Hi,
3 years ago I had an idea of building an arcade machine. After thinking over what kind of an arcade machine I want, I came up with following list:
- universal (it should run games from various platforms (mame, snes, dos, genesis, ...)
- original look and feel (no interaction with operating system, ...)
- everyone should be able to make one (as cheap as possible, opensource)
- everyone should be able to use one (as simple to use as possible)
I looked around the web to see if something similar exists, but at that point I didn't find anything that had all the features listed above.
So I started my own arcade machine project and after 1 year I end up with this:
So you may wonder why is there an usb key and a weird red board on the picture. Well this are the heart and soul of my arcade machine. Let me explain.
I want an universal arcade machine, so it was obvious I need to use a PC to emulate old consoles/arcades. But we all know, that a standard input device on PC is a keyboard and all the emulators use it as a default input device. But different emulators have different default keybindings. So we need an keyboard encoder that can be reconfigured on the fly. So this is what the red board on the picture is all about. It is an on the fly reconfigurable keyboard encoder with 35 inputs.
But to get oldschool look and feel some other things are also important. The first, most important thing for me, is that you don't see an operating system gui when booting the system. The most ugly thing is to see windows logo before you start your frontend/game... This is why I wrote my own frontend for a Gnu/Linux operating system.
At last I want to make my project as easy to reproduce and as cheap as possible. This is why the usb key is on the pic. I made an bootable linux image, where you can add games and emulators. When you want to convert your pc in an arcade machine, you just need to boot it from the usb key
So let me sum up what i did:
- on the fly reconfigurable keyboard encoder, which uses a program on your pc to map your keyboard controls to keycodes. It is based on this hw:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/NXP/LPC-P1343/- frontend which support different emulators and can reconfigure my keyboard encoder automaticaly, when you start a game. You can also make your own graphics for it...
- packed all the software and made an usb bootable image with 2 partitions. So you can easily add new games/emulators and config files even from windows pc
At the end I also build a little cabinet. It is just a cabinet with an lcd and speakers build in it. I didn't put an PC inside, because I want to make a "portable" cabinet, that can be connected to my laptop
I build this cabinet 1.5 years ago and it was in use for all this time in a local skate park
Total cost of the material for the project:
- old P4 pc (2ghz celeron, 512mb ram) 20$ on ebay
- old 15inch lcd display 20$ on ebay
- old pc speakers 10$ on ebay
- hw for keyboard encoder 20$
- arcade sticks and buttons 40$
- Plywood or Particle board for cabinet, around 15$ for square meter
sum 110$ + cabinet material
Here are also 2 pics and a video:
In the video you can see booting, frontend and 4 games:
- super mario world (snes)
- prehistoric (dos)
- metal slug (mame)
- teenage mutant ninja turtles (genesis)
So I hope you like it. I didn't go in any details, but if you have questions ask. I will update this project until summer with some new features and with documentation, which I didn't have time to write yet, so new developers could join the project
P.S.: Sorry for my English, I am form EU so it is not my native language