A review of the project

I am currently working on building a "bartop" arcade cabinet. Essentially, it is a countertop-box shaped like an arcade machine. Inside will be a monitor, and in the front will be an actual arcade-game joystick and buttons on a panel. I will have logos and graphics around it. The guts of it will be an older PC which I have just sitting around collecting dust. I am in the process (about 85% done) of configuring this internal computer to playing (literally) hundreds of classic arcade games from the 70's to the 90's. Most of them are played with a software called "M.A.M.E." -- which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. An emulator is a software that "tricks" on kind of computer to "think" it's another king of computer. Essentially, MAME takes the original arcade game data that was on the circuit board chips inside an old arcade machine, and then "tricks" that data into functioning and running on a PC exactly how it functioned and ran inside the arcade machine. This data is called a "ROM". For example, say that you have the data from an old Pacman machine, or also refered to as the "Pacman ROM" -- you run the MAME program and instruct it to take that Pacman ROM and run it -- next thing you know, your PC screen looks as though you've just turned on the original Pacman arcade machine -- the system goes through a check, then asks you to "Insert Coin." You press the "5" key on the keyboard to simulate inserting a coin, then the "1" key to simulate the "1 Player" button. The game starts, and you control Pacman with the arrow keys on your keyboard.

The most current version of MAME supports over 5000 games. No joke. And the program is free too! As for the ROM files....... it's a bit of a grey area as legal issues go. As far as I know, most game companies that created these old arcade games pretty much tolerate that their arcade ROMs are being used by MAME fans. The most important thing is that no one attempts to sell, or make money through the distrobution (or whatever) of ROMs.

There are dozens of emulation programs out on the internet -- most of them free. I discovered the whole emulation scene back in 1998, and became a huge fan of MAME shortly thereafter. I've been collecting ROMs of all kinds and experimenting with emulators for years. Now, finally, I've gotten to the point where I absolutely want (or need) to create my own arcade cabinet and dedicate an old PC running MAME to put inside it. I've been researching other hobbyists' designs, plans, equipment, setups for well over a year. I am finally doing it for myself now.

Luckily I am an expert with computer systems, operating systems, and MAME, so the guts of the system will pose the least amount of challenge for me -- but because I am merely a novice when it comes to woodworking and such, I've purposely decided to use a simpler "bartop" arcade cabinet plan -- about a foot-and-a-half wide, two feet deep, and two feet tall -- something simple that can sit on top of a table, desk, or countertop. It is only big enough for one set of controls -- one joystick and four buttons (aside from "Player 1" and "Player 2" buttons at the top, as well as two smaller buttons for "inserting coin" and "exiting the game").

So far I've built the frame of the box successfully. It's all out of 5/8" particle board, which I've constructed and secured and sanded down quite nicely. The panel is also done -- it is made out of 1/2" medium-density-fiberboard. I had to order arcade parts from England -- where, for some reason, this whole built your own arcade hobby has seemed to catch on more there than it has here in the states (at least in terms of percentages of demographic population). The joystick, buttons, and a special PC-interface chipset for connecting them, with shipping, came to $92.10. I've also bought plenty of various parts (such as smaller buttons, wiring, solder, crimp-on connectors, etc) at Radio Shack. All this will go together very soon. Yesterday I fastened the joystick onto the control panel. (Note: I screwed up a bit -- I started hollowing out the area where the joystick goes in, because I thought that its metal plate was supposed to be mounted on the top of the panel. I was 30% done when I realized my folly. So now my panel looks like someone has scraped their teeth all around the joystick area. Oh well.) Today, I was going to insert the buttons -- until I realized that the drilled the holes too small. Better than too big I guess. I first tried filing the holes down some more -- didn't work -- I needed at least another 1/4" in diameter on each. I got out a special side-cutting drill bit, and that did the job... clumsily. I got three buttons in there that way.