We've now also assembled the cabinet. We used 2" x 2" which we screwed the plates to. As you could see on the first pictures in this thread, the particle boards have notches on the sides of the plates, which meant we had to try to hide these on the backside. So to be honest, the backside of this cabinet really doesn't look to good. We've let the backplate be a inch further in, so that we can have some ventilation on the back.
Even though it doesn't look to good on the backside, the sides are very clean and nice. It will stand against a wall, so it really doesn't matter anyways. I will post more pictures of the cabinet later.
We've also mounted the bottom panel a bit higher, so there are room for wheels beneath it.
This is the cabinet after assembly. As you can see, we've also cut and sanded the shelf which will be the plate for our control panel, and we're fitting it at the moment.
In addition to the woodworking, we have tested our computer. I got a 20" 4:3 LCD + an old computer for free, both working OK.
After giving the old desktop computer a full cleanup (both inside and outside) we installed XP, and HyperSpin - And gave it a spin
(Sorry...)
We tested with some clips from emu movies, cover art + some NES roms. Everything was running OK, but when we tried some MAME games, we ran into some problems.
The computer has a P4 with around 3Ghz. I thought this should be able to cover it, but MAME was more demanding than I imagined, the same is for HyperSpin - VERY resource demanding! Problems we experienced was choppy sound and 95-100% CPU use on games like Bubble Booble, TMNT etc. On Bubble Bobble 2, the game slowed down, and music was very choppy! Gah...
After fiddling around with the performance settings for both MAME and HyperSpin, we gave up on this computer, and gave it away (once a desktop, always a desktop.)
I got a couple of small esprimo computers, so I used one of these. Itīs an C2D 1,5Ghz installed, so I guess it's a bit faster than the P4.
We installed Windows 7, and tried again with HyperSpin and Bubble Bobble. No problems! Well, HyperSpin is not fast, but it's at least running at an OK speed. Bubble Bobble 2 is not running as it should. It is still choppy, but I guess that is because it's much more advanced than Bubble Bobble 2, and MAME is only running on one core, meaning 1,5Ghz is all it gets. It's still better than the old desktop, and a WHOLE lot smaller. We still haven't configured everything, we're still missing the wheel art for the games, plus videos for a lot of the games (you have to download packs for all games, we're not going to have all of them for legal causes). I guess I have to register on the HyperSpin site to get access to extra art (25USD).
Ah... Guess it's back to the woodworking again. I think the control panel will take some hours, just to get the measurements correctly. We have ordered 3 extra buttons (random color for $1 a piece). These are for dedicated "ESC/Enter" buttons for Hyperspin, and a power on button. The ESC button will be a QUIT button for the games, and shutdown in HyperSpin. The Enter button will be a Pause button in the games. Although these are not completely necessary, we thought it could be nice to separate these from the rest of the panel.