How many here still use their first MAME "creation"

[Generic Eric]

Do you still play MAME on the first control panel you made?  How long before you started to design "Mark II" ?

[Slippyblade]

My first completed project was actually a gift, so it lives with someone else.  My second completed project...  was also a gift and lives with my son at his place.  I actually don't have a completed project at my house...  yet.

[BadMouth]

My friend has the PC & x-arcade I used before building my cab.
He plunked it into generic Super Sports cabinet he found next to a dumpster.
He uses it waaaaay more than I ever did.  (even after having it for two years or so)
It still has my old Mala layout on it.

The x-arcade was always a stop gap from the time it was purchased.
I discovered this emulator stuff and thought I'd throw together a cab the following weekend.
After seeing the builds on here, I decided that I needed to soak in the info for a couple years first.

[paigeoliver]

First one ended up in the trash.

I still own and use one I put together sometime around 2002 or so.

[Jamesbeat]

Mine started out innocently enough as a raspberry pi experiment.
I discovered mame properly (I had dabbled in the past) and had bought controls and hacked a couple of game pads.
I decided that I wanted a cabinet to put it in.
I happened to be throwing away a dresser at around the same time, and it occurred to me that I could use the scrap boards to make a bartop.

Later that same day, I was the proud owner of a cabinet that only a mother could love.

At the time, it was just an experiment and I wasn't really expecting it to be more than a passing fad. I figured I would throw out the cabinet in a couple of months when I got bored of it, and maybe use the joysticks and buttons to make a fight stick for my son or something.

Of course it didn't happen that way, and over two years later, I still have my 'ghetto cab' set up in the living room.
My wife and kids love it even more than I do, but it really looks like sh*t.

So, yes I do still use my first creation, but that's about to change.

I am preparing to build a more worthy cabinet for my machine, and am gradually buying the bits and pieces.
It's nice to already have a cabinet that I can use, because that has taken the pressure off.

[yotsuya]

I still have my first MAME cab,  but not the first panel I built.

[Ian]

I am in a middle of a rebuild. My first machine was lost to an exwife unfortunately but as luck has it my friend got it from her and now 5 years later we are united... and it is a piece of crap! lol... Big ole 4-player beast on an even bigger fatter NBA Jam Cab.

Just slimmed down the cab this week, I have snaake working on some graphics for my two player control panel. Life is GOOOD!

[jtslade]

The rate of work completion for a cab goes down exponentially once it can play games in some form.   


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[haynor666]

My first stick was build on SunBetty joysticks and iL buttons in plain simple wood box - the best hardware I got years ago.

[drventure]

Still have my Arqadium Engine.

It sees pretty regular use, but not as much as in the past. Seems like it goes through phases, lots of play, then everyone forgets about it, then a new game is discovered and there's lots of play again, etc.

Wish I could figure out why the controls don't seem to want to play well with "Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime"

[Aceldamor]

My first cab (LuCiD's plans..aka MK2 cab) had to be torn down when I lost my first home. I kept the CP all this time. I just recently got back into a home and finally disassembled the CP.

2nd cab in planning stages  3rd cab sitting waiting for me to restore.

[kooky]

My first try was a MDF panel where I top mounted the joysticks.  It was a disaster.  I used the parts to rehab a Captain America cabinet and gave that to a friend, so I still play on it when I see them.

[stigzler]

Still using it cos still building it! 

[DeLuSioNal29]

I still have my first MAME cab,  but not the first panel I built.

Same here, but I still have the same panel... which is on it's way out.  Planning to replace it with a new 2 CP and then either sell it my old CP or recycle it as a 4 player pedestal for my 50 inch HDTV in the game room.   

D

[megamoze]

I built mine this summer.  I'm in the process of switching out the CPU, but when it's working I play it at least four or five times a week.


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[ivwshane]

I still use mine! Although when it was put through the test of being used at a party it failed:( So after a quick hack is back to working again but I'll be redoing the control panel and making it party proof.

I just finished a second cabinet for a friend and will be building my first clone machine (donkey kong) for another friend with a nice budget to work with (laminate here I come!).

[Phreakwars]

Sold mine years ago when I lived back in Nebraska.. The guy I sold it to says it still runs like a champ. It's a Windows 98 with Arcade OS setup. Has one of the very first iPac controllers ever made in it. And if I remember correctly, it has an AMD XP2500+ CPU and either 512mb, or 1 gig of RAM. Video card.... I think but don't remember, was probably something like an MX400 or something. Version of MAME?? Eh, whatever was the flavor around the year 2001. Makes me wanna visit his house, just so I could see how the hell I did it all. I remember the motherboard was an MSI. I used an MSI, because they were pretty much the only brand you could find at the time that allowed the user to change the BIOS boot screen logo. There was no app for it, you just had to hack your bios file then flash and pray you didn't screw up your PC. Ahh the good ole days..

[gildahl]

While this might sound self congratulatory, I finished my first cab in 2012 and after banging on it for the last three years, there is literally not a thing I would change on the CP.  If the machine was destroyed and I had to rebuild it, I would use exactly the same plan without an iota of change.  It is pretty much the perfect generic layout for the games I like to play.  How did  I accomplish this?  Well, you could argue that this is actually a Mark IV design, but Mark I-III were paper only.  After building the physical cabinet and CP box, I printed a full size picture of the control layout I had worked hard to come up with and spent a considerable amount of time "air-playing" a spectrum of games on it.  I discovered a severe fault in my first design fairly quickly after realizing that the layout which looked so nice and symmetrical on paper had some very real practical deficiencies.  Hand placement on certain controls was either awkward or would cause my palm to rest on other buttons.  This resulted in lot of re-thinking and a second revised copy being printed with these issues corrected.  This new copy was good—up until I started doing final measurements to drill holes and realized that in my effort to fix the layout, some of the controls no longer quite fit within the box under the panel.  A little more work tightening things up produced a third copy that became my template for marking out the drill locations on the panel.  It would have been my final copy too, except for the need to make a few more micro-adjustments and a last minute text label change.  So a fourth copy was printed to make these changes.  Only when further "air-playing" failed to find any more flaws did I commit myself to drill holes.

My full design would have had flipper buttons on the sides of the CP box, but physically I could not place these without compromising the position of the top buttons, so I never made the attempt. If I can ever find some super low-profile switches, I may add these someday, but it wouldn't really be a change in design.  I have also had some preliminary throughts about building a dedicated vertical screen cabinet that would have fewer buttons, ditch one of the spinners, and reduce the overall dimensions a bit; however this wouldn't be so much a design change as a fundamentally new design for a different kind of cabinet.

[drventure]

@gildahl

Nice! I don't believe I saw this build thread way back when, but nice job. If I was doing a normal arcade cab (like for a gameroom), I'd be seriously looking to copy this design.

[mattsoft]

Since I am still building my first MAME build, YES.

[CheffoJeffo]

Finally got rid of the Plain Black MAME Box this year (not quite finished in this pic).



Built it in 2005(?) because Mrs. Cheffo's sister made the mistake of saying "wouldn't it be cool to have a sit-down arcade machine at the cottage?"

The computer finally kicked it and it was taking up a bunch of floor space (3-siders will do that), so I hauled it back to the city, pulled the monitor, IPac, ArcadeVGA and put the rest out at the curb. 

EDIT: Interesting to note that I would probably keep the same basic design if I had to do it again (maybe go for something less boxy), EXCEPT that I wouldn't put the P1/P2 start buttons on the front panel (you can see a bit of white start button beneath the red controls). That was a bad idea, even if it looked neat and clean.

[RTyper56]

My first cab that is still a bit of WIP.
All that's left are cosmetics.
cab design is the Hypercade design found in the sketchup gallery.
CP design by me.
Buttons are LED backlit, wired for 5v (and still bright), but left unplugged due to a couple LEDs are DOA.

Gallery of the rest of the photos taken throughout the build is linked in my sig.

[mgb]

My first creation basically morphed into my current and still very much used cabinet (Vertical Retrace).
I first built a Slikstik style control panel and while I worked on the cab, I had the CP, computer & Monitor setup on a desk & playable.
Then my cabinet plans went a few design changes before I ended up with CP and components mounted in a big ugly cab in my basement.
As time went by, I decided I wanted a nicer cab actually up in my house and I went through one more failed design attempt before I finally took components such as the trisync monitor and iPac from my first build and used them in VR.
I ended up changing everything else though, including the computer and controls 

[Madman]

Yep,
But I am planning on building a new c-panel this spring!
built in around 2003>>>

[Osirus23]

But I am planning on building a new c-panel this spring!

This time without the angled joysticks? 

[Paul Olson]

I don't think there are even any parts still being used from my first panel from 2003. The second version of the panel was modular, but still attached to the original cabinet. The current version uses the controllers from the second version, but it is now a pedestal cabinet. I haven't touched it in a while now. All of my hobby time has been spent in the garage with the dedicated vids and pins lately.

[CCM]

I'm still using the first one I made back in 2002.   It sure isn't the prettiest control panel, but it works, and I just don't have the time to build another one even if I wanted to.  Hell, I'm still running the original version of MAME from back in 2002.  I have updated the computer several times over the years.

Worst part is my cab/control panel was the guinea pig...  A friend and I built several for other people and each one of them was better than the one I built for myself.

[Automark]

My first mame cab was an old jammy cab I converted. I sold it, I do not like multi game cabs, and now only have dedicated ones.
I have mame installed on a pc, and sometime's use it to play games I do not have a cab for.

[05SRT4]

I still have my first Mame.

I fell into the whole "dont get it functioning before you complete the outside cause you'll never finish it" group. the Marquee is still just a blank foam sheet......

[RetroACTIVE]

Took a solid break from it for about ... Um ... 8 years!  Coming back to it this year

[anthony691]

I built my first MAME cab 12 years ago. It saw a tremendous amount of play but fell out of use about 8 years ago.

This is my first time logging in in a very, very long time.  I'm building a little raspi bartop and checking out the scene a bit.

Also: none of these usernames look familiar.

Also also: with the exception of cabinet kits getting awesome, better front ends having been developed, and progress with MAME itself, it seems that not much has changed in the past decade or so?

[jdbailey1206]

Here's my original Weecade.  After I completed it, it didn't get much use.  I went right to building my Fix It Felix Jr. build.  As of right now (I don't have a picture) half the buttons are gone and only one joystick remains.  I ended up making it a Star Wars Arcade Trilogy Test Bed.  Now all I have to do is take the guts and put it into a Star Wars Build.

[vwalbridge]

Here's my original Weecade.  After I completed it, it didn't get much use.

Somewhere pbj is smiling.

[jdbailey1206]

Here's my original Weecade.  After I completed it, it didn't get much use.

Somewhere pbj is smiling.

   I'm glad I tried the Weecade first though.  It sure did teach me a lot about building my second one.

[telengard]

I switched from modular panels to modular controls maybe a year or two after making my cabinet back in (was it 2003??).  Very happy with the change!