TL/DR:
I've built a multi-vector cab from an empty Atari Space Duel using a @shilmover XY Kit and a USB-DVG. It's called VECTORAMA, and I will be adding a custom set of controls in the near future.

Introduction:
My DIY projects tend to hang fire for a long time. I started planning a plays-everything MAME cab not too long after first discovering arcade emulation on a Power Computing Mac clone all the way back in 1997. I didn't get around to actually building it until over a decade (and a couple of moves, and a wedding) later, and even then I built the control panel a couple of years before getting my act together enough to actually construct the cabinet.
Not long after that project was finished, I got it into my head to build another one, this time to concentrate on vector games. At that time, I had no idea it would ever be possible (to say nothing of affordable) to have a real vector monitor, and so I mapped it out intending to use an LCD with a Mac OS9 computer, as those early Mac emulators did what I considered at the time to be a nice job faking vector graphics on standard screens. Fortunately, I suppose, that project bogged down when the Mac Cube I picked up from a recycling center stubbornly refused to recognize an I-Pac controller board.
My arcade game collection had started just a bit before I discovered emulation, when I spotted a Donkey Kong, Jr. listed in the local want-ads for $35. The monitor didn't work, but a couple of work friends with EE degrees introduced me to the concept of "cap kits" and after I bought and dragged DKJR back to my rental townhouse, we got it operating before the first six-pack was drained. As a recovering 80's arcade rat, I was instantly hooked, and slowly collected more games as my budget and home space would permit.
Flashing forward (quite) a few years, I eventually got more comfortable with CRT tinkering. By the COVID epidemic, I owned seven arcade cabinets plus the homebuilt MAME cab, and I spent a good portion of 2020's down time getting all of them restored and working again. Around that time I also became cognizant of a burgeoning scene for new hardware enabling true vector gaming, and when I ran across an online offer of a new chassis set for a DIY color vector monitor, I figured it was time to jump in.
The Build: Monitor and CPU
Serendipitously, I bought that chassis at about the same time the USB-DVG became available. A modernization of an older MS-DOS based product called the Zektor DVG, the USB version, which provided MAME-driven game output from a tiny Raspberry Pi computer for a vector monitor, was not only affordable but also specifically intended to work with the XY Kit that I'd purchased, so I picked up one of those as well.
Here's my account of building up a working color vector monitor from those two hobbyist products mated to a CRT from a Walmart Black Friday special that I'd bought about two decades earlier:
https://forums.arcade-museum.com/th...friday-junk-to-a-color-vector-monitor.485931/


After getting this initial workbench version up and running, I was unhappy with the way the Spot Killer circuit in the monitor chassis reacted to certain games, particularly Asteroids Deluxe (which was kind of dumb on my part, considering I owned a perfectly good AD cab already), Space Fury, Space Duel and Rip-Off. The Spot Killer was too sensitive, and kicked in enough to make those games unplayable.
I monkeyed around with the resistors around the spot killer circuit, only to find that now I had permanent spot killer and no picture at all. Eventually despairing of my ability to ever fix this thing, I put the whole kit and kaboodle on the shelf and left it there for a couple of years.
Phase I: Cabinet, Controls and Initial Build
This project kept nagging at me, even after I added my all-time favorite vector game, Tempest, to my collection and got it working. I love vectors, and every year they are getting harder to find and more expensive, and nobody has made a new vector tube in almost 40 years. Even if I had an unlimited budget and time/skills to keep them up, I don't have room for many more arcade games, period. So it was either a multi that I already had a whole lot of parts for, or bust.
I had pretty well resigned myself to building a DIY cabinet. Which I could do: I've done it before, but (a) I'm never going to be mistaken for a carpenter, and (b) it's way too much like actual work, so I dawdled. Then around Thanksgiving of 2023, an old friend with an arcade repair and sales business in my area popped up with the ideal platform for a multi-vector project: a gutted Atari Space Duel.

(Dog not included)
After getting the cabinet home, I went back to the parts closet and retrieved the Orion vector monitor and the USB-DVG setup… which still didn't work. Apparently I don't have any benign gremlins living in my basement.
To my simultaneous chagrin and relief, I eventually discovered that the full-time spot killer and accompanying lack of a picture were not due to any tinkering I'd done on the XY chassis, but rather to a bad USB cable between the Raspberry Pi and USB-DVG. Once that was replaced, the picture came right up and I was back in business.

Let that be a lesson unto you, kids: always check the simple stuff. That monitor sat in a closet for two years, because it never occurred to me to swap out a $2 USB cable.
Even better, I learned shortly after getting the screen back up that Mario Montminy, the developer and last remaining official support for the USB-DVG, had also noted the spot killer issues with the XY Kit and added a new option to the DVG's firmware that fixed the problem. Minus a few weird but workable issues with the Raspberry Pi software images (see here for details https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/usb-dvg-users-support-thread.538841/ ), I was now off and running.
I had planned for a long time to make a custom control panel for this game, and intended to have a local metal shop bend and cut out a design for me. But just as I was getting to the point of hacking out a CAD model (which I am really, really bad at), the esteemed @Takeman announced he was doing a new run of Space Duel replica panels, with the option to have them made with no holes. As I have a friend who's capable of punching out the holes I'd need in no time, I jumped on this option.
Because it'll be a while before Takeman's work is ready to ship, I also decided to press on with a Mark I version of the cab, which I've dubbed Vectorama as a tip of the cap to the 1997 Mac vector emulator developed by Sean Trowbridge. Discovering Vectorama was not only my first real introduction to a reasonable facsimile of vector gaming at home, it was the first time I'd ever played (or even heard of) Major Havoc and Black Widow.
CONTINUED IN NEXT POST...
I've built a multi-vector cab from an empty Atari Space Duel using a @shilmover XY Kit and a USB-DVG. It's called VECTORAMA, and I will be adding a custom set of controls in the near future.

Introduction:
My DIY projects tend to hang fire for a long time. I started planning a plays-everything MAME cab not too long after first discovering arcade emulation on a Power Computing Mac clone all the way back in 1997. I didn't get around to actually building it until over a decade (and a couple of moves, and a wedding) later, and even then I built the control panel a couple of years before getting my act together enough to actually construct the cabinet.
Not long after that project was finished, I got it into my head to build another one, this time to concentrate on vector games. At that time, I had no idea it would ever be possible (to say nothing of affordable) to have a real vector monitor, and so I mapped it out intending to use an LCD with a Mac OS9 computer, as those early Mac emulators did what I considered at the time to be a nice job faking vector graphics on standard screens. Fortunately, I suppose, that project bogged down when the Mac Cube I picked up from a recycling center stubbornly refused to recognize an I-Pac controller board.
My arcade game collection had started just a bit before I discovered emulation, when I spotted a Donkey Kong, Jr. listed in the local want-ads for $35. The monitor didn't work, but a couple of work friends with EE degrees introduced me to the concept of "cap kits" and after I bought and dragged DKJR back to my rental townhouse, we got it operating before the first six-pack was drained. As a recovering 80's arcade rat, I was instantly hooked, and slowly collected more games as my budget and home space would permit.
Flashing forward (quite) a few years, I eventually got more comfortable with CRT tinkering. By the COVID epidemic, I owned seven arcade cabinets plus the homebuilt MAME cab, and I spent a good portion of 2020's down time getting all of them restored and working again. Around that time I also became cognizant of a burgeoning scene for new hardware enabling true vector gaming, and when I ran across an online offer of a new chassis set for a DIY color vector monitor, I figured it was time to jump in.
The Build: Monitor and CPU
Serendipitously, I bought that chassis at about the same time the USB-DVG became available. A modernization of an older MS-DOS based product called the Zektor DVG, the USB version, which provided MAME-driven game output from a tiny Raspberry Pi computer for a vector monitor, was not only affordable but also specifically intended to work with the XY Kit that I'd purchased, so I picked up one of those as well.
Here's my account of building up a working color vector monitor from those two hobbyist products mated to a CRT from a Walmart Black Friday special that I'd bought about two decades earlier:
https://forums.arcade-museum.com/th...friday-junk-to-a-color-vector-monitor.485931/


After getting this initial workbench version up and running, I was unhappy with the way the Spot Killer circuit in the monitor chassis reacted to certain games, particularly Asteroids Deluxe (which was kind of dumb on my part, considering I owned a perfectly good AD cab already), Space Fury, Space Duel and Rip-Off. The Spot Killer was too sensitive, and kicked in enough to make those games unplayable.
I monkeyed around with the resistors around the spot killer circuit, only to find that now I had permanent spot killer and no picture at all. Eventually despairing of my ability to ever fix this thing, I put the whole kit and kaboodle on the shelf and left it there for a couple of years.
Phase I: Cabinet, Controls and Initial Build
This project kept nagging at me, even after I added my all-time favorite vector game, Tempest, to my collection and got it working. I love vectors, and every year they are getting harder to find and more expensive, and nobody has made a new vector tube in almost 40 years. Even if I had an unlimited budget and time/skills to keep them up, I don't have room for many more arcade games, period. So it was either a multi that I already had a whole lot of parts for, or bust.
I had pretty well resigned myself to building a DIY cabinet. Which I could do: I've done it before, but (a) I'm never going to be mistaken for a carpenter, and (b) it's way too much like actual work, so I dawdled. Then around Thanksgiving of 2023, an old friend with an arcade repair and sales business in my area popped up with the ideal platform for a multi-vector project: a gutted Atari Space Duel.

(Dog not included)
After getting the cabinet home, I went back to the parts closet and retrieved the Orion vector monitor and the USB-DVG setup… which still didn't work. Apparently I don't have any benign gremlins living in my basement.
To my simultaneous chagrin and relief, I eventually discovered that the full-time spot killer and accompanying lack of a picture were not due to any tinkering I'd done on the XY chassis, but rather to a bad USB cable between the Raspberry Pi and USB-DVG. Once that was replaced, the picture came right up and I was back in business.

Let that be a lesson unto you, kids: always check the simple stuff. That monitor sat in a closet for two years, because it never occurred to me to swap out a $2 USB cable.
Even better, I learned shortly after getting the screen back up that Mario Montminy, the developer and last remaining official support for the USB-DVG, had also noted the spot killer issues with the XY Kit and added a new option to the DVG's firmware that fixed the problem. Minus a few weird but workable issues with the Raspberry Pi software images (see here for details https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/usb-dvg-users-support-thread.538841/ ), I was now off and running.
I had planned for a long time to make a custom control panel for this game, and intended to have a local metal shop bend and cut out a design for me. But just as I was getting to the point of hacking out a CAD model (which I am really, really bad at), the esteemed @Takeman announced he was doing a new run of Space Duel replica panels, with the option to have them made with no holes. As I have a friend who's capable of punching out the holes I'd need in no time, I jumped on this option.
Because it'll be a while before Takeman's work is ready to ship, I also decided to press on with a Mark I version of the cab, which I've dubbed Vectorama as a tip of the cap to the 1997 Mac vector emulator developed by Sean Trowbridge. Discovering Vectorama was not only my first real introduction to a reasonable facsimile of vector gaming at home, it was the first time I'd ever played (or even heard of) Major Havoc and Black Widow.
CONTINUED IN NEXT POST...




























