Project Code: PONYCAB

Lookit!  It’s tiny! I think it’s about the size of a pony. I don’t recall the last time I had a close look at a pony, but I imagine one would be about this tall.  Don’t know how big a monitor I can fit in there, but I’m thinking at least a 15. The control panel might be a bit of work, that angle is pretty steep.  Who knows though, it might turn out just fine!

This one has an awesome spot for a subwoofer, even has the vented ports :) Also a perfect shelf for the computer.

Need to cut and paint a back door, but that’s not much work at all.

Wow, that’s a lot of holes.  Need to use the extra-thick plexi to make this strong enough to take some punishment. Still, it’s good gauge steel, so it should stand up.

Okay, got the computer in there. Ended up using a P2-333 with 128meg RAM and a 10 gig hard drive. Monitor is a 15” (largest I could fit in!)  Time for yet -another- order to Ultimarc!

Did the control panel a bit simple.  One player, twin button packs, which I will wire separately, so that games like defender can still be played, but other games are simply ambidextrous.  Re-did this setup about 5 times...Ended up with P1 B1 at the top far right.

1. Could only fit a 15” monitor in the cabinet due to the depth. Raised the monitor shelf to the top of the cabinet, and gave it a sharper slope, to make viewing it easier on the ole neck.
2. Space left for the marquee.  This will be a piece of probably smoked plexi with backlit graphics. If it turns out like I hope, it should look awesome illuminating the control panel.  If I had put the marquee at the top, it would be right “in your face”, so this might work out well.
3. Dropped the angle of the control panel back so that it is more comfortable for the player.
4. Have still to re-do the front panel on this.
5. I’ll have to make a bezel to hide all this craziness inside.  Might use some small mame graphics I have lying around.
6. Bottom compartment is locked with a coin box.  Cabinet is fully coin operated.

A shot of the coin door. I have one mech in place, and a coin catch on the downtube to make sure the quarters end up in the bottom compartment, not rolling around in the computer chamber. Keyboard and mouse is there for fine tuning, and the I-pac is mounted on the left (red circle).

Back piece is cut and drilled and set with a lock.  Here you can see the computer, the monitor and the speaker (I enclosed an Alpine 6” in a box to improve the bass response)  The light for the marquee is in front of the speaker.  I had it right under the monitor, but had to lower it due to interference. As an odd note, I had HUGE problems with this setup...the games and sound ran too fast in DOS (Mame 32 ran fine). I scoured the newsgroups, reinstalled windows, changed the video card, and swore a lot. In the end it turned out to be a flukey soundblaster!!! Maybe this will help someone having a similar problem!

Finished!

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