A bunch of Ultra Noob Questions

[awesomesauce22]

Hello,

I like playing video games and arcade machines, so I figured that I could try my hand at building my own arcade cabinet and run a computer with MAME on it.  I was just wondering how exactly I would go about doing this. Basically, are there any sites that sell possibly some kits or something of the sort that would help make it extremely easy to build my own arcade cabinet? What could I use in terms of a monitor and where could I find one? And how do I install the computer and hook it up to the cabinet?  My friend said that he would give me an old PC of his w/ 512 MB of RAM and a 20 GB Hard Drive running Windows XP.  Would that be sufficient for most purposes?  I will post more questions as I think of them.  And how much would a project like this cost on average $500?  $1000? 

Thanks in advance for all the help
awesomesauce22
 
 

[wweumina]

Well, you are on the right site. I'd browse the projects forum to get a feel for what you want. The best place to start would be to pick up the 'Project Arcade' book from amazon (click the link at the top of the page)

[awesomesauce22]

Alright sounds good thanks.  I'm just thinking though.  Do you have any suggestions or tips for beginners though.  Because I'm not sure if it makes sense to purchase the book just yet before I get a good sense of how much time, effort, and money I will need to put into this project

[Donkbaca]

Cost will run you anywhere between 200 bucks to over a thousand, depending on what you have available and what you want to build.

I say get the book.  Its a $20 investment and if you don't want to build now, you will have it handy for when you are ready.

As for time.  Once again, it depends on what you want to build and how experienced you are with woodworking and what tools you have available.  But I say plan on it taking twice as long as you think.  I would say a good 40 hours of work to set up the hardware and software.

A good place to start is to look in the project announcements. I would peruse the stikied "hall of fame" projects and check those out.  Most of those threads have good records in terms of time/expense

[quadrider1]

If your building a cocktail your looking at $400, I use $50 comps from ebay, 4/8 way mag stik plus from andy at ultimarc= 36 a piece, the ipac= 36, I go 6 buttons each plus the player 1 and 2 so 14 total, from ebay you get those cheap so $24, 21inch monitor = 120, marquee=40, and then wood and plexi around 120. I can make two cabs out of a 4x8 sheet of ply. Thats just the cocktails i make. You shouldnt go over 500 if you want a nice working arcade. but you can get crazy with alot of money.

[clutch]

I followed a progression.  Get the computer.  Load it up with mame, nestopia, mess, and whatever else interests you and familiarize yourself with all the settings and nuances of the software.  Decide whether you want to build your own cab, buy a kit, or buy an old arcade cab and gut it.  Do you want to take the easy route and use a lcd monitor?  Do you want to use a real cga arcade monitor?  How much money are you willing to sink into this project?  I ended up going whole hog and ordering a Japanese candy cabinet that I can use for mame or just about any jamma/jvs application I want.  The only catch is it cost a lot more than I had initially set out to spend.  However, it will provide me and my family hours upon hours of entertainment and I'm pretty certain I can get my money back out of it if need be.