Dragon's Lair cab' replica... by Luca

[DarthNuno]

Luca from Rome ( Italy) send me pictures of his Dragon's Lair Cab' replica :idea:

The cab is still on the making, but what a beautifull job already done on it    

Have a look by yourself  :












Luca : "In the beginning I was searching for an original Atari cab, but as you well know, it's near impossible to find one. So, about four years ago I started to design a replica cab using a CAD application, as an alternative solution. I don't see an original DL cab since 1989, so I had to work without any phisical reference point. Igor Maggiorelli helped me providing some measurement and some very useful pics of his Atari cab. For the rest I downloaded and studied deeply a bunch of pics from the Internet. It wasn't easy to finalize the project. I printed the final sheets and gave it to a woodsman next to my house. You saw the result in the pics. Before building it, I bought the monitor (Hantarex Polo 20" 15KHz, brand new), the white leaf-switch pushbuttons, the Atari red lighted start buttons, the Wico joystick, two USA grilles for the speakers (don't think Atari ones has ever been reproduced), the CP overlay from Arcade Renovations, the monitor brackets (from USA) and the electronics. The coin-door (Happ Controls over/under, not the original one), the bezel and the t-molding should arrive soon. I'm going to print myself the marquee overlay, because I want the Atari logos/colors on it (a lot of Photoshop work.. ), as like as I'll do for the ATARI and the sideart stickers (I cannot hole the Arcade Renovations ones :_( ). One big trouble is to find two full-range speakers which match the grill holes. Anyway, once I installed the coin-door (still have to cut the hole for it), and the t-molding, I'll have to find someone which can build the metal parts (control panel, marquee and plexi brackets) for me. It will be a Daphne/MAME cab. I've got some laserdiscs and a Sony player, but I would like to have the chance to play some more games in the cab, not only laserdisc ones. This time, the only parts mounted are the monitor brackets, the monitor and the speaker grilles."

Thanks for your pictures Luca... I can't wait to see it fully running  

Forza !!!      

[po|ng]

Wow. Thank you Bruno for posting these first pics of my DL replica cabinet.  I am sure it's not 100% authentic to the original, but actually it's enough for me. I'm not making it for collection purposes, I only would like to play my favourite games standing, with a red ball joystick under my hand, a loud sound,  a lot of coins to insert, and a big yellow Atari logo right in front of my face..   Just as I used to do in the arcades when I was a child.
The work goes on so slowly, but the making of the cab is being a really funny and challanging experience to me. I'm sure I'll be happy with my cab as I should be with an original one. Well, at least no Philips laserdisc players at all!  

Luca (poIng)

[po|ng]

A little update: the cab now has the coin door, black smooth T-molding applied on both sidewalls and a plastic monitor bezel from Happ. It looks really better now, don't you think?


The coin door is not an original Atari one. I preferred to buy a new one from Happ.

[po|ng]

First "in-cab" system test:

Here is the core of the cab:

The mainboard is an ASUS A7N8X-VM/400, and the two smaller boards on the bottom are the UVC and the audio amplifier by Ultracade.
As you see, I choose a comfortable position to place the DVD-ROM drive.


Well, no issues at all for now. The cab isn't still wired, and a lot of parts are still missing, so I don't want to turn on the main monitor yet. And of course the power supply shouldn't be placed on a pasteboard box..
Any suggestion about the model of the speakers to buy? They have to fit the US grilles.

[DarthNuno]

Wooow impressive      

It starts to look very good, very good job    

You're using the best place possible for your DVD Player ( I use the same location for my Gauntlet Legends mame cab)  

Ok so you'll go with a 100% software setup... good choice if you wanna play Space Ace, Dragon's Lair or other LD games without swaping laser disc  
But please, do not put a multi-usage mame control panel...    ...  you should keep the esthetic look as close as possible as the original cab  
Which processor do you will use ? Don't go under 800mhz if you want to have good perfs on Daphne.
Are you already find an issue for a metal control panel?
Thanks for the update of your project  

[DarthNuno]

For the speakers, I suggest you to buy a couple of  PC speakers, open it, remove the little in-build cheap  speakers, and buy car speakers with the same Ohm value ( 4 or 8 Ohm ).

[po|ng]

But please, do not put a multi-usage mame control panel...  ... you should keep the esthetic look as close as possible as the original cab

Eheh, don't worry Bruno.. My first goal is to have a DL/SA cab, so the panel will be authentic. For games which need more than one button to be played, I designed an alternate panel. I'll just have to switch:

I'm now looking for someone who's able to build metal components.

The hardware in the cab is brand new. The CPU is a Sempron 2400+, 512 MB DDR400 RAM, ASUS 16x DVD-ROM reader, and an I-PAC keyboard interface (still not installed). The mainboard has a built-in Geforce4-MX graphic adapter. Enough to play any emulated bidimensional game, I suppose.

As for the speakers, thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, it's hard to find car speakers with a diameter bigger than 16 cm in Italy. I found two 20 cm  speakers, but were still too small. I think I'll need two 20,5 cm diameter speakers. Maybe something like Monacor SP-205/8?
Well, we'll see..

[DarthNuno]

Hey po|ng,

What is the status about your 'beauty'    

[po|ng]

Hey Bruno, sorry for the delay.
Unfortunately there was no progress at all. I just did some software tests and discovered that DL, SA and Cliff Hanger are perfectly playable. Esh's Aurunmilla is not, I wonder why.
On the hardware side, I ordered all the metal parts and the speakers months ago, but for some reason I still didn't receive them. Without those components, I can't go on working..  

I hope I'll be able to post good news soon..

[po|ng]

After a long wait, I finally got the metal parts:


Here is the main panel. As you see, both the controls and the overlay fit perfectly. Those guys did a very fine work.


The alternate panel.


The plexies brackets. I know, the two brackets should be a bit different. But why? The thrid bracket is the one for the monitor plexi (not present in the Cinematronics DL).

Now, I'm going to solder the hinges and latches on the panels to fix them on the cab, then I'll apply the overlay in the way Bruno did..  

[DarthNuno]

Hey po|ng, thanks for the update  

The metal control panel looks great, but I hope you'll get the first one, I mean the replication of the original one : 1 joystick, 2 start player buttons & 2 sword          S

The CPO looks great    Be very carefull with it. I've used this method to apply it :

http://members.aol.com/severlander/dragons_lair_control_panel.html

... follow that procedure, you can't go wrong  

The end is very near... you'll soon enjoy the pleasure to play Dragon's Lair... on a Dragon's Lair Cab'  

Keep your good work  

[po|ng]

Hi all!

Great day today: the main control panel is completed! Look..




Cool, eh?  

Now let's fix the panel on the cab..



And here it is: the cab with his main control panel installed..



Well, my friends. Most of the work is done. The next step is to do all the wiring and then I'll wake up the beast. Will it work at the first attemp? I don't think so.. . We'll see..

See ya!

[DarthNuno]

Impressive PONG  

You're really close to the end now  

Nice that you're using your OWN CPO, in order to avoid pre-cutted US version from quaterarcade (ex : arcaderennovation)

I have a question regarding this picture :



Do the front is black painted ? Or did you applied vinyl  ?

Thanks for sharing this wonderfull WIP on this forum  

At the end, we wanna see a picture of you... playing on your baby ( I mean your cab' of course     )

[po|ng]

Hi Bruno..

Nice that you're using your OWN CPO, in order to avoid pre-cutted US version from quaterarcade (ex : arcaderennovation)

Well.. It actually is an Arcade Renovations official repro.

Do the front is black painted ? Or did you applied vinyl ?

I choose not to use vinyl. It's expensive and it's quite a heavy and prone to error work to apply it correctly. The guy who built the cab for me, covered the external parts with a black rough plastic laminate. Something similar to the method used by arcadegames4u, and very close to the way the original cab was in my memories.

At the end, we wanna see a picture of you... playing on your baby ( I mean your cab' of course)

Ahahaha!! Once the cab is 100% finished, I could  post a pic of my baby and me playing with the cab. A kind of  threesome!  

[po|ng]

My friends, it lives.



Still having some problems with powering up/booting the system and with AV synchronization (the whole system runs via DVD, no HD at all), and it's not playable yet because I still have to wire the control panel.
Anyway now I can see and hear DL running in a real cab, and it is amazing!

By the way, I encoded the attract mode video directly from the HD anamorphic version, at 4000 kb/s only, and the quality is simply stunning. It really seems to be a true laserdisc.