Mehdi Arcade (£100 Bartop) Complete. Pics & Video

[Mungo9000]

Here's a project I've just finished.
I wanted to make a MAME machine for my best friend. I wanted it to look nice but needed to keep the cost low. The original budget was £100 which I exceeded to make a really nice gift, but I could have kept it within the budget if I'd wanted by sacrificing on quality.

The heart of the machine was an old, 1.5Ghz Windows Laptop that I was given free because the screen had cracked and was unusable.
I removed all the unessential programs from the laptop and stripped the devices right back to the motherboard.




For the screen, I bought a second hand 19 inch monitor for £25 and some white laminate furniture board (£15)



To keep it simple, I decided to make it a single player panel (8 buttons)



My original plan was to leave the white laminate of the furniture board as the outer covering, but quickly discovered that the laminate chipped like crazy when cut. This would have left a very poor finish around the edges.
After shopping around I found a 1.5 metre roll of sticky backed plastic with a carbon-fibre effect on Amazon for only £13 that was just big enough to cover the entire cabinet.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Self-Adhesive-Carbon-Fibre-Vinyl/dp/B0053T7OC0/ref=pd_sim_auto_2

I fitted standard Happ joystick and buttons, all to be finished with 15mm chrome effect T-moulding. All in the buttons and moulding cost about £50 from Gremlin Arcade.



(Bobo the Leopard helped with the sticky backed plastic)





If there was one innovation on this project it came in the marquee.
I built the cabinet with an empty space for the marquee with the intention of building a light-box as a separate unit that would just slot into the opening. This light box unit would also include a sound system and be completely self contained, ready to drop into the hole.

The marquee design


The sound comes from stereo PC speakers with amplifier (Tesco Value £5), and the light from two small LED light clusters. The lights are battery powered cabinet lights. Each light has 3 bright white LED's and runs on 2xAAA batteries. I dismantled the lights and connected them to the power from the speaker amplifier.

The speakers are broken down and have a piece of PVC sheet between them (sanded to opaque)
Notice the amplifier at the back and some tinfoil to make a reflector. Everything is attached to 3mm MDF and slots into the marquee space of the cabinet.


Power on


The marquee was printed using a standard colour laser printer onto an OHP transparency to be sandwiched between the opaque PVC and a clear piece. Despite being printed on laser, the toner is still pretty translucent and it's a great way to do low cost illuminated marquees.

With light shining onto the marquee


...shining through the marquee


...and the finished product
(These photos makes the LED's look very blue, in real light it doesn't look blue at all, a quirk of the camera I think)



The controls were wired to the PC using a Minimus USB key. Fantastic value at about £10 including delivery.


The PC and guts are stuffed inside


There are a few final touches (the monitor bezel was sprayed black) but all finished this is how it turned out:



Cost

£... - PC
£25 - Monitor
£15 - Furniture board
£50 - Controls
£13 - Carbon-Fibre coating
  £5 - Speakers
  £3 - LED lights
£10 - Minimus USB keyboard encoder

Total cost £121

Reaction when he received it... PRICELESS

[Kaytrim]

Well made and well received.  Nice job on a small budget. 

[floriske.nl]

Great looking build especially on such a tight budget. Well done! 

[BobA]

Great job for the money spent.  Your friend is very lucky. 

[stefano]

Well done!
That's what we call here in Brazil "jeitinho brasileiro".
Something like: brazilian way of doing things (applied when people do things thinking out of the box, saving money, and using clever design).

[sunnyp]

Well done    I rally like the custom Marquee you made.

What spec was the laptop?  I'm surprised you got Hyperspin to work so well on it.