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Good deal?
TOK:
You had me as a definite yes until I read it was going to be made out of flea market/yard sale parts.
I'd love to have a bartop, but don't have much time to build so a quality bartop under $400 is very appealing. When the price gets over that (which doesn't take much), I'm back into the realm of wanting to do it myself.
shardian:
If you are going to use near end of life PC's, new fans at a minimum should be installed to protect what life is left in the PC.
Also, it is actually LESS work for you to route out a slot for T-molding than take the time to round over everything. Also, I don't think $5 in T-molding will exactly break the bank for a bar-top. ;)
It makes me cringe every time someone says they will be doing a round over edge.
groovy9:
Yeah, I already ordered some T-molding. I'll be putting a nice, big, new 4" case fan an it. I'll think about new CPU fans, though that might be a challenge, since I'll be going with whatever CPU I get cheap that day.
Old PC parts are really very durable in an application like this. Your hard drive is the single most fragile part, and I've eliminated it. Second would be fans. Motherboard/CPU/Memory/Monitor all generally last for years and years.
AKA Kaytrim:
:banghead: I wish to apologize for my previous post. The first time I read this thread I didn't realize what you were doing. I thought that you were looking for opinions on something that you were going to buy not sell. After reading the rest of this thread I see that you could have a market for this if you can get around the legality issue. Just look at the machines that are being sold at Target and Costco for around $400 Here is a link to the RetroBlast review http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/biggames.html. While the machine you plan on building would not be for most of the people on these boards there are so many more people that don't have the knowledge or skills to build something of this nature.
A couple of suggestions, you said in your last post that the hardware you plan on using will last a while. I agree for the most part. CDs however can get scratched to the point that they don't work anymore. This would not be a problem though if you plan to mount the CD ROM Drive inside the cabinet with no external access. Have you looked into using a flash drive for the OS storage? There are two threads that I am aware of on the boards where the builder used a IDE to Flash adapter. By plugging in a 1G flash card you would have plenty of room for the OS, MAME, font end and ROMS.
groovy9:
--- Quote from: AKA Kaytrim on November 16, 2006, 10:26:03 am --- :banghead: I wish to apologize for my previous post. The first time I read this thread I didn't realize what you were doing.
--- End quote ---
No need :)
--- Quote from: AKA Kaytrim on November 16, 2006, 10:26:03 am ---Have you looked into using a flash drive for the OS storage?
--- End quote ---
I do plan to put the drive inside, and possibly zip-tied closed :) I thought of the flash drive idea as well, just to get rid of another moving part (the CD drive), but a CD drive is $5, blank CDs are 25 cents, and my boot CD is already done. Going the flash route would be prohibitively expensive.