Arcade Cabinet

[declaration]

I want to make an arcade cabinet. I'm not too bothered about traditional arcade games, MAME will be present.

I'm thinking of making a cabinet, sticking a decent PC along with a decent graphics card in it. Using a standard 17/19 " monitor. It will have lots and lots of console emulators in it, but specifically SNES, Genesis, N64, Nes etc, and then MAME of course.


Does anyone have any links to sites about building actual cabinets themselves. I googled but found crap guides and/or guides for sale.

Also, any good ideas about its gui/operating system? I was thinking about a heavily customised XP pro istallation. I dont wanna have to use a keyboard and mouse all the time.

 

[lizard808uk]

We (me and a mate) used an old SF2 arcade cabinet off ebay, and then put in a 1600 duron with a special graphics card that links to the JAMMA part of the cabinet.

Its only used for MAME, but I hope to get Beats of Rage running off it at some point. The OS used was Win XP, we experimented with KnoppixMame but couldnt configure the controls as easily as in Win XP. The Mame front end used was MAMEWAH and this has served the purpose very well.

Win XP autoboots MAMEWAH, and theres a switch soldered from the mainboard to the cabinet for easy turning on and off.

Happy building your cabinet

 

[Radio]

Arcade Controls For a guide to making your own arcade controls and help with some of the other more technical aspects of piecing it all together.
It also has links to some interesting and useful sites.

Unfortuantly I did have more links which I had collected shortly before my computer decided to die on me so they weren't backed up. <_< That site was definatly one of the best of the lot though.

Edit: If you follow the links you can visit http://www.lusid.net/arcade/ Go to Downloads and they show the plan for the cabinet that they built. I don't know if it's any help but it must be worth a look.

Also look for the "projects examples" link as there are a lot of sites to look through that might help.

 

[Goity]

There was something about this in retrogamer a few months ago...

 

[Gruntfuggly]

I've done it myself:

http://www.zaonce.com/mamecab/mamecab.shtml

It's the best way to play those Classic arcade games - not particularly expensive either. The only only problem I have is convincing the missus to let me keep it indoors...

 

[declaration]

Thanks guys.

Espescially Gruntfuggly- Thats exactly the sort of thing I would love to end up with.

I'll get there in the end.