Hi guys. This is my introductory post here and it's gonna be a BOOK! First a little about myself. My name's Dan, I'm 19 and I go to Auburn University in Alabama pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering, I'm a game-a-holic, and I just got a new good paying job so I'll have more money that I'll know what to do with. I dunno about you guys but to me it basically screams - "Build a MAME cab!" So I decided I would give it a go.

I've been wanting to do this for a very long time. I've been into Mame32 on my pc for a little while now and wanted to go a step further. Recently I just had an event that would really light the fire and get me going, not necessarily the new job, but about 7 months ago, I was dumpster diving, and found an old computer that was missing a side panel, power supply, and a hard drive. Being pretty savvy myself I decided to see if it worked and what I could do with it. Turns out it was a fairly nice machine, at least compared to what others are using.
1st gen S423 Pentium 4 (1.3GHz)
256MB RDRAM
GeForce2 MX
Creative sound card
yada yada yada...
I went to the local computer store and picked up a used PSU for $15 and gutted my dad's 12 year old PC to recycle, except the part where I saved his 8GB Seagate drive.

It works! Pretty well, I might add. Later on I will probably see if I can get a higher end processor for it, maybe closer to 2.0GHz and also an updated graphics card like the X1300 pro and I will be in BUSINESS!
So far:

The motherboard

1300 MHz baby!

Yay for RDRAM [/sarcasm]

The reason I gutted everything was because this case was FILTHY! Full of dust and it had a solid cake under the CPU fan that made it rattle. Got that all fixed up now.
Aside from the HANDY T25 torx screws used to secure the board (thanks, Gateway) I found this beast of a thumbscrew in the center.

Hide your kids!

Nice sound card!

...or IS IT???

Mind you this was AFTER I blew some of the dust off.

Everything back in place... Not the prettiest thing in the world but I've seen worse.
Now, then. I put Windows 98 Se on there because it's relatively low-resource consuming and available to me. After that I got MAME installed and configured how I like it, and then got the ultrastyle frontend installed and configured. So basically the whole PC hardware and software part is complete minus maybe future upgrades I mentioned earlier.
These pictures are huge, so I will provide you with the links to them. An idea of what I wanted my cab to look like in my head, rendered in gmax. I will go back and do them in Solid Edge to specify and record all the dimensions and stuff since this program can't really do that:
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p152/Dcl2049/MAME%20build/drawings1.pnghttp://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p152/Dcl2049/MAME%20build/drawings2.pnghttp://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p152/Dcl2049/MAME%20build/drawings3.pngThoughts?
The graphic will most likely be changed. I think I want to have the controls laid out like that but I have yet to make a template yet to decide where I want the buttons. I'm very comfortable with the Naomi system controls (and I think I'll be purchasing two Naomi oval-top sticks soon) so that's where I got that from, it should be alright. I'll probably get the buttons and hookups soon and start mocking up prototype CP's.
I've also decided not to hack a keyboard, and just use a PS/2 KeyWiz-ST I think it's called... And just hook up the controls that way. Should save me a lot of trouble and probably money since it's a good possibility I'd jack up at least two to three keyboard doing that. And I've always had problems with ghosting, especially with M vs C.
And that's pretty much where I have left off. I've got a budget sheet I'm working on and so far the components minus speakers (amp is accounted for, however), the CPU and GPU upgrade, and materials like mdf, etc.. total $190 (always growing as I'm sure you guys know). If I can fix an old TV I have lying around I will get that for free as well. So it's a pretty nice budget project if I do say so myself.
Well I'm looking forward to the build and the insight of all you pros on here to help me do a little research and plan this out before I go to the next step...

Dan