You're making a what? You're crazy! That's about what I heard from people when I told them what I was doing.

I grew up in the early 80's. Arcades were new and exciting. I was also into programming computers; Apple II, Franklin, Commodore, Kaypro II, Atari and TRS-80's. Well, times have changed, I'm still into video games and computers and so is my oldest son. After he got good at using his computer, and then the Sega Dreamcast. I figured, I'd take the ultimate step; build a full size Arcade Machine. However, instead of using an Acade PCB board and only having one game, use a PC to run the games. The result. The ability to play over four thousand games on a single machine. A good amount of the games are PC games, but most of them run on Emulator programs like MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) or NeoRageX ( a Neo-Geo emulator)

These are the original classic Games from the Arcades; Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Robotron, Rally-X, Puzzle Bobble, Shenoku, Metal Slug, etc. They basically work like this; the original games are stored on a ROM chip on the motherboard inside the Arcade machine. The software on these chips can be transferred onto a hard drive on a modern PC. The emulator program then plays the ROM (game) on the computer. The Arcade cabinet I built is basically a computer with a 27" TV/Monitor inside a wood cabinet instead of a VGA monitor inside a beige plastic case.

( PLEASE BARE WITH MY DIGITAL CAMERA, IT'S OLD AND DOESN'T TAKE GOOD PICTURES INDOORS)

IT BEGINS

A couple weeks later I came across Saint's "Arcade Controls" website. An entire website devoted to building arcade controls and machines. I knew I was going to buy a house soon, and I would have a garage to build it in, so I started gathering my parts. I did my research and gathered the important components. I put together a 550mhz AMD Athlon from spare parts. I  found for a good large display, you have to have a GOOD television with S-Video. Not any TV or any TV with S-Video will do. You also have to have a GOOD video-card with TV-OUT. Once again, Not any Videocard with TV-OUT will do. I've had a lot of video cards and prefer to stick with the NVidia GeForce2's for my computers. However, The TV-Out was the most important factor and ATI rules that market hands down. (Nvidia's TV-Out chip needs work) I bought a 32mb ATI RAGE FURY PRO for $67(A newer one with the Radeon chip would of been fine too), and a 27" JVC television for $300. (Thanks to Juan and Jimmy for helping me deliver it)

I ordered exterior cabinet pieces like T-Molding, monitor bezel, and a marquee retainers from  Happ Controls. I bought a coin door on eBay for $10. After shipping, new paint, and new locks, It came out to $40. Not bad considering they are worth twice that. The bottom of the door had 3 holes drilled from a security lock plate, but I covered that up with a Happs 'No Refund sticker'. The mylar coin return decal was torn up and to replace it, I would have to buy a roll of 10. That would of came out to $55.00, so I ended up just printing out a jpeg of a hand holding a coin. After darkening it with a felt pen,it ended up looking pretty original.

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In the picture below, the left is the original, and the right it the one I redid.

TIME LINE

Well, I finally moved into my new house and WOW, I NOW HAVE A GARAGE TO WORK IN. I was having a house warming party in six weeks and I wanted to complete it by then, so I got cracking right away.

CABINET CONSTRUCTION

The first step was getting wood. Originally I was going to do it in 3/4" Oak, but ended up using 3/4" MDF ($19 a sheet ) and painting it black. After dragging my friend Tony down to Lowes, I filled up his truck bed with 3 sheets of MDF, and 2 other sheets of thinner MDF and Birch (for other projects) I also bought a bunch of 1x2, 2x2, and 2X4's. I bought the wood at Lowes because it was a little better quality (doesn't apply to the MDF) than Home Depot's. However, I ended up buying all my other hardware from Home Depot. After visiting various arcades and surfing the web looking at arcade machines, I creating my own design on graph paper. I then traced it on to a sheet of MDF and began to cut it. I wanted it big and taller than me, so I made it 80" tall x 34" deep x 28" wide. After the first side was cut, I used it to trace the second side. After the second side was cut. I made the bottom piece and attached 4" rubber wheeled casters I bought on sale at Harbor Freight tools for $2 a piece. (http://www.harborfreight.com )

I didn't know what to do about the T-Molding slot. After doing alot of research of other people's cabinets, every one suggested using a router with a 1/16" slot cutting bit over a Dremel with a cutting wheel and self made jig. After spending a couple weeks trying to locate the 'rare' 1/16" slotting bit unsuccessfully, I decided to look back at the Dremel. I figured out why they were probably having problems.

1) a wooden jig does not slide on wood very well.

2) they were probably using a slow speed

3) the regular cutting disc wears out too fast.

So, I created a fix. I already had the #565 cutting tool attachment. The attachment was perfect for adjusting the depth of the cut and acting as a jig. (http://www.dremel.com/productdisplay/att_template.asp?SKU=565&Color=99CCFF)

All I needed was a disc that doesn't wear out. What's that? Dremel has a New tungsten carbide cutting/shaping wheel? That's right! #542. Picked it up at Home Depot for $15. At 35,000 rpm, it cut like a hot knife on butter. The same wheel came in handy cutting and shaping the Lexan fiberglass that covered the marquee and the monitor bezel. (http://www.dremel.com/productdisplay/bit_template.asp?SKU=542&Color=CC0000)

CONTROL PANEL

For me, the Control panel was the easiest thing to make. All I had to do was 'transfer' my HOTROD SE onto another piece of wood. I drew the size to allow 1" overlapping on each side of the cabinet and used templates for the joysticks and button placement. Since I was already used to the way my HOTROD SE is setup, I decided to stick with it with 2 light modifications. I wanted the joysticks centered for wrist support, and I wanted the 'Insert Coin' buttons next to the '1 and 2 player start' instead of on the side. I had some extra buttons, so I decided to use blue instead on the plain white ones it came with. I drilled all my holes with a 1 1/8" bit and used marble contact paper for the surface. Transferring the buttons and joysticks were easy. The Hanaho Digital Multiplex Sampling MUX circuit keyboard encoder was a little trouble to remove, otherwise, all the HOTROD SE hardware was easily transferred.

Five years ago, I purchased a pair of Labtec speakers with an 8"subwoofer. I decided it was now time to upgrade my Main PC with Cambridge FPS-1800s and use my 5 year old speakers in my arcade cabinet. I opened them up and spray painted the front pieces gloss black.

The Marquee was made from the help of a online tool at COOLTEXT.com. I then resized it and changed it to high resolution in Photoshop. After I had it the way I wanted it, I saved as an .EPS file and burned it to a CD. I then had Kinko's print it out on a plotter for $21. To mount it, I sandwiched it between 2 pieces of Lexan fiberglass and secured using the marquee retainer I bought from Happs. To light it up, I used a 18" Fluoresant light kit from Home Depot for $9.

(FYI- Savoia is my name)

Here are some screen shots;

Wizard of Wor on the left.

Below that, Disasteroids -A great 3D PC port of Asteroids. http://www.lmnopc.com/disasteroids3d/

Below, Primal Rage.

Any questions? e-mail me,  Joekerr1@netzero.net