I finished this build before thinking of posting, but I've got a few pics I took along the way so here goes:
July 16, 2015: Somehow I stumbled upon arcade controls listed on eBay & remembered my childhood dream of owning an arcade. If I had to pick any one game to own, it would have been Mortal Kombat II, but today I learn I can build something that'll play nearly every game I've ever played. Order placed and research begins... I ordered a two player setup with light-up buttons & a xin-mo usb controller.
July 18, 2015: Joysticks, buttons, usb controller are delivered & the wife is out of town for the day. I built a control panel mostly as a proof of concept - if I can make this work with my PC then I'll move forward. Spent most of the day drilling holes & installing /wiring buttons. By the time my wife was home I'd got it up & running. She laughed at first because it was a bit ghetto looking - I'd built the control panel box a bit too shallow & the bottoms of the joysticks would hit a table... so I supported it by both ends with chairs from the dining room - in the middle of the living room floor. Wasn't long before she pressed the p2 start button :p
That night I ordered parts to build the PC. I wanted to build this for $500 - this included the PC (all new components), wood, TV, sound bar, buttons, etc. I was REALLY close to this number until a few things happened.
PC Specs:
- Intel G3258 processor (3.2ghz overclocked to 4.2ghz)
- Gigabyte H81 motherboard
- Western Digital 320gb drive
- Patriot 4gb ram
- Onboard graphics
Total cost for PC = $151 (home-made case using scrap wood & threaded rods)
Within one week of the PC's build - just after I'd got all of the windows updates installed - the cheap ram died. I'd taken the next week off of work (had to burn some vacation time or I was going to lose it) & wanted the PC to be up & running before I started my build so I went to Fry's & bought Corsair 8gb ram & Evo 212 cooler (I'd removed the stock cooler during troubleshooting & didn't have more thermal paste to re-apply... a new cooler was only $10 more than the cheapest paste Fry's had in-stock).
Later, the hard drive (about 1 month old) developed bad sectors. This was detected while I was backing up my system (I had everything running the way I wanted & wanted a backup). Attempts to repair resulted in more bad sectors = time for more upgrades. I bought a 120gb SSD for the OS & a 3tb hd for the arcade drive (I'd realized I could use up a lot of space with some of the extras I'd started to add & didn't want to have to upgrade this later).
New total cost for the PC = $400 ($500 budget is immediately blown away)
July 21, 2015: Found a deal on a 32" TV from Dell. $248 gets you a TV + a $125 gift card - I used that card to buy a sound bar to go with the arcade. A sound bar with a sub seemed like the best/easiest solution for what I wanted - it required no design work on the cabinet & would provide decent sound when I added jukebox functionality.
Now that everything has been ordered, I sketched out what I wanted my cabinet to look like, added dimensions, and created a cut-list. I was able to fit this on one sheet of plywood using a little bit of scrap-wood I had in the garage.
July 28, 2015: I've got the day off work & head the the garage first thing in the morning to get the a/c going (it's HOT and HUMID in Galveston Texas - I don't work well in the heat. A few hours later I'm cutting wood. At the end of the day I've got something that looks like this:
I chose plywood over MDF for a few reasons:
- 1. I hate MDF (sawdust is toxic. Sawdust from MDF is double toxic)
- 2. Plywood is lighter than MDF (my house is elevated - I'll have to carry this upstairs just to get it inside = also part of the reason I went with a pedestal style cab)
- 3. Plywood is more durable than MDF (get plywood wet & it dries out ... get MDF wet & it falls apart - did I mention it's humid where I live?)
July 29, 2015: More cutting & assembling. By the end of the day I've got the base built & placed my 'proof of concept' control panel on top - it's not attached, just sitting there making this think look like something. I was unhappy with the button layout for the test-panel, so I redesigned it. My idea was to have a standard 6-button setup but add a 7th button to the top row so I could play 4-button neo geo games with the layout they were meant to have (I've yet to play a 4-button neo geo game since building this thing). I'm happy with my new layout, but the 7th button seems useless.
August 2, 2015: Paint is finished (all black), t-molding is installed, and everything is together/working. I originally built this without fans for cooling in an attempt to keep dust & pet hair away from the PC (made sure there was a path for air to get in/out & hoping rising heat would be enough - it wasn't. I monitored temps because of my fairly aggressive overclock (3.2ghz -> 4.2ghz) & they went up substantially when I put the PC inside the cabinet (from a max of about 60 deg all the way up to average of about 75 while playing). In the week or so after it was complete, I added two 140mm fans with filters to the back & a vent to the front (seen in these pics) & my temps are back down to about 60 max / 40 average.
Accessible from the front door (or by lifting the control panel): USB hub, storage space, wireless microphones for karaoke (my wife loves karaoke & it's a big hit at parties).
In the 4th pic above, you can see my power switch - it's accessible with the control panel down & very convenient.
Also, notice the string on the rear handle + the hook below the middle hinge for the control panel. I use the string/hook to keep the back door open when working on something & can open the control panel against the string/back door to keep it open while working underneath the panel (wasn't planned, but quite convenient).
The circles at the top of the control panel are cup holders - there's a kegerator on the wall opposite the arcade & I didn't want people trying to find their own not-so-creative place to set their beer while playing.
August 6, 2015: Control panel graphics are complete. I've never designed graphics to scale, so I wasn't sure if I could get button placement, borders, etc in the right places. I figured I'd start with the smallest/cheapest piece (also the most difficult piece) and go from there. I know some people will not like my design (mix of PC, consoles, and arcade), but I built this for me & I'm happy with the result:
August 19, 2015: I tried to use a local print shop but gave up a week after they wouldn't respond to my questions. I contacted Lucian045 from the hyperspin board (I now see he's here too) & had graphics in my hand a few days later - great service & fantastic product.
After seeing results, I went to work finishing up the artwork for my cabinet. Life + work slowed my progress, so finishing up took much longer than expected. I finally got the graphics finished up & sent off for printing before a long holiday weekend.
September 9, 2015: A few short days after sending off my file, graphics were delivered & installed:
When I build another, I'll change a few small design things but overall I'm very happy with how this turned out.
My biggest change will be control panel height. I'm 6'3" & the control panel is 38" high... I think 43" would be just about perfect for standing (and my stools are adjustable, so I could sit at any height).
As it stands, I've got these systems installed/running:
- MAME
- Daphne (Dragon's Lair 1 & 2 + Space Ace)
- Nebula (Neo Geo arcade)
- NES
- SNES
- Sega Genesis
- Atari (2600, 5200, 7800)
- Walaoke - (for karaoke) have to boot into windows to lauch, but it works really well
- JukeCade - still trying to figure out some parts of this
My next project will be a custom layout for Maximus Arcade - I want the cabinet on-screen to match my cabient.
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Topic: I started (and finished) a pedestal style build (Read 6987 times)
