Some nice t-mold ordered

The existing plastic  t-molding on the cabinet looks very abused and indicates the cabinet must have had a hard working life when it was earning a living from the public. There are quite a few cracked areas, cigarrette burns and  the t-mold is coming away from the grove underneath at some areas. The t-mold is unusual in that it has a two curved grove pattern in it and that makes it look more expensive.

Unfortunately after a long search I still haven't managed to find an identical replacement for it. I did already purchase on Ebay a bag of five small sample t-mold offcuts to see what they could look like on the cabinet.

The modern  t-mold you can buy these days looks quite cheap and they don't come with the grove pattern. The colours also look quite matt. The best modern t-mold seems to be the chrome version, however I quite liked the brass/gold colour of the original t-mold on the cabinet as it went well with the wood colour.

Yesterday for the first time I spotted on Ebay a good candidate t-mold for the cabinet. I had never seen it on an arcade cabinet before. Looks like something that would be seen on the side of a casino table! Its a gold edged t-mold with a blue pattern on the surface. I think this will work, as the blue will also go with the blue theme I have adopted for the screen bezel. Also blue is the colour that seems to have been unofficially adopted by MB for their European Vectrex promotion - and my goal is to make the finished arcade cabinet look like a real cabinet that could have been produced by MB. Anyway I have just ordered 25m of the stuff!

The cabinet control panel

When I first got the arcade cabinet it was accompanied with a control panel.  The control panel provided controls for two players (each player had a joystick and three buttons and there were two additional buttons to select a one or two player game).

When I originally arranged for the cabinet width to be reduced I knew there wouldn’t be enough room to include controls for two players. The finish of the control panel also didn’t look that good. As a temporary measure the area for the joystick on the left hand side of the control panel was simply cut off. As you can see from the photo the remaining joystick is slightly off centre and there are a number of holes and possibilities for a total of 8 buttons. The original Vectrex controller only had four buttons and for me the positioning of the buttons on the arcade control panel is less than ideal. I also am not very much in favour of having the joystick securing screws visible on the top surface of the control panel. Therefore, I will investigate the ideal joystick and button layout and with the intention of making a completely new control panel – I’ll cover this subject  in a future post (very soon).

Instruction artwork

All 80s arcade machines had game instructions typically either on the control panel or on the screen bezel. A later project is that I'm going to modify the Mine Storm software so that it can  be coin operated. When I have success I am thinking  there that there will be a small sticker with instructions placed on the left hand bottom conrner of the screen bezel for the cabinet. Here's a screen dump of the artwork I am considering having made up as a sticker. Of course it also means that some way is need to identify the button number - either numbers printed on the buttons or numbers printed on the control panel artwork. Still very much work in progress at the moment:

Kick box (post 2)

Preparing the kick box took longer then expected. I bought some gloss black paint from my local supermarket and set about painting the kickbox. However, the finished result was terrible. Despite trying to apply the paint on thinly, paint drips still appeared. Small paint balls were also visible. I thought I was being careless, so sand papered down again with fine sand paper and tried painting again. The result was just as poor. The folllowing photos show the process. For sand papering first I used very course paper followed by fine sand paper and a little spit! On the fourth go I tried a different paint. This was Wickes Exterior satin (black) for wood. This gave an excellent finish.

After the paint was dry I attached the four cabinet slides on the corners and mounted the two cabinet wheels. The first picture shows the kickbox in its upright position with the back in view whilst the second photo shows the kickbox underside.The  final arrangement of the kickbox with the castor wheels positioned at the rear is clearly seen. This kickbox including the stand off of the slides adds 17cm to the height of the cabinet!

Kick box (post 1)

I’m currently constructing a new wooden kick box to replace the damaged kick box that originally came with the cabinet. The existing kick box had bits chipped off at the corners and also showed evidence of water damage. I had previously paid a carpenter to make a replacement kick box but I was not happy with the result. It did not seem very strong.

I’m going to improve on the existing box through a number of modifications. Firstly, I’m increasing the height of the box, so the cabinet and the Vectrex screen are higher. This will allow tall persons (such as me) to comfortably play the machine (I'm too old to suffer neck aches).  Secondly I am considering some metal feet for the kick box which will protect the box base from scuffs if the cabinet is dragged across the floor. This also provides some protection from water damage as the wooden walls of the box would be raised off the ground.  Finally, I've seen some company built arcade cabinets that have wheels positioned on their rear making it easier for them to be moved. The wheels are positioned so that the cabinet can be tilted and the pushed or pulled rather like a sack truck hand trolley. I want to make my cabinet look like a real cabinet rather than a home cabinet, so having such wheels will help make that aim more convincing.

I just received some bits I ordered from Arcadeshop.de for the wooden kick box. These guys are good guys and very helpful. They sell a whole lot of parts for the would-be arcade system maker.

I bought four cabinet slides and two cabinet wheels.  Regarding the cabinet slides I had thought whether I really wanted these or perhaps levelling feet instead to compensate for uneven floor surfaces. However, given my cabinet will be placed on relatively thick carpet pile I felt I could get away with cabinet slides instead. The slides are round and will make it easy to fine position the cabinet resting place.  The mouting of the wheels will require some careful thought. They will need to be arranged in the kick box so they are on the back wall of the box but affixed in such a way that not all weight is on the back wall when the cabinet is tilted. Ideally they would not be very visually obtrusive either and would only touch the floor when the cabinet is titled.

Installation of the marquee backlight

The cabinet didn't come supplied with back lighting for the marquee and the area for the back light was masked of with a black plastic panel. However, it did come with a wooden panel for mounting a light. This panel slides into the marquee area. Also mounted on this panel is a speaker. When the panel is slid in, the speaker position is directly above a slotted area (resemebles a grill)  underneath the marquee to allow the sound from the speaker to get through.

Today I mounted the light fitting and light onto the panel.

I am now able to slide this panel into the marquee area. See below with the backlight switched on! Next is some perspex and artwork. I could have different artwork depending on the game installed but to begin with I am going with the European Vectrex logo. This will be a sticker (I ordered from bigange83 on a transparent blue background perspex.

Wooden screen bezel complete...

A new wooden screen bezel is complete and installed....Admittedly the Vectrex screen looks small, but the proportions look right, and the screen doesn't look ridicously small or silly  in the cabinet.

Actually, this is not the end of it. I have a friend who is kindly machining with a CNC machine a perspex bezel that will sit on top of the wooden bezel. In addition I have just ordered a sheet of glass that will sit on top of the perspex bezel.