Since I have decided to put a computer inside of this cabinet which will run MAME I need some admin buttons in order to work the front-end and MAME itself. The goal of this project is to keep the cabinet as authentic as possible and only make deviations from the original design when I feel it is an improvement or out of necessity. Admin buttons ruin the illusion that this is an actual Donkey Kong cabinet straight out of 1981 so I have to hide them. Fortunately there is a lip underneath the control panel area with plenty of room:
The cabinet is tipped on its side here and you can see the area I'm talking about. Man it drives me nuts the way this thing was originally put together - look at the gap between the speaker panel on the front and the panel underneath! Thankfully no one will ever see this mess.
I decided on three admin buttons - Exit (which will allow the player to exit the current game back to the list of games on the front end), Pause (because I have kids and rarely get 10 consecutive minutes to do anything) and Coin (the coin door will be fully functional but this will make it a bit easier). The Pause and Coin buttons are also going to double as Volume Up and Volume Down when shifted by pressing the Player 2 Start Button in the control panel.
Since I don't want these buttons to ever be seen I decided to countersink them into the wood panel so the top of the button is flush with the panel. It was easy enough to do. I used a 1-3/8" forstner bit to countersink the buttons and when I got about 1/4" down I switched to a 1-1/8" forstner bit to finish the job.
It was tough to get the drill in there just right - the plywood was not even close to level so the lip in the front is actually a little deeper than in the back for each button. Here is how the buttons will sit in the holes I drilled:
The last thing I did was take some powder blue paint and paint the exposed wood to match the cabinet exterior. Even though no one will ever see this I wanted to make it look somewhat neat even though it is a mess. If I was building this from scratch I would have pre-drilled all of these holes prior to assembly and I would have rounded over the edges of the recessed holes. Oh well. It came out OK but most importantly it is going to work great.
I should also note that I drilled a hole to the far left for the Exit button and I drilled two holes to the far right for the Pause and Coin buttons. I don't want anyone to accidentally hit Exit in the middle of a game when they were only reaching for the Pause button!
Things are coming together now. Tonight I'll reattach the new base I made and install the t-molding and some other stuff.
More later.
The cabinet is tipped on its side here and you can see the area I'm talking about. Man it drives me nuts the way this thing was originally put together - look at the gap between the speaker panel on the front and the panel underneath! Thankfully no one will ever see this mess.I decided on three admin buttons - Exit (which will allow the player to exit the current game back to the list of games on the front end), Pause (because I have kids and rarely get 10 consecutive minutes to do anything) and Coin (the coin door will be fully functional but this will make it a bit easier). The Pause and Coin buttons are also going to double as Volume Up and Volume Down when shifted by pressing the Player 2 Start Button in the control panel.
Since I don't want these buttons to ever be seen I decided to countersink them into the wood panel so the top of the button is flush with the panel. It was easy enough to do. I used a 1-3/8" forstner bit to countersink the buttons and when I got about 1/4" down I switched to a 1-1/8" forstner bit to finish the job.
It was tough to get the drill in there just right - the plywood was not even close to level so the lip in the front is actually a little deeper than in the back for each button. Here is how the buttons will sit in the holes I drilled:
The last thing I did was take some powder blue paint and paint the exposed wood to match the cabinet exterior. Even though no one will ever see this I wanted to make it look somewhat neat even though it is a mess. If I was building this from scratch I would have pre-drilled all of these holes prior to assembly and I would have rounded over the edges of the recessed holes. Oh well. It came out OK but most importantly it is going to work great.
I should also note that I drilled a hole to the far left for the Exit button and I drilled two holes to the far right for the Pause and Coin buttons. I don't want anyone to accidentally hit Exit in the middle of a game when they were only reaching for the Pause button!Things are coming together now. Tonight I'll reattach the new base I made and install the t-molding and some other stuff.
More later.
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