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Today was a monumental day as I finished enough of the major woodwork on the cabinet to move the cabinet indoors. There's still a long way to go, and more woodworking needs to be done for the control panel etc... A shelf support was also damaged and theback brace for the shelf will need to be moved back a couple inches to accomodate the curve of the tv screen and the bezel.
The damaged control panel side was filled with joint compound and sanded down, the gap between the side and front was also filled.
The end result provided a smooth clean control panel side. A little T-molding should cover up all of those loose bits of contact paper all over the cabinet.
Likewise, the front control panel was covered in contact paper to match the cabinet and all of the trim areas that were painted black were touched up to cover the paint damaged during construction.
1 1/8th inch holes were drilled in the front control panel for the coin 1 and coin 2 buttons. L brackets were also added on the top side for the control panel. A carrage bolt will go through the cp and into these brackets and will be secured with a wing nut. I tried several other locking mechanisms for the top panel, but this is the simplest and easiest to pull off.
You can't see them, but the CP was test fitted with machine screws through those newly drilled holes and into the brackets.
While I was waiting for the cabinet to dry, I decided to play with my router and do a test fit on how the joysticks would look when finally mounted. The bottom of the control panel was routed 1/2 inch in something close to the shape of the joystick base, the base was then bolted to the control panel.
I then mounted the shorter 4 way stick onto the assembly to check the fit. I'm very pleased with this as it's just like how I remember the stick for games like Pac Man and Donkey Kong.
The 8 way stick was fitted and actually fastened in using the hardware. The action is very smooth and the slightly taller shaft gives enough clearance to hopefully make newer games like the Street Fighter II series completely playable... DRAGON PUNCH!
Here is the cabinet in it's final (until I have to move, ugh!) resting place next to my slot machine in the makeshift rec room that used to be my dinette area.
The new marquee! It looks better in this picture because of the flash, but I do have 3 layers of white paper behind it so removing a layer or two might help, or I might print a 2nd banner with just the background to place behind it to help diffuse the light without making things too dark. I used a program called Poster 6.6 you can download it at www.postersw.com it's shareware, only 16 bucks to register the demo lets you print up to 12 banners. The program will let you print a banner using regular paper, but I bought some HP banner paper for the occasion, your printer has to support that type of paper to use this option. Originally I was going to use Cory Vigen's screenshot marquee and print it out on the banner paper, but I decided to make something a little different using Poster and some of the side art that you can get at Dragon's Den. That's all for now, I'm awaiting the arrival of my IPAC and my shipments from Happ to start re-fitting the cabinet and build the control panel!
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