Who has time to keep up with all of these hobbies?

my latest tangent has been to design and build a MAME arcade cabinet. for those of you un-familiar, MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

• what is it?
  • it is a software application that runs on a PC and emulates the hardware that used to reside in arcade machines.
• what does it do?
  • it plays the rom files that have been extracted from the memory chips on the arcade machines.
• where can I learn more?
  • http://www.mame.net/

a lot of undocumented planning and work has occured and after 3 saturdays of working in a wood shop and painting, I have reached a point where I have something meaningful to show, the semi complete arcade console..

A modified Lucid cabinet design (http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/) with a recessed neon side logo (Idea from Knievel Kustoms, http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,31417.0.html) and my own custom airbrushed Lightning to set it off.

when completed, the system will play over 1900 original arcade game roms.

I plan to include Daphne(http://www.daphne-emu.com/), the Laserdisc emulator to be able to play "Dragons Lair" and "Space Ace" as well.

this weekend, between chores and standing responsibilities, I will be doing the following:

• installing the speakers (Creative Labs SBS 2.1 350, retrofitted with 6" 3-way car speakers and the included subwoofer)
• final assembly on the control panel (29 buttons, 2 player console, 2-8way joys, 1-4way joy, and a 3"backlit trackball)
• wiring of the control panel, every button on the panel is backlit using MALA Hardware (http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/hardware.html)
• wiring up the marquee and placing art
• airbrushing lightning around the coinbox opening and screen bezel
• build a PC and configure the hardware/frontend (MALA)(http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/index.html)
• needless to say my saturday will be busy and long
• more pics and documentation to follow...

hope you enjoy the pics.

the controller box will sit on the ledge you see in the above photo, to the right hand side of the cabinet.

below is the top view image of the controller graphic.

the colored dots represent the color of button that will reside in the location, with the exception of the large blue dot in the center (which will be a 3" glowing trackball) and the dots in the center of the stars(which represent the color of joystick handle).

other than that, imagination is key...