Hi all .
It's a long time I don't write anything on the site .
There could be many reasons ... but I'm not here to explain them
!
SO
Here is the story of my "Garage / Arcade Room"
It all started years ago when I met Teo / Italiandoh ( Matteo Marioni ) , one of the best lasergames collector here in northern Italy . I went to his Lair and played Dragon's Lair and Space Ace , just like the last time I played them , since 20 and more years ago ! I was surprised watching myself defeat the two Bluth's at the 1st try
!
Talking with Teo about emulators I thought of building a Dragon's Lair cab ... FROM SCRATCH , like my "done-by-myself" nature wants me to do
. Before start building it I had to "restore" my garage with new paint , new floor coating and "extendend" electrical plant .
Before ...
... and after
FIRST OF ALL ... the project !
All drawings and measures came from IgorStellar .
Thank you so much Igor !!!
Then I bought from Internet all these stuff
( er ... sorry : no pictures for ORIGINAL speakers & grills , ORIGINAL score plexy panel and 19" PC CRT monitor )
I catched from the net some hi-res imgs of all the artwork , then a friend print them on three different types of "hard adhesive paper" with his color professional printer ( he owns a photo lab
)
I took my old PC ( AMD AthlonXP1600+ , ATI Radeon 9250 ) to throw inside the cab
Built a bent control panel ( zinc )
Bought some wood pieces ( MDF , thickness 19mm and 20mm black-plated wood ) and began cut & work on them ( vinyl covering phase included !!! )
A huge help came from my wife , applying side arts
I will now want to show you the final result , passing over the other stuff and the other cab's building
The cab on the left is a MAME cab , done starting from a not working Jamma .
I re-worked some woodpanel , built a new 2 microswitches joysticks + 4-button each player ( with some other "service" buttons ) control panel , etc...
The one on the right is a "mini Pac-Man AtariVCS cab" .
It' s the right "throne-place" for my FIRST console ( excluding a "last70's" horrible ping-pong console ) , that is a 6-switches 1st VCS release ( named "Stella" or "WoodyVCS" , due to the wooden frontpanel ). I have almost 70 games on cartridge , and some of them are very rare , like Time Pilot , Burgertime , Commando ...
Just 2 days ago I changed Dragon's Lair PC monitor with a 20" ( measured 19" ) TV CRT tube ( a Bluesky TV BL 5126 TX ) using the ATI board S-Video TVout , and it's REALLY great ! ( thanks for the tip , Bruno
! ) .
I still have to work on the Scart plug to make the tube auto-switch on the AV channel ( and maybe auto-turn ON itself , too ... withOUT pressing any key on TV remote control
) .
As soon as possible ( got to find some time to spend for it ... ) I'll post a detailed report of this work.
That's all , for now
