How long do MAME cabinets usually take to make?

[IceCold]

How long has many of your guys' mame cabinets taken to make?  A month, 2 months, a year, 2 years?    If I'm only going to to controls for 1 person on the control panel(doing a sidewinder hack) and i'm able to work on it over 20 hours a week, could I get it done within a month?  BTW - I'm making a tabletop / compact mame cabinet.  I know it's different for every cabinet, so if you want to, just tell me how long yours took to make.  

[SirPoonga]

I have no clue how long mine took.  It's still not done, though unemployment doesn't help that.  It took me about 3 months to get the controls scouring ebay.  Took about 3 months, just weekends, to make it playable.

[MrArcade]

I have built a machine in a little over a day, and I have built machines that took weeks....

[IceCold]

I have built a machine in a little over a day, and I have built machines that took weeks....

Woah, it shouldn't take me very long then!  That's very motivating to hear somebody could do it in that short of time!  I have lots of time to work on it, so I should be able to have it at least playable in a couple weeks.  And in a couple of months I should have it looking pretty cool

[SirPoonga]

You know what MrA doesn't tell you though, he refurbs arcades.  So he has some experience.

[SNAAAKE]

I'd say about a week.
Mine was playable the first day because i already had a panel built before i went for cab.

[1UP]

Mine took about a year of planning (in my almost nonexistant free time) and over a solid month off work for construction (8-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week!)  My design is a bit more complex than most, so if you took the rotating control panel and all the artwork out of the mix, I probably could've made it playable in 1-2 weeks.  It's still not quite finished yet, but it's playable and looks finished...

[mtd]

I think most people would agree that the cabinet never is really done.  It is an ongoing project.  I've never seen anyone build just one control panel.  

What I would stress is . . . . Take your time.  Do lots of planning.  Wait till you have the money/time/equipment/components to do it right the first time.  I tried to save money on sidewinder hacks, mouse hacks, etc. and in the end wound up spending almost as much as I would have spent on the ultimarc products that are far superior.  

However, each cabinet project is different and original, so ymmv.  

Best project I have ever started.  Now to convice the wife that building a Game room onto the house is a priority.  

[JustMichael]

A word of advise, do the control panel last.  Once you get it done you will be play testing more than you work on the cab.

[mikenotbob]

I'm in total agreement with mtd and JustMichael:
#1) Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan.  Then... plan some more.
Spend a lot of time circling the cabinet, measuring, taking notes, sketching out plans...  Visit Home Depot (a lot!), look at everything and ask, 'can I use this? How would I use this?'  Spend hours here reading the forums and looking at others projects.

#2) Finish the CP last, or at least assemble the CP and affix it last.  I almost followed this rule..  My cabinet was almost 100% finished.  The only thing left to do was find a good spot for the power button.  Two years later and I FINALLY took care of that, after two years of bending over and grabbing hold of a button hanging off of a wire coming out of the coin door.

I definitely recommend planning the control panel first, though.  First, decide what controls you want.  What types of joysticks, how many buttons, spinner, trackball, etc...  Then order all of the parts, take measurements of them, and do a mockup on cardboard.  Install the buttons on that cardboard and everything.  I don't really feel a need to hook it up to a pc at this point, but pretend to play it, visualize the various games etc.  

I spent a lot of time on this, more than anything else, and it really paid off.  No redrilling, redoing a CP.  What I found easiest to do is either print out the exact size of things w/ a cad program, or sketch them out.  Then I cut out the buttons and taped them to another sheet of paper in the configuration I decided on (6 buttons each joy), 'pretended' to press them, and kept reaffixing them (closer, farther apart) until I was most confortable, then photocopied that config.  Then I sketched the size of the joystick and affixed it to my button config, photocopied it twice, cut them out.  I did my various other controls in the same way (asteroids buttons, trackball buttons, etc), cut out each mockup and taped them to a piece of cardboard in the most comfortable layout, installed the buttons for better verification, and made sure I build the frame for my control panel to that size.

I feel that it's much better to decide on the size of the control panel this way than to decide on a size first and have to cram everything into it. (Unless you are doing modular panels/keeping to the exact dimensions of the original panel.)

Phew... can anyone tell I tend to talk a lot?

[rampy]

I'm in total agreement with mtd and JustMichael:
#1) Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan.  Then... plan some more.

#2) Finish the CP last, or at least assemble the CP and affix it last.  I almost followed this rule..  My cabinet was almost 100% finished.  The only thing left to do was find a good spot for the power button.  Two years later and I FINALLY took care of that, after two years of bending over and grabbing hold of a button hanging off of a wire coming out of the coin door.

#1 is totally true... planning is important.  Take your time.  

#2 I relate to this too well...  Getting my setup playable ruined my progress... and although mine has been playable for about a month, I still haven't wired up the PC power switch to where it would be accessible without opening the coin door =P  (i finally did just pick up a momentary swith that would fit the old arcade power switch hole/bracket... so maybe this is the week)

I'd also add to the list...
#4bPractice on scrap wood/pieces... make mockups in cardboard/scrap wood.  (unless you are already a  proficient craftsman...)

*shrug*

If you had all your materials you thought you needed upfront(and tools)... and live close enough to a hardware store to run out 12 times to get what you forgot or just discovered you need.... I'm sure you could make a bartop in that amount of time ( a month)...  depending on how many manhours you spent in that month on construction of course  (what, nobodies done a MS Project Plan for there cabinets? That would be too funny...)

Rampy

[Vesper]

My cabinet took me 3 weeks from when I got the original machine to be converted.  I live in an apartment so I had to do all of the sanding/painting/woodworking in my friends garage.  It took almost all of my freetime.  There were some times near the end there though where I was waiting for parts to arrive (the IPAC in particular).  

The control panel was the most difficult and took the most time.  That was an entire weekend of woodworking.  I did a lot of planning ahead of time using Visio and finally spending 3-4 hours drawing all of the lines on the piece of wood.

I'd say I made about 15 trips to Home Depot/Ace Hardware.  

- Mike

[AlanS17]

To get a working machine took me a weekend, but that was with the original buttons, monitor, etc. Rather than conforming the arcade machine, I conformed the PC inside. It provided for a much more rapid first development. It's a great way to decide where you want to go from there. (Like what you're missing, what you won't need, etc.)

Now I'm working on a (different) dedicated machine and that thing has taken several weeks (but most of that is just time spent waiting for parts to come in the mail). I'm still not finished but should be done by the weekend (FINALLY). All my fraternity brothers have been down my back to get it working ever since I took the last machine out!!!

I spend more time on the technical issues, though, so my trips are usually to places like Radio Shack or Office Depot. (But it's still gonna look good. Just yall wait and see). I've been working on this stuff for a couple months now and I still don't have a web space for it. And yall will never get to see my first machine now...

[neuromancer]

A word of advise, do the control panel last.  Once you get it done you will be play testing more than you work on the cab.

I was going to say exactly the opposite: build the CP first, because then you can use it by itself for a long time before you get around to building the rest of the box. My first CP just has the parts mounted on a scrap of pressure treated 2x8. Still using it too.

Bob

[JesterDEV]

It would have taken me only a weekend but the motherboard
blew. Really though to get just the cab done, I say a weekend.
For art work and what not it took me longer.

[Howard_Casto]

Boy you guys really rushed through things.  

To be honest there are two types of cab builders.  

Cab builder #1 does it because he wants an arcade cab to play those mame games on NOW!

Cab builder #2 also wants this, but isn't satisfied with a mere conversion or quick build.  He wants to build the prefect cab.  

Cab builder #1 can get things done in about a month and he'll never work on his cab again.

Cab builder #2 will also get the initial cab done in about a month or slightly longer (he might have a more complicated plan)  but wil forever have an "unfinished" cab.  

So the real question is how hardcore are you?  Some people build a cab over the weekend, found it to be fun, and then the novelty wears off and they fool with it rarely.  For others it becomes a life-long obsession.  

Try to guess which category I fit into.

[hyiu]

I agree to most

a) PLAN PLAN PLAN PLAN PLAN !!!...
and MEASURE TWICE, CHECK TWICE, CUT ONCE !!!

but I think building the control panel first is VERY IMPORTANT !!!.... cos that is basically the HEART of the whole thing !!!....

in the CP, you need to decide swappable ?? or fixed ?? BIG ?? or small ?? trackball ?? spinner ?? tron stick ??... rotate panel ??... keyboard drawer ....2 players ??  4 players ??.... and these MAIN decisions go on and on....

and with those decisions made, then you design a cab which fits the control panel....

maybe you'll need a panel that is wider than the cab itself... (like a box sitting on the cab.... or if the panel is wide enough, just a piece of wood mounted on the cab.... and how thick the whole thing is.... will it fit.... and so on.....

yes... I agree that once you get the CP playable, you'll start testing the games and the progress of your cab will be slower.... but I do think it is worthwhile doing the panel FIRST....

afterall.... we build a cab to play..... so.... building while playing is acceptable... right ??  

ps: maybe that is why I took sooooooo long before I got my first cab done.... (it took about 4 months...) I mainly worked on weekday after work.... and a little bit (not much) on wkends....

[IceCold]

I already have my control panel planned how I want it to be.  I want it to have 1 joystick, 6 main buttons, 1 button on each side(for pinball) and a button that simulates putting coins in.  So I should be able to build the cab around that.  I was thinking that this would be the order I would o the cab 1. get the pc that I'm going to use with it running and see how it plays some games on MAME and stuff 2. PLAN PLAN PLAN! 3. Build the cabinet, with my control panel design in mind 4. make the control panel.  That way I have it in an at least playable state, then I make the control panel, to finish it up a little bit(make it looks good after I do that)