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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 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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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