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Isometric Bacon:
G'day mates. I've been wanting to create one of these cabinets for some time now, but I've never really had an excuse to get started, but now I have.
For school (final year) we are able to work on a independent design project, and i'm seriously thinking of doing an arcade system.

There are only a few problems, money (being still a high school student) and time. (I have a deadline of around 12 weeks.) I mainly will be working on this on weekends, (and in a week, I will have two weeks of which when i'm not partying i'll try everything to build this cabinet :) )

I basically have most of the tools here, a drillpress, disc sander etc. I don't have a jigsaw, but I should be able to make a relatively square cabinet and disc-sand the edges right? or use a file? Then agian, I don't think i'll even have curves... Kind of like this guy's design http://www.pioproductions.com/cpu.htm
I also don't have those button hole maker drill bits, but hopefully I can use ones at the school.

The beauty is I already have a 20" TV/Monitor for use (My dad got it from his bank, it's around 20 years old, but it should do. I haven't tried PC resolutions on it yet, but console systems and TV works fine. I have a PC to TV adapter around here somewhere too.)

I also have a PC ready to gut, an AMD 450 with around 300 megs of RAM and a Riva TNT. Not the best, but I plan to upgrade it sometime in the future. I'd also like to include Dreamcast compatibility, but I understand I probably can't do that if i'm going to hardwire a keyboard right?

Speaking of which, i've been thinking about controls. Where are some good suppliers in Australia? OZStick looks nice, and they seem to have quite good prices. (http://home.iprimus.com.au/ozstick/parts.html)

The only thing that worries me, is the Joysticks. I want some 8-way 4 way switchable ones, but Ozstick's aren't, although they quote that they "work well with 4 way games" Is this true? I'd hate to buy them and find out they're useless for old school games.

I was also looking to use the "PB04" buttons. They're much cheaper than the "PB01" buttons, with the only difference that they have a shallow dimple, and make more noise (I love clicky buttons, so this doesn't bother me.) Is this the right path to take?

Another question relating to buttons, is it really worth me getting a IPAC control system? They're rather expensive (at $94) and I'd much rather hack apart some old keyboard (we have plenty) then solder up the connections myself. I heard this can lead to some "button locking" at times though. Is this a major problem? or just a minor niggle than can be ignored? Which one would you reccomend, keeping in mind the small budget of this cabinet?

I've even been thinking of forgoeing the whole make your own control box thing, and getting a X-arcade stick... but judging by the responses i've found by your community, I might give it a miss. I don't like the idea of the sticks being so close together and flimsy buttons. :)

Also, just out of interest, what's a roughly estimated idea of how much wood and materials would cost if I went with something like this guys measurements. "http://www.pioproductions.com/cpu.htm"

Finally speakers. What sort of speakers can I use? They don't have to be anything special... something pretty cheap. I may just stick some PC Speakers in there. If I want better sound I'll just plug in my stereo system.

So enough yapping about newbie questions, I'd love to see your cabinets. Please link me to your respective sites so I can have a nosy at your machines :)

Thanks in advance.

Isometric Bacon:
Hmm. The AMD 400 seems well.. crap in MAME

It even runs old games like "Rastan" pathetically slow. I guess this calls for an upgrade. I'll use the AMD for now, but in future I want to upgrade so it can play most games. (E.g. Street Fighter series, Mortal Kombat and other graphically intensive games.)

How much would it cost (the cheapest way) to upgrade to a processor that will essentially play most of these games? would say, a 1.2 ghz do? The Riva TNT is also very old. Should I fork out on another video card?

Thanks for the advice in advance

paigeoliver:
Drop back about 15 Mame versions and watch that processor do much much better. (Use something like mame .56 or .57).

Isometric Bacon:
Thanks for the help man!
I tried downgrading to .56, but unfortunately it didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference. I'm starting to think the PC is just too clogged up with crap.

I'll do a format on it soon, and see what happens. Does anyone know of any programs that can make it exclusively stripped down? (e.g. i'm only going to use it for Arcade games/MP3's... so explorer + all that other crap can be gotten rid off? (still needs network functionability though)

Thanks

paigeoliver:
The difference between a fresh windows install + drivers and a totally stripped one is minimal. You probably wouldn't see any actual performance gain. But definitely at least format.

Also, (I know this sounds dumb), but try pulling out some RAM. My old K6 series computer emulated about 20 percent faster with 128 MB of ram than it did with 256 MB of ram.

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