www.theoldcomputer.com

Hi everyone,

About a month ago a friend and I decided to build an arcade cabinet to station at my home in Veenendaal (NL).

Specifications:
Hardware

Core2duo E6350 - 2.13Ghz
2gb ddr2 (soon 4gb)
Ati 4350 512mb videocard
100gb sata II (boot)
1tb sata II (storage)
Philips SPA5300 2.1 speakers
Sony 24" CRT monitor (ty anonymous person from Apeldoorn who gave it for free!)

My friend used to have a LOT of cabinets and pinball machines at home and he also used to to a lot of trading with people in the UK. So he has quite some knowledge about the general picture. Next to that, as he often has projects that involve wood-crafting, it was an obvious choice for us to make the cabinet out of wood, 'MDF' in dutch, heavy, but stable and easy to work with.

I mostly like the 'Centipede' arcade cabinet, because it's such a classic model. In my opinion this is what a cabinet should look like!



But because this cabinet will be placed in the kitchen, where my wife (ofcourse) resides every now and then, it would be fair to make the side art a little less ''in your face''. So I decided to go with the original Donkey Kong side art, which my friend still had lying at home (including the top-front art in front of the lightbulb):



Almost every evening I've had for the last few weeks, I've spent putting the right Emu's and ROMS together for the build; tuning Windows, getting to know ahk scripting, writing batch files...

Emulator's that will be running on the machine:

<game name="MAME"/>
<game name="Atari 5200"/>
<game name="Atari Jaguar"/>
<game name="Atari Lynx"/>
<game name="ClassicPC"/>
<game name="Daphne"/>
<game name="Nintendo Entertainment System"/>
<game name="Super Nintendo Entertainment System"/>
<game name="Nintendo 64"/>
<game name="Gameboy Advance"/>
<game name="MSX"/>
<game name="PCFX"/>
<game name="Sega Master System"/>
<game name="Sega Genesis"/>
<game name="Sega CD"/>
<game name="Sega 32X"/>
<game name="Sega Dreamcast"/>
<game name="Sega Game Gear"/>
<game name="TurboGrafx 16"/>
<game name="Neo Geo"/>
<game name="Neo Geo CD"/>
<game name="Neo Geo Pocket Color"/>
<game name="Panasonic 3DO"/>
<game name="Sony Playstation"/>

Enough of the talking, let's post some pictures of the first Saturday's work:


Drawings and measurements


We first made one sideboard with the 'CNC machine'. And we made some (1/2) holes in it, to loose some weight. Though we came back on that thought later on .


First side panel standing up straight.


The two sides put on each other and went around them with a router to make them both smooth and perfectly identical.


Beast sub that will go inside the cabinet.


Yet another 'beast' to go into the cab.


The sideart.. whoohoo!

Now for some photo's of last saturday:

Yesterday we continued on the build and mainly did a lot of thinking about how to secure the monitor and where the 'setup-bar' and the 'usb-hub' from the monitor go. We also drew out were the coin-door is going to be placed. We chose an awesome 70's Midway coindoor, my friend still had lying at his place.

Next to that, we've routed the marquee bottom board so the speakers can go in. Yeah!



















More coming up in a week, maybe two.

Cheers!

I love you guys for this awesome community btw!

That is freaking amazing.

This is an excellent post. It is great to see something like this coming togather. I love the pictures and cant wait to get the next instalment.

Keep it coming and keep up the (so far) excellent work.

JAHGoVeg wrote:That is freaking amazing.

Thanks a lot pal!!

Still working on it

We just ordered some parts that are needed for the cabinet.

Since I own a Dreamcast and N64, I want to be able to play these consoles with Hyperspin with an analogue stick. So we decided to order two 360 sticks. These sticks are extremely useful, because they each also contain a 8 channel button controller! (saves us an iPac):

2x http://www.ultimarc.com/ultrastik_info.html


The attract mode of Hyperspin seems like an awesome feature, so we also bought:
16x Ultralux White RGB buttons http://www.ultimarc.com/ultralux.html


Ofcourse the LED controller and marquee illuminator could not be left alone in the store .

Awesome stuff. :3

Hot Trout wrote:This is an excellent post. It is great to see something like this coming togather. I love the pictures and cant wait to get the next instalment.

Keep it coming and keep up the (so far) excellent work.

Thanks lad! Kind words that keep me going!

This is fast becoming my fav post. Superb stuff.

Quick update, because I'm at work .

Since my wife will also be playing on the cabinet every now and then, and we're married and all that...
I decided to color the cabinet like our kitchen is colored (white gloss), since the cabinet will be placed in the kitchen .

That add's some extra work as adding orange accents:
- Adding orange t-molding:


- Designing new control panel artwork
- Coin door orange paint job (optional)

for the great replies mates.

Still can't wait to see the finished product. :3