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Sunday, April 01, 2012

Red Storm 32" LCD arcade cabinet

I've been saving up for over a year now to get an LCD cabinet, and sold one of my Astro City's to make room in my garage.  The wait paid off last week when I was able to take home a new Red Storm 32" LCD cabinet.

This is a sister to the Black Storm 32" LCD cab (as seen on arcadeotaku back in September).  They are made in China and based on the New Delta 32 design by Riverservice (although not a direct copy).  Unlike the New Delta 32, there is no slick LCD rotate mechanism, but its fairly easy to unscrew the four bolts holding the LCD onto the frame to remove and rotate manually.  The LCD itself weighs about 50 pounds, so a single person can rotate it without a problem. 
Visually, the Red Storm differs from the Black version by the color of the control panel and monitor although the rest of the cab has the same red accents.  Personally, I think the Red Storm looks better, especially with the red light up panel.

The LCD on the Red Storm also differs from the Black Storm, with a host of inputs including VGA, HDMI, Component, and S-Video (Black version only has VGA and DVI).  Inputs are located on the side of the LCD rather than the bottom like the Black version.  This however presents an interesting problem for the Red Storm, in that rotating the monitor counter-clockwise for vertical games, puts all these inputs facing the top of the cab, which does not fit the fame's design.  
You can rotate the monitor clockwise (the wrong way) and have the inputs facing the bottom of the cab, only in this configuration, you'll not be able to attach the top marquee since the mounting holes are now also on the bottom, but more importantly, you'll only be able to play jamma games that support a screen flip option (most do but some don't).  However, I did find a solution to this strange issue, which involves rotating the square chassis on the back of the LCD 180 degrees.  This takes an additional 2 minutes while the LCD is off, and the wires support flipping the chassis around.  Now when you mount the LCD back on the frame, its oriented properly (counter-clockwise) and inputs are facing the bottom of the cab

[Update!] Since this original posting, I received a set of low profile Power, VGA, and HDMI cables from GameCenter Arcade, which now allows me to rotate the monitor proper without having to flip the chassis on the back.  So in total, rotating takes about 2 minutes (just unscrew 4 hex bolts from the back, rotate, and screw back in.  This is actually faster than rotating an Egret II if you consider the time it takes to also rotate the bezel.
Now lets take a quick look under the hood.  You'll see in the pictures above, a very convenient light when the cabinet door is open, a shelf for your PCB, an adjustable main jamma power supply, and a stereo amp with its own independent power supply. Behind the coin door (not shown) is a modern coin mech with electronic coin comparitor, and illuminated power switch with standard test and service buttons.  Wiring is for straight jamma (no JVS) with a VGA cable for the monitor.

Under the lighted control panel, you'll find a typical Chinese CGA2VGA scaler.  This version is seriously budgeted to only take RGBS input and VGA output, although the firmware supports component input.  I added my own SGL3000 to add realistic scanlines at 640x480 which does make a world of difference when playing low res PCBs.  Button and sticks on the panel are typical Sanwa JLF controls.

On the back of the cabinet (not shown) are 4 fans, two large 4 1/2" and two smaller 2 1/2".  This creates a large amount of cool airflow inside the cabinet, which is good news if you want to put a console or PC inside.  Also on the back are a set of versus connectors (and cable included) for hooking two cabinets together.

Light up marquee and instruction strip are a nice touch, although both use non-standard sizes, which really sucks for the instruction strip as its significantly shorter than the typical Astro City size. 
LCD cabs are not known for displaying great pictures for low resolution 15khz PCB games, and this holds true with the cheap scaler included in the Red Storm.  However, I was pleasantly surprised that the cabinet was able to sync and display a picture for oddball refresh rates like 54hz for Seibu games!

Of course the cabinet really shines when displaying HD games for Taito Type X/2 and modern consoles.  I especially like that most vertical arcade games for XB360 allow me to rotate and position the 4:3 picture with a background image filling in the remaining area.  Of course you'll need to supply your own console-to-jamma solution to hook up he controls, but there are many options available on the market or homebew for doing this.

Overall construction of the Red Storm is surprisingly good, with quality components, and well thought out access panels and hatches for the back and monitor/LCD.  Some corners were cut when constructing the base, where I found screws holes that were not tapped properly (they were just drilled holes with screws), and the paint job around the speakers pods looked amateurish. I'll likely be investing in a better stereo amp (the sound is quite thin), as well as a better scaler for the 15khz mode.  I didn't notice any LCD lag, but I've herd this model may have 1-2 frames of lag for pro's playing SSFIV, although it appears the chassis can be easily upgraded/replaced.

18 comments:

  1. NICE GET!

    I want a pair of Vewlix cabs... but man are they pricey. There are a lot of modern 720p games I want to be able to play, and my blast city just doesn't cut it at VGA res.

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  2. Yeah, for modern HD games (which means mostly console games) widescreen LCD is best. The Bast is better IMHO for lowres/PCB games.

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  3. Hi really nice cab you got there. I'm working on a wooden version similar to this one and wondering if you could get some high Res shots or scans of the cab art?

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    1. I scanned as much of the panel art that would fit on my scanner, so here you go. It gets a litter lighter near the top since it wasn't sitting flush against the glass, so I'll let you clean up the image and replicate the pattern as needed.

      https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-aInv1vNvbiI/T_ZvkFN98nI/AAAAAAAABQo/W4XKK_EvFLE/s2550/RedStormPanel.png

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    2. Just realized you probably wanted a scan of the control panel, not the light up red panel just above it (duh)! That would be a lot more difficult to get a scan of unfortunately, and I don't have time to take off all the controls, etc. I'll try taking a high res picture with another camera this weekend.

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    3. Thanks for taking the time to do this. If you'd like to see my progress it can be found here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=121235.0

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    4. An amazing build! I can't believe you even made a rotate mechanism. :)

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  4. Would it be too much of a bother to ask who you ordered through, and what the cost was, roughly?

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  5. I ordered through Game Center Arcade in San Mateo CA, which unfortunately closed last year. Myung, the owner, imported them from China and may have had a couple left after closing (all moved into storage). You can try reaching out to him through facebook. https://www.facebook.com/gamecenterarcade

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  6. Is the screen 1080p?

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    1. I believe its 720p native but haven't really tested it with any 1080p content.

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  7. I own the same machine with the exact same decal on the top the joysticks and buttons are different just wondering if it could be you machine?

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  8. Hi Dave. I still own the machine pictured in this post, so not mine. Congrats on finding another one, as they make for a fantastic console cabinet (as well as for playing Type X/2 games if you have them).

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  9. Yeah looking at other cabinets on the market think we got one of the best out there. I'm just in the process of installing hyperspin at the minute are you familiar with it?

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    1. I'm not much into mame/emulators, but have heard of the Hyperspin front end. I mostly stick with original PCBs and some consoles. I'd imagine this cabinet would work great with a PC emulator setup.

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  11. Yeah it is. To be honest I'm a total novice. I bought the cabinet 3 years ago and bought a full hyperspin set up on disc from eBay which kind of did it's job but ealier this week I wiped the whole thing off and started again to try and tweak a few problems and what a nightmare it's been but now finally getting somewhere. Do you own more than one cabinet?

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    1. Yes, I have quite a few cabinets, most are pictured in my blog if you go through some of the older posts. I have some Japanese "candy" cabinets, and a selection of classic wooden cabs from the early 80s. Above all I have an understanding wife!

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