Arcade Cocktail Cabinet Project
Introduction
In the Spring of 2009 I got this email from maxiumpc with a link to an
article about building a MAME arcade machine. I had never heard of MAME
but I knew in that moment I that I was doomed to have to build one.
Having grown up in the height of video games (I graduated
high
school in 1985) I was not going to be able to rest until I had at least
tried. I just had to play Galga again on a cocktail cabinet.
My initial thought was I could use an old pentium II machine
I
still had laying around. But while it could play Galga, it
could
not handle another favorite: Outrun. So I ended up having to
buy
parts from newegg.com to build a new system. I was also
originally going to use an old 14" crt monitor. But in the
end
decided it would be too hard to mount. So I used this as an
excuse to replace my 17" lcd monitor with 23" HD
monitor and
use the 17" lcd in the arcade machine.
The Parts and Software
Assembling The Case
Installing The
Electronics
Final View
The Parts and
Software
I'll list the parts at bottom. The toal cost? I don't know. I'm too
scared to add it all up!
The
Computer
My inital plan was to use this old computer I had
sitting in the corner.  It's
had linux on it for a long time but I stopped using it because I put
linux on my laptop. So I installed windows on it so I could
try out Mame on it. Games like Galga ran fine. But high graphic games
like Outrun were just too slow. So I ended up buying some parts from www.newegg.com. It
think it was around $300. This included a
motherboard, power supply, intel dual core, 2 gig memory, 120gig sata
hard drive, and a pci wireless network card. I had everything
else. Here it's hooked up to dvd drive just to load software.
The
dvd drive won't be in the final case. Here I have the parts on
a
board the exact size of the case bottom so I can see where everything
can go to see if it all fits on the bottpm board.
I want to mention one other very useful item: The smart strip
power strip (www.smarthomeusa.com
but I actually bought it from newegg.com).
Since everything is going to be inside a box the problem
becomes
how to turn on/off the monitor and speakers since you won't have access
to the buttons. This power strip resolves that little issue.
It
has one control outlet. When it senses that device is drawing power it
turns on the other outlet. When the control device turns off,
the
outlet strip turns off the other outlets. So you
plug the
motherboad power supply in to the control outlet and when it boots up,
it turns on the speakers and monitor.
I wired the motherboard power switch to a button on the side of the
control panel. |
The OS
| I'm using a copy of Windows 2000 Professional
that I
was no
longer using.. I initially tried Windows 98 but it had
problems
with drivers. Windows 2000 is a lot more stable than Windows
98.
It considered trying to get XP but I hate the product
activation.
I would like to do it all under linux. I tried to
get mame
to run under linux. But I began running into isssues with
sound,auto-login,front-end software,etc. Eventually I could
figure things out but I got impateint and decided to stick with
Windows. Later I might try to switch. |
The Arcade
Controls
The whole point is to play the games with real
arcade
buttons
instead of a keyboard. That means buttons and a joystick.
I
choose to have just one control panel with actual controls.
There
are many sites on the web tht sell arcade parts. A good one
is www.arcadedepot.com.
Besides the buttons and joysticks, they sell
metal control panels. They have predrilled ones but they also
will drill the holes to your custom specifications.
 
 All
hooked up to the computer for a full test.
|
The
Controller Board
This is the key device that makes this whole
thing
possible: the I-PAC 2.
(from www.ultimarc.com).
Basically it emulates a keyboard but lets you wire buttons to
keys. So pressing the coin button sends the number 5,
pressing the fire button send the left-ctrl key,etc. It is
programmable but the default is set for MAME so you don't really have
to do anything but hook up the wires.
. 
|
The
Software
MAME32 v1.0.3
www.romnation.net
|
This is a gui
version that supports highscores. I used it because I
could find more games for this version. The offical version of MAME
wants games with .chd files and I was having a hard time finding games
I wanted. |
Fishbowl
 |
This is
a custom front end that I wrote in C#. I
was appalled at how large and compex some ot the front ends were.
Sure I had plenty
of disk space but why should a program that basically is just going to
call another program be 30mb? I also wanted
something
controlled by an
ascii file (an ini file) that I can copy to a shared folder on the
computer
via the wireless card and not have to log in to windows. In
addition I
wanted to be able to have some custom commands such as shutdown and
exit to windows. I intend to release Fishbowl one day once
I'm happy
it is stable. |
| RealVnc |
Used so I can
remotely access the computer if I ever need to. |
| No antivirus
and no
firewall |
Not sure even
are
still any
anti-virus programs that still support windows 2000 anyway. I was
worried about prompts popping up that would require a mouse click
but there would not be mouse. I control things somewhat by
not
havng a
valid gateway in the tcp settings so it can't access the internet.
I
have a backup of the setup programs and the games, so in the worst case
I'll just reload the os and restore things. |
Parts lists
This list is not 100% complete but it should have most of the
stuff
| Item |
Cost |
Vendor |
| Motherboard Asrock G41M-GS, (video,sound,PCIx16,2
pci) |
$57 |
www.newegg.com |
| Cpu, 2.93 ghz pentium dual core wolfdale |
$93 |
www.newegg.com |
| ATX Power Supply |
$49 |
www.newegg.com |
| 2 gig ram. Gskill pc2 8500 |
$37 |
www.newegg.com |
| 160g hd west dig caviar blue |
$40 |
www.newegg.com |
| Smart Strip |
$30 |
www.neweggg.com |
| PCI Wireless Network Card |
$12 |
www.newegg.com |
| joystick and arcade buttons |
|
www.arcadedepot.com |
| control panels (1 blank, 1 custom drilled) |
|
www.arcadedepot.com |
| cabinet latches for top |
|
www.arcadedepot.com |
| IPAC 2 controller board (with ps/2 cable) |
|
www.ultimac.com |
| 3/4" wide T-molding,black leather,22 ft |
|
twistedquarter.com |
| 2 Small speaker covers, round |
|
twistedquarter.com |
| 1 big speaker cover, rectangular |
|
twistedquarter.com |
| 3/4" x 4' x 8', plywood |
$23 |
home depot |
| 1" x 3" x 3', pine |
|
home depot |
| wood glue |
|
home depot |
| (24) #8 wood screws 1 1/2" long, flat head
slotted, |
|
home depot |
| (16) #8 wood screws 2" long, flat head
slotted, |
|
home depot |
| (18) #8 wood screws 1/2" long, flat head slotted, |
|
home depot |
| (16) #8 wood screws 1" long, flat head slotted, |
|
home depot |
| wood glue |
|
home depot |
| pack of dowels |
|
home depot |
| dowel drilling kit |
|
home depot |
| 1/4" x 3/4" x 36" ,pine |
|
home depot |
| wire, green and black |
$10 |
home depot |
| electrical connectors,20 4.7mm ones |
|
home depot |
| (4) wheels,2 per pack |
$12 |
home depot |
| (3) small hinges (in place of piano hinge) |
|
home depot |
| (2) 3/4" x 4 3/4" x 11" plexiglass |
|
home depot |
| paint strain, 2 pints |
|
home depot |
| black paint, gloss, 1 pint |
|
home depot |
| clear paint, 1 pint |
|
home depot |
| (3) 1" x 3" x 6' pine (for monitor
stand) |
|
home depot |
| picture hanging wire (for mounting speakers) |
|
walmart |
| green felt |
|
micheals |
| black cardboard paper (for making bezel) |
|
micheals |
| buttons for power, tab and enter |
|
came from spare parts drawer |
| reset button (inside) |
|
came from spare parts drawer |
| metal strips for back of control panel |
|
came from spare parts drawer |
| 17" lcd monitor |
|
already had |
| pc speakers w/ subwoofer |
|
already had |
| 1/4" peice of glass for top |
$49 |
custom cut by local glass shop |
| Midway Cocktail Glass Clip Set - 3/4 inch |
$28 |
www.mikesarcade.com |
Next: Assembling The Case
Date: 2/27/2010
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