Who hasn’t spend a lot of money and time on arcades during childhood? What about build one and play all those games again?
Browsing the web I found that a lot of people are building their own machines, building over a pc running a MAME emulator with a cool front-end. If you google images for ‘arcade cabinet‘ you will be amazed by what people are doing!!
I decided then to build my own, trying to use as much used stuff as possible, like a old computer, old screen and two usb game controllers that were broken but with the electronics hardware in perfect conditions. The cabinet will stay on the hackerspace from my town, TARRAFA HACKERSPACE, so we can set some championships, it will be fun for sure!!!
On this post, I will be giving updates on the progress (not much will be done during university semester, I hope to finish this project on holidays).
Right now I am working on the Google Sketchup design of the cabinet (and learning the program, as I’ve never used it before).
For the controller, I got an broken usb game controller, opened it and got the hardware, which was working, then I soldered all buttons with cables to connect on the arcade buttons.
It’s a very ugly picture, but you can understand how it will work.
The computer I will use, a old notebook headless and a 17′ 4:3 LCD. Installed with Windows XP.
Good Links:
- http://www.arcadecab.com
- http://www.hyperspin-fe.com
- http://www.hyperspin-fe.com
- http://www.retrothing.com/2008/03/diy-build-a-mam.html
- http://www.ultimarc.com/ipacve.html
- http://chris.polymathic.net/cabinet/
- http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepweecade.htm
New updates soon! Keep posted!