@MacDLSA

Hi Marco.. Nice to finally "meet" you. We've never officially presented, but I often looked at your posts/pics/videos on the web.
Your gameroom is basically as mine would be, if I had one: A Dragon's Lair cab for Dragon's Lair (and other one-button lasergames when wanted), a MAME cab with a lot of buttons for the other arcade games, and various working retro consoles/computers ready to use. It just lacks a Space Ace cab to be absolutely complete (it was terrific to see the "Bluth's brothers" singing side by side in the arcades in the 80's.) .

I remember I spent a lot of time between 2002 and 2005, trying to reproduce the perfect DL cab plans. In 2005 I was running out of time, so I had to build mine. In that moment I think the plans "splitted" in two versions: the last one I gave to Igor and the one I used to build my cab. If you look closely, you can notice that the monitor on my cab is mounted a bit more "vertically", and the speakers panel is a bit more forward than on the original cab. I don't remember why I changed this two things before start building, and I'm afraid it was a mistake. Your DL cab instead was probably built using the other version of the plans (I don't know if Igor changed something on it) and it's apparently authentic to the USA one.. Very nice job!

The reason I decided to build an Atari cab was not because I was missing DL as the game itself. It was yet available in a bunch of formats, and even emulable via Daphne/laserdiscs. What I was really missing was DL as the whole thing it used to be.
That big black cab, it's artworks, it's blue score/lives screens, and it's big yellow Atari logo.
When I was 7, that sticker made me think DL was a game by Atari, and so I became sure that an Atari 2600 cartridge of DL not only had to exist, but even that it had the same audio and visuals of the arcade version (!!!).. I looked around in every shop, asking for this phantomatic cartridge for an entire summer.. Then, luckly, I surrender..
This memory is enough for me to always choose the Atari sticker instead of the hardware scoreboard (even if sometimes I have to activate the on-screen scoreboard overlay..  )

But maybe I was not completely wrong about DL on Atari 2600..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wwzSg92HYo&list=UUhqt2ze5DGeZRn2ruRLhoCw&index=45&feature=plcp
Seriously, what's this thing?

Hope to read some updates on your projet soon  Shocked

Well, I'm a bit embarrassed.. More than 5 years passed from the last post, but I was VERY busy. Anyway, I want to end the story.
In this 5 years the cab was externally incomplete, but it worked quite well till the UVC board got broken.
I solved the problem by connecting the vga output of the motherboard directly to the screen and rebuilding the system from scratch to lower the video output frequency to 15,7KHz. Now the boot sequence is cleaner and every game can run at its native refresh rate, with no tearing effect at all.
Then the audio amplifier board got broken too..  So, the cab now works, but with no audio.
But other than boring technical stuff like this, I was waiting for some "aesthetical" enhancements to come back and post new pics..
During the last two weeks I applied the sidearts, the marquee overlay and the thee Atari logos..









I hope late is better than never..
I still got to change the monitor plexi, which is brown and not black.
I'm writing a little python app too, a kind of hidden frontend to change rom version and/or dip switches settings before the game boots.

If someone has it

I'm quite sure someone on this forum has that sticker on their cab.. But I understand it can be hard to take a scan of it. Anyway, I have a scan of the german version, made by Igorstellar. Using it as a model, I think i could "rebuild" the english version, but I need at least some clear, readable pictures of it. After all, I built the whole cab this way..

What a job, Bruno!! Your hands turned that old crappy cab to a factory new Space Ace! Simply stunning!    

The electronical solution you used is quite similar to the one I choose for my (still WIP) DL repro cab: autostarting Daphne with real laserdisc (mine is with MPEGs).
This make me think a pair of questions for you:

You (like me) don't want a Cinematronics score leds display between your speakers grilles, or an annunciator board under the control panel (european pride!!   ) . So, I suppose that this time you (like me) are forced to play SA using the USA ROMs, and without being able to see your score and your remaining lives (no fat blue screens   ).
Daphne 0.99.8 will probably support Euro versions of DL and SA, but to have the overlay emulated, it will be mandatory to use MPEGs (this was the first reason for me to choose not to use real LDs) . If you are going to convert your game to the Euro version in the future, which approach are you thinking about? And how do you select the skill level this time?

Congratulations again for the great work!


Igor: era per me la scansione dell'adesivo? Grazieee!!!! Continuo a non sapere come avrei fatto senza il tuo aiuto!
A presto!

Hey Bruno!

The system works nicely. I can play DL, SA, and a bunch of MAME games (at least the one that don't need more than one button). The marquee and the stickers will come next. After a year of work on the cab, now I'm taking my summer holiday. I'll think about tha cab again when I'll be back in Rome, in september. For now only sun, sea, food, good wine and.. ;-)

See ya!

My friends, it lives.



Still having some problems with powering up/booting the system and with AV synchronization (the whole system runs via DVD, no HD at all), and it's not playable yet because I still have to wire the control panel.
Anyway now I can see and hear DL running in a real cab, and it is amazing!

By the way, I encoded the attract mode video directly from the HD anamorphic version, at 4000 kb/s only, and the quality is simply stunning. It really seems to be a true laserdisc.

Hi all!

Great day today: the main control panel is completed! Look..




Cool, eh?  

Now let's fix the panel on the cab..



And here it is: the cab with his main control panel installed..



Well, my friends. Most of the work is done. The next step is to do all the wiring and then I'll wake up the beast. Will it work at the first attemp? I don't think so.. . We'll see..

See ya!

After a long wait, I finally got the metal parts:


Here is the main panel. As you see, both the controls and the overlay fit perfectly. Those guys did a very fine work.


The alternate panel.


The plexies brackets. I know, the two brackets should be a bit different. But why? The thrid bracket is the one for the monitor plexi (not present in the Cinematronics DL).

Now, I'm going to solder the hinges and latches on the panels to fix them on the cab, then I'll apply the overlay in the way Bruno did..