OVERVIEW:

For those who are not familiar with it, MAME is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. It is software that allows you to run ROM images of video arcade games. I was first turned on to MAME from a friend I worked with, around 1997 or 1998 My friend, Tony Duckett, brought me a CD-ROM he had burned containing the emulator and almost a hundred ROM images. When he told me what was on the CD, I assumed it was cheap rip-offs of the original arcade games. Once I finally popped the CD into my home PC, I was seriously shocked. Here was the “original” arcade games, bit for bit, byte for byte. I was immediately hooked. As most kids growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I was a video game junkie. I plunked countless quarters into Asteroids and Galaga games, among others. After eventually collecting over 1000 ROM images of video games, there was only one logical thing left to do….. Build a Video Arcade Cabinet to play them on.

After a little searching, I discovered I wasn’t the first one to have this idea. Whats more, much of the ground-work had already been completed by others, such as determined cabinet measurements, designs, and locating supply companies that sold critical components, such as buttons, joysticks, and keyboard converter boards. Thank God for the Google and the Internet.

THE PLAN:

I knew what I wanted to build, a simple and authentic looking cabinet with controls for one or two player games. I had seen some designs for 4 player games, but that just seemed like overkill to me. I had also seen designed than included spinners and trackballs, for games like Tron and Missle Command. I decided, again, that this was overkill. Moreover, it would take the simple control panel and destroy the authentic aesthetics of a real arcade control top.

I used the basic layout that I obtained from “Lusid’s Arcade Flashback”. The original link is no longer available, so I have mirrored the PDF formatted layout here.

The file made very efficient use of space and reduced the amount of 4x8 boards that I thought I would need. Unfortunately, a single bad measurement resulted in two side panels that didn’t quite match up. The old saying “measure twice, cut once” was made painfully clear to me as I had to make another trip down to the HomeDepot to buy another $20 board to make up for my blunder.

I followed the directions only loosely, to get the basic frame of the cabinet. From that point on, I just made it up as I went. The only thing that was critical to me was to make sure that the control panel could be easily removed at any time for repairs and maintenance and such.

The PC I used was an Intel Pentium 600mhz, 15 gig hard drive, and an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro. The video card was of particular importance to me. I wanted to be able to output the video to either a typical computer monitor, OR, to a standard Television set. I planned to use an old 20” monitor as the screen, but I wanted to leave room to eventually put a 26” color TV screen in to replace it. I had a problem with this however.

When I eventually placed the 26” TV in, I wanted it to be mounted on its side at a 90 degree rotation. MAME allows you to rotate the video 90 degree to accommodate this, and it makes a perfect screen fit for most games. The screen fit perfectly, the video was great, but there was one problem… Apparently the raster gun is adversely affected by the 90 degree rotation and added a pink tint to all the colors. As a result, I decided to remove it until I could find a TV that did not have this affliction. If anyone knows why this is, I assume gravity, please drop me an email with any suggestions ( paw @ paw . org ).

I obtained the buttons and joysticks from Happ Controls. They have the best prices I have found for the control components. They also have additional cool stuff such as coin slots, lighting, trackballs, spinners, etc... For those that really want to trick out their Mame Cabinet.

Finally, to convert the button controls to keyboard input for the PC, I used the I-Pac2 controller from Ultimarc Its about $39 but is well worth the money. For a few bucks extra (~$64) you can get the I-Pac4 which includes connections for 4 players. They also sell Trackball / spinner converts that connect to the serial port and are supported by the MAME application.

The project was mostly completed in the Spring of 2002, with some additional work being put in after moving to Wisconsin in the fall of 2002. The additional work included finishing the “banner” across the top, and adding a faux “marble” top and edging to the control panel, to improve the aesthetic appeal.

Here are pictures of the project as it progressed. You can click on the thumbnail pictures for a full-size image.

The first 5 pictures are from the initial framing of the cabinet. You can see the control panel was actually completed first and tested before I built the cabinet. No sense building a cabinet if I can't get the control panel to work, right?

The next set of pictures are of the control panel. The first picture is the original finished product. I later reworked it, adding buttons for "ENTER" and "OK". I also eventually added the faux marble finish and some edging to clean it up a little. The second picture shows the wiring for the controls. The I-PAC controller card really made easy work of what I originally expected to spend the majority of my time designing and building.

Here is the final product. Well, at least for now. I still have some more work I would like to do, including cleaning up the edges and adding some artwork to the sides of the cabinet.

End.

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