Cabinet help

[Elemental]

Hey, I have been looking at this site on and off for a long time, and have finally decided to build a cab for myself!

At first I was going to find an old cab to build up into a mame machine, but I went to the only place I could find that had some, and one was just snatched up, and the others were classics, which not only could I not afford but I would never rip apart! I decided the best way to go was to build my own. So far, I have alot of the stuff I need:

A nice PC (2.0ghz Celeron, 256mb RAM etc)
A Dreamcast
A TV

The problem is the TV. I was going to use Lusid's awsome plans, but after looking at it, I think that the monitor hole will be too big.  The TV I have is a 20in Toshiba flat screen. It is 23 inches wide with the side speakers. It is 17 1/2in tall. The veiwable screen is 20in. diagonal. On lusids design, I would seem to have more bezel room on the sides and top of the TV then I would like. Is there another set of plans that would be better for my tv? Thanks!

[Sasquatch!]

Go to the main arcadecontrols.com site, click on "Cabinets" on the left nav menu, and then go to "cabinet plans".

If you really like lusid's plans (and hell, who doesn't  ), you could probably easily modify them to be narrower if you needed to.

[Elemental]

I saw all of those, I just was wondering if anyone had first hand experience with a design that could fit my tv nicely. I will look through the links again though.

[Sasquatch!]

Lusid's plans have a  26" interior, IIRC.  You say that your TV is 23 inches wide?  Honesly, I'd still go with the 26" plans.  So what if you have some space around your monitor?  You can spruce up the blank area with some nice arwork and stuff and it'll look great.  Really, the only thing that you'd have to modify is that the TV shelf might have to be higher, but that's about it.

Plus, what if you get a bigger/better TV or monitor in the future?  If you stick with the 26" interior width, you'll be set.  If you make the cabinet a lot narrower, you might be outta luck.  That's just my $0.02 anyway.

[Jakobud]

Well if your tv is only 23" wide I think you could still build a cabinet made for the 26" wide tv but just modify the plans a bit to accomodate your size tv instead of the ones that the plans asks for.

[Elemental]

Ok, I think that I will just go with the design, and put some bezel art around the screen. You never know, like Sasquatch! said I might want to upgrade the monitor in the future! Good thinking! Anyways, thank you for all of the replies! I am sure to have many more questions when the build starts  

[grafixmonkey]

Besides, you can always do something really cool with the space, like put some fluorescing paint on some black plastic and then put a black light under the marquee.  It's also a good place for things like volume knobs, system buttons, or even a headphone jack, that need thin material to be mounted.

[ErikRuud]

I am just about done building a cab for my wife's cousin. I used the Lusid plan's pretty much as is.

The only monitor that he has right now is an old 15". The viewable area is 11" x 8.1/4".  It did not look too bad until I made the bezel panel last night.  All that blank space just emphasized how small the screen is.

I am going to fill in some of the empty space with some artwork, and some instructions explaining the front-end.

Eventually he will get a bigger monitor, and we will just redo the bezel panel.