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3/6/10
Noah B's cabinet
Noah
discovered MAME machines last year and, as many of us, became obsessed with
them. At some point in his research, he stumbled up this site.
Noah's project began as a gift but he "selfishly" reconsidered once he
realized how expensive and time consuming it would be. He knocked out
the project in a quick month. Nice job!
There are a couple more pictures on the Visitor Page.
6/20/09
Introducing Jose C's cabinet
Jose built this beauty from the
second set of plans,
with some alterations required by the 27" television he used. He
modified the width, decreased the depth of the drawer, and recessed the
monitor glass a bit more. The control panel is his work as well.
Very nice work Jose!
There are a few extra pictures on the Visitor Page.
5/10/09
Michael's
new cabinet
Michael L informed me he has recently completed a small
Barcade project, partly inspired by mine.
Having some parts left over from his original cabinet build (see the 11/09/08 item
further down this page), he decided to design his own mini-arcade. He
has written an excellent
step-by-step article on Retrojunk, detailing his build. He has
included a ton of photos of the steps, with many great suggestions on how to
build the project on the cheap. It is a very informative. Give
it a read.
5/4/09
Derek M's Control Panel
Derek M sent along pictures of his completed control panel. I
know Derek from back in the early days of ArcadeCab, when he
originally built his cabinet. His cabinet is the fourth from
the bottom on the Visitor Page
to give you an idea of how long ago (five years). He had gone
down the same path as myself- build the cabinet and use an X-arcade
until he knew exactly what he wanted on his control panel.
Flash forward a few years, and he is helping a friend build a cab
from my second set of plans. This, as Derek says, "inspired"
him to finally build his own, custom panel. He used Happ
Supers (a great choice), a Betson trackball, TurboTwist2 spinner and
a GPWiz32 Rotary-capable unit to control it all.
His
cabinet has been humming along famously all this time and his son,
who was just born when he completed the cabinet, is growing up
playing the classics. You can't get much better than that!
I have included a few construction pics of his on the Visitor Page.
4/18/09
Chris
G's cabinet
Chris sent me a couple pictures of his recently completed cabinet.
More pictures are on the Visitor Page.
3/14/09
Brad G's cabinet
Brad G forwarded me shots of his finished cabinet. He used the
TankStick and
HyperSpin as the
front-end.
He used plexiglass for the monitor bezel, painted the back with
the Duramax paint, and used molding to surround the bezel. For added peace
of mind, Brad placed a 2x4 beneath the controller (which necessitated
routing the keyboard drawer to accommodate the keyboard).
Brad decided to try something different with his coindoor as he was most interested in just the lights. He purchased the UNREAL Coindoor from Groovy Game Gear (click here for close-up photo). This product is a photorealistic vinyl reproduction that he stuck in place after routing the area. A 1/8" piece of plexiglass is mounted over it. Brad then drilled out holes for two coin slot buttons, and wired them to the credit buttons on the TankStick.
Good work!
3/1/09
Blake W has completed his cabinet
Blake W sent me a very nice email this morning describing his recently
completed cabinet. Excerpted from his email:
I guess this journey has come to an end. Although we've never spoken before you have helped me greatly. My arcade cabinet is finally complete. I was interested in building an arcade cab (after seeing your website) back when I was in High School but never had the money or the space to afford one under my parents roof. Fast forward 8 years, I graduated college, have my own apartment, and a great job that hopefully will last through this crazy economy. After seeing another one of your visitors cab's (CZARCADE) through a local LAN group I became re- inspired to complete a cab. I visited with CZAR and picked his brain as well as some of this leftover parts to build my own. I biggest difference is an additional three inches of height added to the bottom since I stand at 6'5". The cab runs off a HP d530 with a 2.8 Ghz processor with 1 gig of ram with a 21" CRT. (...) The entire cab was built and painted (except for the colored sides and the coin door) over the long memorial day weekend. I waited for a deal on the coin door and was rewarded by only paying 27 bucks. The sides were then finally painted this week.
The cabinet turned out quite nice, in my opinion. The painted sides look first rate. As always, a few more pictures are featured on the Visitor Page.
2/25/09
PDF document of the Second Set of Plans now available
I have created a simple PDF document of all the pages in the second set of
plans. I did not include most of the full screen photos- you'll still
have to visit here to for those. The document will be nice for those
individuals who have perused the pages on the site and now want a printed
document to have in their hands to write notes on, and refer to during the
construction process. I have had two emails asking about such a
document in the past week so decided it was time. I hope it helps you.
Enjoy!
2/6/09
James
P's completed cabinet
Being snowed in the last few days worked in James' favor; it allowed him
time to finish up his cabinet (see his November 9th news item below for
progress shots).
He is driving the cabinet with an AMD2400 processor running the Gamex frontend. A 19" ViewSonic LCD provides the display. If you look carefully, you'll note he reduced the depth of the cabinet because he used the LCD. James said that did create a few problems when it was time to insert the PC, but he successfully maneuvered a smaller case in at an angle.
Some of the other features he included: Mini-USB keyboard and mouse on his slide-out tray, cold cathode marquee lighting driven by the PC's power supply, hidden power button and marquee light switch, Power Griffin USB that controls the volume, and a home printed marquee and side art.
He estimated the entire project, software included, took about forty hours. Great job!
More pictures are on the Visitor Page.
1/27/09
Richard B's BarCade
Richard B built a barcade using a modified version of my plans. He
used a 17 inch monitor, and added a nice marquee. He used Mala as the
front-end.
More pictures are on the Visitor Page.
1/12/09
Doug M's Cabinet
Doug M sent me the following
email:
I, like most guys my age growing up, we were dropping quarters in our local
hometown Arcades. Oh the memories of playing my favorite arcade games like
Galaga while listening to AC/DC, Journey and Foreigner. That was before the
home video game consoles became popular, thereby killing many of our
childhood hangouts. Very sad... so I said if I ever struck it rich I would
like to have my own arcade at my house. Well I never struck it rich... but
that is when I found out about M.A.M.E. (Multiple Arcade Machine
Emulator) and I could house all, and I do mean all, the arcade games on one
machine versus a room full of individual machines. Now I can relive playing
many of the classic arcade, console and pinball games to boot! But all I had
to do was build it...
That's right, I built it from scratch! It only took me about a week with
basic tools. Now when I told my wife what I was about to do, she thought I
was crazy (much like you reading this story). But when I told her she can
play her one and only favorite arcade game Centipede, there appeared a grin
on her face...
Ubergamer was born; it has about 9000+ individual video games running
through a GameEx frontend and X-arcade Tankstick. It emulates all the games
and I do mean all the games from Arcade (MAME), Laser Disc Games (like
Dragon's Lair and Space Ace), Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega
Genesis, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, TurboGrafx 16 and yes, even Pinball!
This cabinet even has a MP3 jukebox, DVD/Movie player, Comic Book Viewer and
it's still a fully functional WinXP computer.
Doug still wants to add sideart; I'll be sure to add that picture when he sends it. Very nice job.
12/26/08
Craig D's Cabinet
Craig D emailed me this picture
of his recently completed cabinet. Excerpted from his email:
"The project I finished many months ago, but construction of the machine
has taken a year (!), primarily because I have been at the mercy of my
colleague, who I have depended upon to complete the necessary woodworking
and to assemble the cabinet, as well as financial constraints and sourcing
materials !
Patching, painting, electronics and software setup I did myself. I am
using the X-Arcade Tankstick for my controller as it is strong and robust
and will last for years !
I am using MameWAH for the front end of my cabinet, and a fairly old version
of MAME 0.110. The system I used in my design is a socket 939 motherboard
with an Athlon 64 3800 processor running at 2.4Ghz, and 1 gig of DDR3200
memory. Not very recent, but it does the job very nicely and runs about 90%
of ROMS at full speed.
Also installed on my cabinet is CPV2, along with the controls.dat datafile
so I can find out what buttons a particular game uses by pressing a button
with MameWAH itself.
The cabinet also doubles up as a juke box, since I have installed 'Arcade
Juke Box' and coins can be inserted to play mp3's !
Coin box is the same as used on the Atari Asteroids cabinet. I couldn't find
a used one, so I purchased from a UK supplier. I-PAC 2 I used to attenuate
inserted coins (wires are rigged up to the coin 1 and coin 2 credits of the
I-PAC which are then in turn soldered onto the microswitches of the coin
mech). When coins are inserted this gives me a credit in MAME or Arcade
JukeBox.
I'm very pleased how things have turned out, and my partners little boy also
enjoys playing his footy games for hours on end !"
Craig also documented his CPV2 and Mamewah layouts for the TankStick, and generously provided them for use on my site. You will find the write-up on my Projects page (or directly). Thanks again Craig for the email and project write-up. Great work!
11/26/08
Finally! The second set of Cabinet Plans are
complete.
After a ridiculous amount of months, I have finally
completed all the pages for the
second set of cabinet
plans. My list of excuses is lengthy but I finally can mark
this project off my list. As always, if you use my plans for your
cabinet build, please do send me some pictures when you are complete so I
can add them to the site. The cabinet projects seem to be the only
thing that get me to update the site these days.:-)
Happy Thanksgiving, a day early.
11/15/08
John H's Cabinet(s)
John
H emailed me a month back with a picture of his recently constructed
cabinet, based on my second set of plans. Lo and behold, before I
could get the News items up, a follow-up arrived from him showing his second
cabinet as well.
He constructed both cabinets at the same time, over three long weekends. The first cabinet (on the left) uses GameEx as the front-end and has 4,000 games to choose from. The second machine is for trackball games only, and has nine of them on it. There is just something about seeing the two cabinets next to each other that I find very cool. Maybe it is just the geek in me. Very nice job!
11/9/08
Michael's Cabinet
Michael L finished his cabinet a couple months ago. He built a custom control panel, and
included a older neon car light for the keyboard drawer to make using in the
dark much easier. For the side art, he had printed a Dragon's Lair
picture poster-sized, then cut out the dragon's eyes, and inserted two LEDS
that light up. The effect when the lights are off is very cool indeed.
Nice work.
Michael also wrote up his construction process on retrojunk that you might find helpful. The startup video he created is a nice touch.
James' Project
James,
another builder from the UK, sent me some pictures of his nearly complete
cabinet. He constructed it from 15mm MDF, and it features a 19" flat
screen, cold cathode marquee, and a refurbished coin door. He modified the
depth to better fit into the space available. I'll post an update when he
is completely finished.
7/20/08
CzArcade Unleashed!
Alex has sent me pictures of
his completed cabinet, the CzArcade. The name was born from a mixture
of an old nickname (Czar) and Arcade. By his own admission, Alex is
"not constructionally inclined by any means, so this project was over
my head. Luckily, my comrade was able to assist...and he had power tools!"
Nothing wrong with that at all. Everyone has to start as a beginner
and the cabinet turned out quite nice.
Alex also did his part in helping the economy by using some of his economic stimulus check for the project.
He has a blog of the cabinet building process as well a bunch of construction pictures here. I read through the blog (it's a fun read) and it was interesting to note he had some of the very same issues I did during the construction process. Alex hopes that the write-up will assist other prospective builders during the construction process by detailing problems he had as he went along. Thanks for the pics, Alex, and nice job.
6/29/08
Patrick T's Cabinet
Patrick T sent me pictures of his nearly complete cabinet yesterday.
He had been communicating with me the last year as his project moved along.
He completed the control panel first last June, right before his daughter
was born. He used MDF and, instead of T-molding, he routered the edges and
sanded. Sanding between numerous coats of paints gives it, in my
opinion, the polished, laminated look. Within the control panel he included three hacked USB gamepads to allow for 30 buttons. He then worked at getting Mamewah
and all his emulators set up as, I am sure, time became very scarce.
The cabinet, named "The Jolly Roger", still has a few more details to be added: coin door lights, monitor rotation motor, and a control panel overlay. Personally I like the angled monitor glass, and how polished the entire project looks. Great job Patrick! Now to teach the little girl the classics.
6/18/08
Scott's Sideart
Scott added sideart to his cabinet a few months ago. He created the
custom artwork himself, sized to perfectly cover the entire cabinet sides.
He had it printed by a local sign company on heavy-weight vinyl. Scott
said that he spent a couple hours per side with his Exacto-knife trimming
away the excess vinyl after applying the adhesive and rolling all the
bubbles from it.
The photo doesn't really do it justice. It defies belief in person. For an ultra-hirez shot of it, click here (warning: over two meg filesize).
Other Updates
Nothing new from me on the arcade front. The month's have just flown by
and no timeframe on building myself a new controller. Maybe in the
winter. We shall see. The completion of the second set of cabinet
plans is still on the to-do list. This has to be the longest project in
the history of man. Below is a recent photo of the reason I've chosen put
aside the arcade projects for the immediate future.
Wayne P's Single-Player Controllers
Wayne P emailed me pictures of his
two single-player control panels that he built using my
plans as a basis. He did modify them to suit his particular needs but
said the plans did provide a lot of help. Very nice job Wayne!
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