ProtoMAME #2 (TiBox)
Seen sitting on a small table. Apple Titianium Powerbook
guts, Apple amplified speakers, dual joysticks and plenty of buttons.
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MAME machine #2 is also made from an Apple Powerbook. This time though I decided to try a
"mini-upright" or "bar-top" style machine.
This machine is in response to my first MAME machine really. On this machine I wanted to go for an upright playing position. Too, with these LCD displays, viewing angles can be restrictive. Placing the display directly in front of your face solves that issue. My first machine was a touch too quiet so I made this machine a little larger and dropped in a set of Apple amplified speakers (circa mid 90's). They have no subwoofer, but the speakers themselves sound good and beefy and have quite large magnets. This machine can really crank out the volume.
This time, I made sure the speakers faced out toward the player. |
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Another way in which I was reacting to my first MAME machine, was in my decision to include
additional controls. A few extra buttons and an extra joystick got me Robotron
and a few other multi-joystick games. As well, some games, like Joust and Gauntlet, I am now
able to play with two players.
My first MAME machine had a permament control panel. For this machine, I made the control
a seperate, detachable component. It is attached with hinges and I can, right now, remove the
hinges and easily attach a second control panel if I desire to. I would have to modify the
control wiring and insert a DB-25 connector to facilitate easily swapping control panels.
By placing the common controls (coin insert, 1, 2 player buttons, etc.) on a seperate surface
(in this case above the deck and between the speakers) there is no need to put those redundant
controls on every control console I create.
You may notice that in the area beneath the control deck (left to right), I have located the
power supply for the Powerbook (upside down and mounted with hot glue), the IPAC USB interface
board (highly recommended) and the wall-wart-like power brick for the powered speakers. |
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But where is the CPU? Come around back.... There is a second hinged surface here. Again the guts of the machine, motherboard, etc. are mounted to a plexiglas door that swings open for easy access. Power button is the yellow arcade button. This photo was early and the lower part of the base was not yet painted black. |
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No battery (the one it came with was not holding a charge for me).
It also has a longer display cable running to the LCD panel (white rectangle). Otherwise, it's
the guts from a Titanium. The harddrive is dead center with the optical drive (in this case
a DVD drive) to it's right. Along the backside (closest to the MAME machine) is the
motherboard.
It has a modem, is Airport-ready, ethernet, Firewire, two USB ports -- the usual Titanium stuff. The built-in speakers were removed and the power switch was replaced with a large yellow arcade button. An additional switch was mounted in order to turn on and off the amplified speakers. A nice hack would be a relay controlled switch in its place. I could perhaps even draw current off the Firewire or one of the USB ports to operate the relay. In this way the speakers would power down when the machine did. Also visible from the rear are the large magnets for the powered speakers and the backs of the five common switches (coin insert, etc.). |
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So, the display.... The Titanium is unique in that it has an aspect ratio wider than your
standard 3:4 display. Sadly, this is a poor match for an arcade game emulator. I didn't wish
to run the display in a "stretched" mode (everything would be horizontally stretched and
distorted) and I didn't want the user to see the black matte stripes along the edges when I
put the display into a non-streteched (3:4 aspect ratio) mode. So, I basically built the
opening in front of the machine to only expose the 3:4 portion of the display that will be
imageable.
Yes, I confess, this was perhaps a wicked thing to do - throwing away that screen real estate. Something I forgot to mention (a nice touch) was the 'stop' or 'slide' I put along one edge of the back door (motherboard). This little brass bit allows you to swing open the motherboard in back but keeps it from flopping all the way open. I could have used a chain as well (make sure you don't short out anything on the motherboard....). |
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As with my first machine, we're running a custom compiled version of MacMAME on Mac OS 9.2.
I love Mac OS X (ten), but the display drivers for MacMAME have not been moved over to X
yet.
I have now standardized on a green button (Enter key) that takes you into a game from the MacMAME front end and a red button (Escape key) to get you out of the game. In fact, this was the bit I had to change in MacMAME (the bit that required the re-compile). Command-W is normally the way you exit a game, but that is two keystrokes. I like having a simple interface for getting into and out of a game. Things I would do differently? The wood work on this machine is poor when compared to the job I did on the first MAME machine. I wish I had finished it better. Perhaps I can use some sort of plastic laminate and clean up the outward appearance a bit. |
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I think I could have put the cluster of five buttons down along the front edge of the machine.
I put them where they are because I found with my first machine that buttons mounted along the
front edge of a machine are easily bumped by accident. That may be true with a cocktail-style
machine, but this really isn't likely to happen with this upright machine (you tend to sit
back from the machine a bit).
The speaker grilles (shower drains painted black) don't look too good. I don't know. There are some fit and finish issues, but generally I'm happy with this machine. |
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