Over the years, I have turned to these forums for information that has been very helpful in building my own arcade cabinet. While I have never signed up or even posted, I now feel it is time to share my machine... or should I say machines (plural).
First off, wanted to tell you a little bit about myself. I grew up on the Gulf Coast of Florida and in my youth spent many days hanging out with friends at the St. Pete Beach Amusement Center (the local arcade). I had always wanted to have my very own arcade machine, but in those days this was not entirely possible. Eventually life got in the way and every day became monotonous and boring until 5 years ago when fate had me move to the Philippines. I have been here for almost 5 years now and I am married with a beautiful 3 year old daughter who loves "games" already. Because of the lowered cost of living and my reasonably high income from working online, I get bored easily and soon found myself wanting some comforts of home...
An Arcade Machine.
By this time, MAME was already fully functional and the costs associated with building a machine here is fairly affordable so I set out researching.
For almost a year, I was using an old "Piso-Piso" cabinet. A Piso-Piso cabinet is a locally designed and built coin operated internet kiosk which is marketed to local stores and eateries. I was using cheap USB gamepad controllers that I picked up in the local mall and contemplating the best route to go about making a real machine... And of course finding all of the equipment.
The i-Pac was and still is way too expensive for my tastes so the plan was to hack a keyboard... or two. The only keyboards I could find are limited to 6 simultaneous buttons and after researching keyboard splitters I was quickly becoming distraught. As luck would have it, my gamepad broke and I decided to disassemble it to repair it. Upon opening it up, I found it to be perfect for hacking. The locally bought USB gamepads have spots for each button that are there solely for surface mounting to. I had already found all of the controls I needed including a pair of Crown joysticks, 20 colored clear acrylic buttons with microswitches, a couple of coin doors and a coin acceptor.
My first cabinet was modeled after the MVS NEO-GEO 2-piece design. it only took me three days to actually build, but about a month's worth of planning ahead. I hired a local carpenter who hand cut each of the pieces out of 3/4 plywood and then I personally assembled all of the pieces. The following day the painter came by and made use of some good old automotive body filler to make the cabinet perfectly smooth and asymmetrical. On the third day, the painter returned with a can of flat black and high-gloss ferrari red automotive paints and finished the machine off. The results were amazing...
The Front view of my first arcade cabinet. I used computer speakers and the built in amplifier for the audio system. Took maybe 10 minutes to tear apart the casing and move the electronics to the machine.
This is not my daughter (she was only 2 when this photo was taken), it is the daughter of the carpenter who helped build the cabinet and was waiting to play it first.
The cabinet was designed for a 19 inch monitor I had, but had some issues with it so it was at the repair shop when the machine was completed.
The top of the controller board is on hinges and opens with a key giving access to the keyboard, mouse and wiring in order to make some repairs. The green buttons on the front are player-1 and player-2 start as well as the orange button which exits the current game to the MAMEUI game menu window.
I never got a picture of the backside. This cabinet was made with 2 buttons and a switch on the back of the cabinet. 1 switch turns the computer on, the second button is handled with Joy2Key. When the second button is pushed, Joy2Key sends it as a particular key combination which is interpreted by a utility called Quick Shutdown which turns off the cabinet in less then 5 seconds. The switch is basically a hot-wired power cable for the monitor which turns off the monitor when the cabinet is not being used. The computer speaker amplifier is also located in the back along with the power and volume control knobs.
Of course there were some issues with my initial design, but that did not stop my neighbors telling everyone else in the city about the arcade machine. It only took a couple of weeks before someone asked me to build them one.
Side image of my second cabinet.
front image of my second cabinet.
Anyway, I will try to get around to taking a photo of the controllers for everyone to see.
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Topic: My arcade machines (Read 2526 times)
