25pin D-sub connector so I had just one 'A' and 'B' wire go through the harness. All the 'A' and 'B' wires on the panel connect to the one in the harness at a terminal block on the back of the panel.

Connector

All of the other wires were then connected to the correct button (eventually) and marked. I made sure that all the wires has a bunch of wire on the end so I could cut them to the same length and would have about 8 inches of wiring harness at the end. Then they were connected to the correct pin on the 25pin D-sub connector. All wires were held snugly with tie wraps.

Cabinet controls

Under cabinet buttons

There are a few controls that I wanted to put in the cabinet because they were used with all control panels but more infrequently. Plus then I didn't have to put them on all the control panels. I cut a angled piece of aluminum and drilled holes in it and secured four momentary switches to it. These buttons are 1) tab - MAME config menu 2) Tilde - MAME volume control 3) F2 - MAME reset 4) P - MAME pause. I mounted this bracket under the front edge of the cabinet under the coin door. This bracket also has buttons for PC power and PC reset.

Interface connectors & wires

I drilled a small hole on the underside of the front edge of the cabinet and ran all the wires into the cabinet here. These connected to a 9pin D-sub connector and attached the 2nd part of the harness from the keyboard encoder. The picture at left shows the panel and cabinet connectors and the mouse interface connector that is mounted on the right inside side of the cabinet. The bottom of the picture shows the wire that come into the cabinet from the bracket as well as the coin door wires.

Credit Switches

Credits are registered with real quarters. Rather than drill more holes in the control panels or the cabinet I decided to use the original credit switches. This was just a matter of connecting wires to the encoder. So I ran the wires from the switches to the wires from the cabinet buttons and into the connector that attaches to the encoder. A picture of the wires can be seen above.