Russ's 'Weenix' cabinet

[retromax]

I was reading a thread on here yesterday with a mini cabinet so I thought i'd post my mini Phoenix 'Weenix' cabinet that I made a few months back.

About 3 years ago I was at the local tip getting rid of some rubbish when I came across a little 10" colour TV and a light bulb came on!, as i'm a fan of building 'little' arcade cabinets I knew something I always wanted was a Centuri 'Phoenix' arcade and this was my opportunity to start. I built a system running mame from a Pentium III motherboard and then placed it in the shed where unfortunately it waited for 3 years, I'd got a week off work coming up as the wife was away with work so I thought "I know what i'm gonna do, I'm gonna finish that Phoenix cab".

When the week arrived I started construction as soon as the wife left the house

and within a day I had my basic cabinet built from 3/4" ply, as the week progressed i'd been cutting glass, grinding and bending aluminium, routing, sanding, staining, painting and everything.

When it came to getting the system out of the shed i'd built for this it wasn't working too good and was noisy so I opted to use a spare raspberry pi i'd had laying around for a while, I had all the artwork specially scaled down and printed (the cabinet is only 90cm tall) and that was the last thing to fit.

So a few pics along the way to completion

Oh and it's 10p per play just as it was when I was a kid

Philmurr did this for me too, check out the bottom line of text

It also has Phils enhanced freeplay too

finally moved into it's new home

 

[Fuzzy]

Wow! Brilliant, Russ!

 

[corn]

Love it!

 

[Jase]

Jesus! Superb build! Looks amazing. So do you have to sit on the floor cross legged to play it?

 

[RygarR]

Nice. A real object d'art! And you can play Pheenix on it. Pheenix was one of the first games in my local arcade after it opened. For about half the time they had it, the machine had a fault where if you switched it off using the power switch on top, then switched it back on again, you got three free credits! Happy days.

 

[retromax]

Jesus! Superb build! Looks amazing. So do you have to sit on the floor cross legged to play it?

I do indeed, it's like being at school!
There's about 12 quid in 10p's in there right now for a rainy day!

 

[Flinnster]

That's a really lovely cab! I've been looking at caravan tellys and little CRTs for a while now too!
How did you cut out the monitor bezel - router?
Amazing finish

 

[Jase]

Jesus! Superb build! Looks amazing. So do you have to sit on the floor cross legged to play it?

I do indeed, it's like being at school!
There's about 12 quid in 10p's in there right now for a rainy day!

Well I reckon there's gonna be plenty of them on their way!

Don't forget to get up and stretch your legs once in a while!

JaseJase2016-09-30 15:32:21

 

[Milky]

I love that so much!

 

[joe34]

weenix = ace

hey russ, i was wondering, how long does it take to boot up the game when you switch on power?

 

[virtvic]

Easy to steal!

Such a beautiful looking thing! Well done

 

[retromax]

That's a really lovely cab! I've been looking at caravan tellys and little CRTs for a while now too!
How did you cut out the monitor bezel - router?
Amazing finish

Jigsaw

The reason I used plywood is so I could have real wood sides, they are sanded, stained then laquered. The Sanwa's buttons, t-moulding and mechanical coin mech were from arcade world uk and it's a hacked usb joypad for the controls. I actually have 2 identical 10" tv's the second I got a year or so back from the car boot for a fiver. That's in the kitchen with another raspberry pi running Nes and Megadrive games with Usb Nes/Megadrive pads.
I also built a 'piStation' too (a raspberry pi built into an original PlayStation) which I may post at some point in another thread.

edit: just posted about the piStation and the other 10" TV is visible in the video

http://www.ukvac.com/forum/topic354117_post970607.html#970607

Russ2016-09-30 19:09:39

 

[retromax]

Easy to steal!

Such a beautiful looking thing! Well done

Thanks, I do believe I looked at your little cab too when I originally started doing this.

 

[retromax]

weenix = ace

hey russ, i was wondering, how long does it take to boot up the game when you switch on power?

It actually boots into retropie/emulation station which I removed the boot text and replaced the retropie boot screen with one that says 'Phoenix is Loading' then I removed everything but the mame menu where you have a choice of three games, the untouched Centuri rom, the rom philmurr modded for me and Pleiads of course as a little bonus

40 seconds to the menu 3 or 4 seconds to the game.

 

[retromax]

here's a video of my son testing it when it was still being built (still had the paper cpo fitted)

and a test with Pleiads

Russ2016-09-30 19:04:30

 

[joe34]

to have it so the youtube video is visible in the thread, you just paste the last bit of the url after you cliked on the 'insert movie' icon, so you just paste: vMMBikSI2wo or w44ENVC2bbo

 

[retromax]

to have it so the youtube video is visible in the thread, you just paste the last bit of the url after you cliked on the 'insert movie' icon, so you just paste: vMMBikSI2wo or w44ENVC2bbo

Cool, sorted!

 

[smarty]

Very good work.

Impressive little cab you've made.

 

[virtvic]

That side effect is excellent. What kind of ply and stain/lacquer did you use?

Looks just like an old school cab. This is the next level of home builds.

 

[retromax]

That side effect is excellent. What kind of ply and stain/lacquer did you use?

Looks just like an old school cab. This is the next level of home builds.

It was just some regular softwood ply from B&Q it was only a couple of quid more for an 8ft piece that was twice the size I needed or could fit in my Mini

but they have a free wood cutting service so they chopped it up for me

.

Colron medium oak wood dye (B&Q I think) and the lacquer and satin black was from Toolstation and branded 'Pro-cote'