Unique Arcade Toys!
Arcade Project
I finally took the plunge this year and started my own cabinet build project. I elected to go the new-build route rather than a renovation, and decided on a MAME emulator rather than a PCB/Jamma based game system. I wanted to be able to play as many games as possible, and this seemed the easiest route.
Latest Updates:
Jan 19th 2007 - Coin Door
Managed to get a second hand set of coin doors, but with no mechanism. I cut out the holes for the doors in the front panel, now I need to clean and paint the doors, and find a coin receipt mechanism to interface to the PCB. No idea what mechanism type I need...
Jan 11th 2007 - Control Panel
Next job was one I had been putting off for ever - cutting the perspex and control panel for the buttons and joysticks. All of the research I did on working with perspex had prepared me for the worst - and I had to cut 16 holes without the sheet cracking. I bought a hole saw attachment for my drill, but the test cut was a mess, must have been a cheap one. So option 2 was the hole drilling bit I used for the test rig. Starting VERY slowly, and clamped to a scrap of MDF, I drilled the first hole, which was perfect - no melting, no cracking, no trouble. 15 more and I was in business, and ready to begin fitting the controls.
November 8th 2006 - Monitor Test
After adding the control panel base, I put in the monitor shelf (2" square timer supports and 4 9" angle brackets) to hold the 38kg weight of the monitor. Now the monitor is in place it looks a lot better - using a GameCube I tested the monitor screen and it looks great, can't wait to get the Mame PC linked in once I have a graphics card with TV-Out.
October 23rd 2006 - Monitor Selection
Looking at the huge void in the cabinet, even my PC 21” monitor is starting to look a bit small, and I’m worried it just won’t feel right when installed, particularly on my favourite vertical shooter games, which will be even more compressed on the square screen. I can’t stretch to a new 27” arcade monitor, and I don’t want to use a TV if I can help it, so I am stuck for ideas. After a quick look around ebay I find someone selling a pair of 27” professional video monitors that were once used as part of a video wall. They have a scart input, I figure the quality should be better than a regular TV, and as a bonus they are compact with a narrow case which has an edge to edge glass cover over the screen. I will need a TV-Out graphics card to drive the monitor though, as it is not take a VGA input.
October 17th 2006 - Cabinet Shell
Using the LUSID plans, I cut out the panels from 3 sheets of 8' x 4' x 18mm MDF. I started with a circular saw, but the cut was too rough and I moved to a jigsaw which gave a more accurate result. The first piece to assamble was the base, which was glued and screwed, and used 2" castors from Wickes.
I then fixed the side panels to the base with glue, screws and L-brackets. Standing up for the first time I fixed the top section, followed by the speaker shelf and the rear angled section. So far so good - at this stage it is really starting to look like an arcade cabinet!
July 15th 2006 - Mame Setup
I installed the latest version of MAME (which I had downloaded from www.mame.net) on the PC, and tested the software using the keyboard. I had a few game roms which I had collected over the last few months, and the software worked first time, and looked great on the huge 21" monitor. The PC however was way too slow, and will need to be replaced at some point. I plugged in the test rig, and it worked just fine with Phoenix, 1942 and Track and Field.
July 13th 2006 - Test Rig
I built a small wooden control panel for installation of the components, and installed a joystick and six fire buttons, as well as a 1 player start button. I then wired each microswitch into the Keyboard Interface as per the instructions, and plugged the keyboard into the PC. The PC registed each joystick movement and button push as a keypress, as expected. Now I was ready to test with the emulator.
June 2nd 2006 - Planning
Having done my research, I'd settled on the LUSID cabinet design, and started to amass all of the various components. On my shopping list were a 21" VGA monitor for the screen, a keyboard interface (more later), 2 8-way joysticks and various control buttons and microswitches. All of these items I was able to source easily through ebay. Combined with an old Pentium 2 PC, this provided the basic mechanics for the cabinet, and I wanted to test them prior to installation
