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Your DIY Arcade Machine?
astro_ripper asks: "I'm looking into building my own MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), and for the most part the equipment and know-how to build one can be found via our good friend Google. However, the number of webpages dedicated to showing off complete machines or other gaming hardware hacks (turning an XBox into a full MAME, for example) are a little lacking. My guess is that if any group is going to have a decent amount of gaming hardware hackers, it's going to be Slashdot, so I ask you all: What type of custom gaming rigs have you built?"
I think you were looking for "Ask A Slashdot Editor"
-> http://cmdrtaco.net/jubei/
I went to a company called Game Cabinets Inc. and purchased their plans and some supplies for 2 person cocktail cabinet. I ordered almost every electronic part from them with the exception of the Coin Door. I live 20 minutes from Happ Controls and got my last parts, including the door from them.
The plans I got were pretty darn good and has a great checklist for supplies. It took me roughly two weeks to get the cabinet built from scratch. I move it inside and then proceeded to do the electronics and wiring - very tedious. I would highly recommend going to Radio Shack and purchasing the the little wire labels to keep it all in order.
This was definitely a blast to do and I like the fact that I built it from scratch. That said, if you have the room build an upright. You can put more controls on the board which means you can play a variety of games. If you go to the Game Cabinets Inc website you will see the cocktail table that I built.
Arcade Controls website is the place to get all of your information as well!
Q: I am short, useless and provide no value. What am I? A: a sig
i bought the cabinet, and built the insides. the monitor board and monitor were included, but it didn't have any joysticks, buttons, or coin acceptor.
i put a pc in, bought a j-pac from http://www.ultimarc.com/ and loaded up my mame dvds. it was done in a day, but i still had an amazing feeling of accomplishment.
http://psg.com/~jjohnson/arcade.html
I and a few of the people in the fighting game comunities I frequent build our own joysticks. While I stick to modding existing sticks for the most part, this guy http://www.byrdo.org/arcade_joysticks.htm does some great work. Treat her gently, though slashdot. I'd hate to fry his server.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I think this is the best site out there
http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm
there are a ton of examples
Slasdot English Lesson: "a lot" not "alot" and "no one" not "noone"
http://www.x-b-r.com/
/. hehehe)
The guys are a couple of friends of mine with too much spare time on their hands! They build an arcade machine using a PC and a TV, and they later used that knowledge to build a DDR machine. The site has some good techie background that might prove useful for you.
Enjoy! (And i'll get a good laugh if the site crashes because of
While I would love to build a MAME machine myself, I still havent got around to it (need to wait a while till I can buy a decent computer to throw in there). So in the mean time, for the last week, I've started on a backyard air hockey table. The thing is about half way finished; I just need to mount the fan to the bottom and build the legs for it. While there are plenty of MAME related websites you can google up, try finding one on a homebuilt air hockey table. If you cant, i'll tell you why: air holes. I put a sheet of peg board on top of my table and drilled 4608 of them yesterday, one every inch. It took about six hours and i'm probably going to have carpal tunnel syndrome. Anyway, hopefully I'll finish the thing tomorrow. Another project I worked on last year was building a metallic DDR pad. It's pretty nifty, I put some LED lights underneath it, which I havent seen anyone else do. Things works alright, but i never use it anymore. Anyway, sometimes it's the journey, not the destination.. just remember that when you're building your machine
I got a lot of good ideas from this site when I built my cabinet http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm
I got an old painted over Pole Position Cabinet for free from someone about 30 minutes from me who was going to get rid of it. I got the cabinet, finished painting it, cleaned it out, and then went on with my plan.
I rigged up a full PC with Mame, and pretty much every game known to man. I'd reccomend getting a decent graphics card and lots of ram if you want to play some of the newer stuff.
The controls are all done though an X-arcade (be sure to get the usb adapter) and it has s-video out, running to my 23" tv inside the cabinet.
Ideally, I'll be getting a 23" LCD to hook up to it, and Ill be making a switch, so i can jump from pc to xbox to ps2, instead of manually switching the cables for my xarcade.
The fact they have the adapters for the xarcade makes my life much easier.
Slasdot English Lesson: "a lot" not "alot" and "no one" not "noone"
Nothing makes me chuckle as much as when some grammar or spelling nazi makes a spelling or grammar error in their message which mocks the grammar and spelling of other people. Check your spelling of Slashdot, Einstein.
The important thing is the buttons and the joystick piece. Get six buttons or whatever you think you will need, and a four way joystick (NSEW). These can be found on eBay or arcade supply stores online.
Now what amount of hardware hacking is this going to take? Which USB driver should I use? What interface should I pick? Hehehehe.
Go to your local Target or eBay or BestBuy and get one of those clone console controllers with the two analog sticks, the D pad, buttons and a USB interface. Rip that sucker apart, leave the USB cable intact and don't mess up anything on the PCB (in otherwords, rip the case off the PCB). Note that all the buttons and the D pad go to little traces on the PCB, which work with membrane buttons. The arcade game buttons and the joystick are simple on-off switches. So are membrane buttons. Solder those old skool buttons and joystick to the contacts on the PCB of the clone controller where the membrane buttons were. Solder the joystick up down left right to the corresponding contacts on the D pad, and wire the arcade push buttons to the contacts on the PCB where the right hand buttons were on the clone controller. Wire the R1 and L1 buttons in also if you want 6 puttons (think street fighter emulation). No we don't get analog sticks or vibration, but most old emulated games don't use them anyways.
You have basically replaced the membrane contact switches with your old skool arcade switches (buttons/joystick). The controller, USB interface and your PC won't know the difference, it's just a switch being closed!
Put it all in a nice heavy wood container you built, run the USB cable out the back (or in your upright cabinet if you are really going for it). Plug it into your pc and install your drivers for windows that came with the clone controller, or in Linux configure a joystick device. Fire up mame, and you are all set for the price of the controller ($20) and the joystick and buttons, plus some knee grease for the box and soldering. mame thinks it sees a logitech rumblepad or something similar, you see a box with an old school joystick and buttons and a cable coming out the back. But you won't need any quarters. Enjoy.
Looks like Microsoft made their own...
I built my cabinet using these plans: http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/ (click on the Design link on the left) You can download the plans in .pdf form. I modified them a little to my liking. I had never done any woodworking like this before and I found it extremely rewarding. Now for the controls. I priced out all the parts I wanted on Happ Controls website (http://www.happcontrols.com/) and came to the conclusion that if I bought a prefab control that I wouldn't be out of so much more money. After careful research, I settled on the best:
http://www.slikstik.com/
If you want to shell out the dough, it is well worth it.
I used a fairly decent pc I had around and then found a 27 inch tv cheap at circuit city. I used a 19" monitor at first but the tv was so much better especially on the older arcade games which didn't really have great resolution anyway. Then, I finished it off with some cheap 5 1/4 car stereo speakers.
Good Luck!
Tom
I bought two pre-gutted cabinets (Please never gut a working cabinet for MAME, it makes me cry)
took an old compaq PC I bought off a friend for $20, Its a P3, I cant even rember how ast it is and I dont care, it plays every classic game Id ever want it to.
I mounted the motherboard on one side of the cabinet, the HDD on the other side (near the door opposit the coin door so I could change the HDD with out taking the back off the cabinet if need be)
Purchased one iPac, the best priced keyboard encoder around, and buttons from some local supplier
Cut a custom button layout from MDF, wire everything
Thats the basics. The thing everyone should do is add there own touches so none of our MAME cabs look the same.
I for one added the following:
Added white LEDs behind the coin slots, so they look like they should
Glued micro switches to the coin return system so when you push coin return it gives you a credit in the game(wired thru the ipac)
Original TMNT marquee
Monitor is from an older bartop breakout type thing with a touch screen.
Buying all those video games?
Well, a chance to show off my baby:
I'm obsessed with Dance Dance Revolution, and so I built myself a DDR Studio! The web page shows version 1.0 of the studio. I'll soon have an update to show the even nicer 2.0 version.
I can pimp my cab/site without having to somehow turn the trying to turn the conversation in that direction ;)
The one I built is a Time Bandits themed gaming cabinet (mame, nintendo emulators, ddr via stepmania, and a handful of arcade control-friendly pc games). I built the cabinet, built (as in assembled) the pc to power it, drilled a control panel for controls. As far as hacks go, enough people are making similar systems now to warrant commercial interest, and most of what's needed has become commercially available (not talking about pre-built control panels etc, but instead things like ready-to-use arcade-friendly keyboard encoders and such).
I can't really take credit for most of what's there, hack-wise. I built a playstation to parallel port adapter for the dance pad, but it's based on somebody's plans for exactly that. My spinner is wired up to a pre-made mouse hack, the joysticks and buttons and coin mechs to an ipac. N64 to USB adapters for external gamepads, a smartstrip to control power to the components (tv, lights, sound). The closest I've come to a real hack was smooshing a bit of metal into the TV's power button so that it would turn on automagically when it received power.
Most of the good pictures are on this page if you'd rather not bother going through the site, otherwise almost every step of the process is chronicled on the site in one way or another.
Actually, graphics cards won't make much difference with MAME since it emulates the whole hardware on the CPU.
What you really need is a fast CPU and dual-channel memory.
A couple of years ago, some friends and got together and built "The Boilercade". We got the cabinet together, and it now houses all of my video game equipment. I haven't put any of the finishing touches on it, like a marquee, coin door, or graphics... but it gets the job done.
One thing I've learned is that nostalgia wears off quick. We built the cab and were all excited about playing some older arcades, but other than centipede it hasn't seen any action in months. Still, the cabinet makes a nice entertainment center, and houses my receiver, DVD player, VCR, CD Jukebox, and PC. I've wired up consoles, but only the GameCube sees much action on it. I know I could probably wire the console controllers into the control panel, but I'm thinking it probably isn't worth it.
One thing that I know I wish I had planned for: A glass door. Since the cab is used like an entertainment center, I have to leave the door (where the coin door belongs) open all of the time so that the remotes work. If I had used some type of transaparent / translucent door, it wouldn't be a problem.
Have fun with your project, and good luck!
Buy a working JAMMA cabnet (on ebay) without a game in it. Then buy a JPAC this nifty device plugs directly into the JAMMA interface like a game board would. It converts your PC Monitor and Soundcard signals to something the monitor and speaker can play and converts your joystick movements into keyboard presses.
It is a great piece of hardware and is very little fuss.
UberCade: Taito Arcade Cabinet MAME conversion
BTW, you linked to byoac... but did you some how miss the 900+ projects in the byoac project example pages?
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Actually, graphics cards won't make much difference with MAME since it emulates the whole hardware on the CPU.
Some video cards support higher AGP speeds, which let MAME transfer the composited image more quickly to the frame buffer. Some video cards support better quality TV outputs.
Yeah, I did it. World's First MAME cockpit.
Here's a hint SMALLER IS BETTER! Which explains the Final Pictures.
- 1 Happ Joystick - I prefer the Happ Ultimate; it's very reasonably priced at about $11 apiece.
- 8 Happ Pushbuttons - Preferably each in its own color. They carry Red, White, Blue, Green, Purple, Yellow, Black, and Orange, so at $2/apiece, you have no choice but to get one of each.
- Optionally, get them with the fancy dimpled variety.
- A box. If you're cheap enough, you can actually make a viable controller out of a pizza box. Eat the pizza first.
- Yes, you can go the whole nine yards and get the stand-up case; the vertical screen; and the coin slot. But isn't something missing?
Think back. What do you really remember about being in an '80s arcade? Consider the following additions:- Man does not play Pacman in a vacuum. While you're chomping away at those dots, consider a set of these attached to your home computer. Oh, no. They're not for your game. They're for pumping out ambient noise: a) Asteroids, Galaxian, et al., and b) That angry guy that's always yelling at the machine because he keeps losing at Mr. Do.
- I never actually saw anyone with hair like this in an arcade, (and I admit I may be blocking it out), but you'd see them on signs and TV screens everywhere. Your home arcade is not complete without a few posters of Debbie Gibson. NOT to be confused with "Deborah Gibson."
- If your pants are fancy enough to spend a few thousand on a replica arcade device, you probably have a posh gaming room. What's under your feet? Is it that nice, solid oak flooring? Not so fast, bucko! Cover that high-price floor of yours with -- yes -- office carpeting. It's cheap. It's durable. And, most importantly, it's so crummy, you won't notice when you drop that oily slice of pepperoni pizza you got from the consession stand.
It's touches like these that will truly allow us to re-live the childhoods that were torn from us as we passed from the '80s into an altogether more reasonable decade.__________________________________
Epidemic Groove - Our latest indie game for Windows. It's, like, totally not like that game I saw down at the arcade in the mall. Let's go rent some videos on Betamax.
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
I will take this opportunity to pimp my own cabinet, however I should also note that asking slashdot is a poor substitute for visiting and exploring the resources at Arcade Controls. The maintainer of the site also has compiled much of the knowledge and experience collected there into a nice book. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. If there's something that's not covered, ask in the forums there. It's a far more appropriate place.
I built an arcade machine in partnership with my uncle and would gladly help out tellling you what you NEED to get going. We are in the Lanarkshire area of the UK, so some of our suppliers are local. 19mm MDF boards for the sides of the machine and an offcut for the footplate x 2 (local supplier) 9mm MDF boards for facings and 'Bezel Board' 21'' Hantarex Polo monitor - around £270 inc VAT and delivery 3.2mm slot cutter for your router (this cuts the groove to fit your t-molding trim round the machine) - bought from Mackays of Cambridge A roll of t-molding - try a shopfitter (we bought ours from Dominic Diamond - the gamesmaster presenter's dad!) A roll of rubber mat - (Machine mart) A couple of lengths of 2x4 to make braces 'Special Effect' paint (Bought from Scotpaint in Airdrie) Controls from Ultimarc (we didn't use a coin box) 12x Red buttons - (use a 28-32mm hole cutter to mount) 1x 1p button 1x 2p button 2x yellow button (coin insert) 2x T-stick (has 4 way / 8 way switch - useful for pacman) I-pac 2 PS/2 Arcade VGA breakout cable From Maplin: Push button with LED to use to turn the computer on and off - front mount this Tons of coloured wire (we used 2 colours - one for earth and one for live) You could also get 2 5v LED's to attach to the I-pac and shove up the 1p and 2p start buttons to make them flash when you 'insert a coin', but this is optional since it doesn't work for all games. For the sound, we used a set of Piezo speakers bought from a car parts store. These already had a nice speaker cover with a lip, and a cylinder design for easy mounting. We powered these with a speaker set from Creative which had a detachable volume control and subwoofer. Attach the volume control to the underside of the control panel. We used a sheet of aluminium for the control panel top to give it a nice finish. I think the last things were a strip light to go behind the marquee, and the marquee itself. I designed the marquee in photoshop and sent it to a friend who is a professional sign maker. He mounted the design onto white Foamex which acted as a diffuser. If I could offer one piece of advice: don't hunt around for a decent piece of Perspex to go in front of the screen. Instead, scribe the outline of the screen onto 9mm (or even 6mm if it's easier) MDF and cut out a snug fit to place around the screen. If needs be, fill any gaps BEHIND the screen with heat resistant black filler. Oh, and one more thing. Make sure you put heat vents on it at the back, these things get hot. All in all, it cost about £500 to make (not including the tools to do it). I might draw up some plans properly and give a materials list - this arcade machine is a perfect size for a house. Hope some of this helps!
You've listed the best site for building arcade cabinets.
Also what do you want? A giant 4 person arcade for X-Men, Simpsons, etc. that you'll never move or console-like setup by getting a Hanaho hotrod and a mini-pc.
Do you want spinners, yokes, steering wheels?
You do need double joysticks so you can play SmashTV
I'm actually in the process of building an arcade cabinet myself.
:)
My #1 piece of advice: DO NOT SKIMP ON THE MONITOR!!!
All too often I see these decently built machines that have a 17" PC monitor in them. Here's what I reccomend in order of my preference:
1. A Wells Gardner or Betson Imperial multisync VGA arcade monitor (27"). This will run you back about 400-500 bucks. It is, by far, the best decision you can make for your cabinet.
2. A high quality TV. This will run you back about the same as the arcade monitor, so might as well go with that.
3. A 22" or above PC monitor. You can't get a very good 'arcade' display because of how clean these are, but it can be simulated. But these are even more costly than the arcade monitor, so you might as well go with that
One thing is carefully think of the order you do things. With mine, I first got a junker machine and got the software up on that. Next comes building the actual cabinet, then buying and wiring up the controls. I'm going to use the junker until I feel like upgrading, which I eventually will.
One final bit of advice, think about your control panel. Do not make it too busy. Mine will be a 2 joysitck and 1 trackball configuration. No spinners, no analog sticks, etc. Those will all be usb add-ons.
Learn DOS 7 or how to edit your autoexec.bat in Windows 98 for a dedicated machine. That way, you can boot up into the 2 best DOS front ends, ArcadeOS or Game Launcher, without even a hint that it is a PC.
And wiring your own is so much more fulfilling than buying a pre-made system.
For kids, check out arcadedepot.com, and mameroom.com.
If all of your questions aren't answered here, you can always go to mameworld.net
Please don't buy a cabinet. There are plenty of non-classic cabinets being dumped for free. Any cabinet that is being sold for money is likely to be more important than the money.
Many collectors are seriously miffed (with good reason) when a classic arcade cabinet is mutilated to become a MAME cab. Check your local newspaper or "penny saver" or "trading times" if available in your area.
I have built a serveral mame cabinets and you can get the cabinets for free in many cases.
Secondly, buy and IPAC or JPAC from ultimarc. This is so worth the money!
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
2 tips :
1) Piano Gloss. Dont skimp. Lots of sanding and lots of layers of gloss. It takes ages but it looks fantastic
2) X Arcade controller - saves you time and, in my case, lots of money (40 quid on ebay for a 2 player controller )
good luck. It's hard work if you are building your own . I spend a solid day with wood filler and sand paper just to get it perfect....
Rob
A few years ago a friend of mine and myself built a cocktail table game and programmed the games inside. He took some pics and has some info on his site:
http://www.goodfellow.net/cocktailTable/
wouldn't that be 668?
Depends where you live. The street I grew up in *did* have adjacent numbers beside each other (although this is admittedly not the norm in Scotland).
I suspect that this is because the houses over the street may have been newer, or that they weren't terraced and thus wouldn't have lined up with those on the opposite side.
But that's not particularly relevant; what *is*, is that not all streets follow the odd/even sides rule.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Basic 1900+ XP computer w/low end Nvidia graphics card with TV Out, Apex 20" TV from Circuit City (holiday sale for $79), got all the controls from HappControls (2 joysticks, 12 buttons, 1-Up, 2-Up and two coin buttons), used the IPac to interface with the controls.
Built the cabinet itself out of MDF with the help of a friend. All in all it was a pretty satisfying experience...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
My friends built an arcade cabinet, not a mame cabinet.
The details can be found here: http://foxed.ca/arcade/
They laid out some of the steps, so you can follow it... kind of.
A couple of the pictures are not quite SFW.
I had to go buy $35 in lumber (plus $5 in wood screws) for this beaut, but the real expenditure was on the wonderful controller I got from http://treyonics.com/. These guys are great! Forget about that cheesmo X-Arcade controller; take a look at what Treyonics' Devastator II offers on their website...you NEED 2 joysticks, a trackball, a spinner, 6 buttons for each joystick (in-joystick button optional), plus buttons on the side for pinball games.
Here are pictures of my "finished product"...it ain't pretty, but it's pretty fun: http://devlinks.net/gallery/MAME_cabinet
Total build time: 3 days.
Total cost (assuming no cost for crap that was sitting around): $490