XJnine
10-22-2006, 05:58 AM
As with most mods this one ended up being pretty different that what I first envisioned. My first thought was to design an arcade machine that looked similar to the bar top games you see in you local watering hole. This would have involved turning the case on its side and mounting the LCD screen to the back. I scrapped that idea and I thought about mounting the LCD screen flush with the side of the case. You would still have to lay it on its side to play it but it would have been fairly portable. After seeing the case however, I realized I wouldn’t be able to do that with the 15” LCD monitor I planned on using (btw, I had to paint that thing too). My wife wouldn’t let me spend the money on one of the smaller bare LCD’s out there so I had to make do with what I had. That’s how I ended up with the current design.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/overall.jpg
This actually works out pretty well. After handling the case I knew it could hold up to the torture of me pounding on the buttons during some furious gaming sessions and it’s actually the perfect height (with the wheels on) to use while sitting in a chair.
To get this thing ready I had to strip it down and do some painting so the case didn’t look too generic.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/prep.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/painted.jpg
To make this an arcade machine you need to have some arcade supplies. That’s where www.ultimarc.com (http://www.ultimarc.com/) comes into play. I got the buttons, joystick, and keyboard encoder from them. This particular joystick is great for this kind of application because of how easy it is to mount. They also make some that have a more professional look but they wouldn’t work for this mod. One good thing about the joystick is that it’s adjustable between 4-way and 8-way. You don’t want to get stuck in the diagonals while playing Pac-Man and when you need the diagonals you can switch it back.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/supplies.jpg
http://www.ultimarc.com/images/ipac2_diag.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/buttons.jpg
Since this was going to be a portable arcade machine I couldn’t be lugging speakers around so I had to come up with an alternative. I found the Cyber Acoustics CA-1001 Black Internal Bay Speakers to be a good fit. They actually sound pretty good for internal speakers. You can see them in the front of the system.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/front.jpg
Inside the system you’ll see two of the things I’m most proud of.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/video.jpg
The first is the video card. Yup, that’s a Rendition V2200 powered Hercules Thriller3D. All of us probably remember what brought us to this website. This card is the reason I’m here. I bought this card an awful long time ago and when I went searching the net for information on Rendition video cards I found that Bjorn3D was the place to be. The card still works great and it’s a perfect fit since the system is running Win98. Why Win98 you say? Because it has a relatively small install footprint that fits nicely on the 1GB compact flash card I’m using as the hard drive. You can see the card in the adapter on the right hand side of the picture. The system boots pretty darn quickly and it stays cool and quiet. I didn’t need much hard drive space in this machine since the Mame ROMs are sitting on my big arcade machine and they’re accessed via a shared drive through a wireless NIC. I could have gone with a standard hard drive but I thought it would be fun to do something a little different.
In keeping with the Bjorn3D theme I went with a blue and black color scheme and I decided to adorn my side window with a nice blue paw.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/paw.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/top.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/glow.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/bottom.jpg
I hope you guys like it. This is my first real case mod. I definitely wish I had more time. I think the contest was long enough but since I travel for a living I was only home a couple days a week and trying to work on this while helping the wife with 3 kids can be a little time consuming. I’ll keep tinkering with it to clean up some of the wires inside and reroute the monitor wires through the case so they’re not exposed.
You can see all the pictures in my gallery here: http://www.bjorn3d.com/photo/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=367
Let me know what you all think. Thank you VERY, VERY much Antec and Bjorn3D. Without the support of Bjorn3D I wouldn’t have this excellent case to work with and without an incredible versatile and sturdy case from Antec this mod wouldn’t even be possible. Thanks again!
http://www.x-j-nine.com/overall.jpg
This actually works out pretty well. After handling the case I knew it could hold up to the torture of me pounding on the buttons during some furious gaming sessions and it’s actually the perfect height (with the wheels on) to use while sitting in a chair.
To get this thing ready I had to strip it down and do some painting so the case didn’t look too generic.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/prep.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/painted.jpg
To make this an arcade machine you need to have some arcade supplies. That’s where www.ultimarc.com (http://www.ultimarc.com/) comes into play. I got the buttons, joystick, and keyboard encoder from them. This particular joystick is great for this kind of application because of how easy it is to mount. They also make some that have a more professional look but they wouldn’t work for this mod. One good thing about the joystick is that it’s adjustable between 4-way and 8-way. You don’t want to get stuck in the diagonals while playing Pac-Man and when you need the diagonals you can switch it back.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/supplies.jpg
http://www.ultimarc.com/images/ipac2_diag.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/buttons.jpg
Since this was going to be a portable arcade machine I couldn’t be lugging speakers around so I had to come up with an alternative. I found the Cyber Acoustics CA-1001 Black Internal Bay Speakers to be a good fit. They actually sound pretty good for internal speakers. You can see them in the front of the system.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/front.jpg
Inside the system you’ll see two of the things I’m most proud of.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/video.jpg
The first is the video card. Yup, that’s a Rendition V2200 powered Hercules Thriller3D. All of us probably remember what brought us to this website. This card is the reason I’m here. I bought this card an awful long time ago and when I went searching the net for information on Rendition video cards I found that Bjorn3D was the place to be. The card still works great and it’s a perfect fit since the system is running Win98. Why Win98 you say? Because it has a relatively small install footprint that fits nicely on the 1GB compact flash card I’m using as the hard drive. You can see the card in the adapter on the right hand side of the picture. The system boots pretty darn quickly and it stays cool and quiet. I didn’t need much hard drive space in this machine since the Mame ROMs are sitting on my big arcade machine and they’re accessed via a shared drive through a wireless NIC. I could have gone with a standard hard drive but I thought it would be fun to do something a little different.
In keeping with the Bjorn3D theme I went with a blue and black color scheme and I decided to adorn my side window with a nice blue paw.
http://www.x-j-nine.com/paw.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/top.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/glow.jpg
http://www.x-j-nine.com/bottom.jpg
I hope you guys like it. This is my first real case mod. I definitely wish I had more time. I think the contest was long enough but since I travel for a living I was only home a couple days a week and trying to work on this while helping the wife with 3 kids can be a little time consuming. I’ll keep tinkering with it to clean up some of the wires inside and reroute the monitor wires through the case so they’re not exposed.
You can see all the pictures in my gallery here: http://www.bjorn3d.com/photo/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=367
Let me know what you all think. Thank you VERY, VERY much Antec and Bjorn3D. Without the support of Bjorn3D I wouldn’t have this excellent case to work with and without an incredible versatile and sturdy case from Antec this mod wouldn’t even be possible. Thanks again!