don't know if this belongs here, but this is what i've been working on. once this is complete. i'll start on some TF's. i have to buy paint though. model paint apparently isn't readily available in New Orleans. I've attached the pictures b/c i guess that's a rule around here. You may notice that i painted and then filled the screw holes. that's b/c i'm an idiot and went back on forth on whether i should do it or not, and then ultimately decided it would look better filled. so now i have to do another coat of paint. it's not complete, it would be, had i not cracked my huge piece of acrylic that was going to cover the TV. now i have to go out and get another one. snapping large pieces of acrylic apparently is difficult for me. thanks UPDATED: COMPLETE! i might make minor improvements when i have time, such as add lexan for the top of the control panel, and some corner covers. i do have the speaker grills, i just have to go to the hardware store to find long and skinny self-tapping screws. other than that, it's done! improvements over the last update: Monitor bezel is complete, screw holes painted over, another fresh coat of paint, external volume controls, speakers in, all power and wiring complete.
Woah, awesome. I almost bought a book on making arcade machines but lost the link. Which game is on the cabinet?
It's a MAME cabinet, which means you can tuck a PC or Console in it and run pretty much anything you want. I made a kickass Pac-Man mame cab a few years ago, using an Xbox, running emulators. It's really fun stuff! The cabinet looks it's off to a great start! A lot of MAME people would boo and hiss your choice to leave an X-arcade just sitting on top, but those are the purists and haters. You do what you want!
the poster after you is correct, i'm going to have a PC that runs and emulator, so i'll literally have HUNDREDS of games on it. there are tons of resources out there, i went w/ the two piece approach. took 2 1/2 sheets of MDF. 1 for the base, 1 for the top, and 1/2 for the controller base. thanks! yea, i thought about building my own, it probably would have been JUST a bit cheaper, and good quality too, but I ultimately went w/ the X-Arcade b/c they advertise that they have a LIFETIME warranty on controller base, and i know this thing is going to get some abuse from my niece and nephew, so i went with it. i just bought a new piece of Lexan. i'm scuffing it up right now so i can paint it. hopefully, i'll be done soon. thanks!
regardless I want one maybe stick my old PS2 in it. they make arcade controller sets for those still dont they?
Have you given any thought to which frontend you're using? I'm running GameEx on my Emu box, and I have to say it's both gorgeous and superb for multi-system. This cabinet looks like excellent work! I wonder what the system specs are on your hardware. Feel free to post, or drop me a PM. Nice to meet another EmuGamer. Shameless plug: My box emulates MAME, NES, 2600, N64, SNES, Jaguar, Genesis, Game Gear, Game Boy Advance, NDS, Neo Geo, and ColecoVision so far. (Complete romsets--I'm what Emulation snobs call a PokeRom... I do my best to have a copy of everything, whether I play it or not. The collecting aspect is fun). I also have a DS Lite that emulates NES, Genesis, Game Gear, SNES, Game Boy Color, and GBA.
Good job, man. Looks good! I've had the blueprints saved for years... I even made a mockup out of cardboard. I have the 21" monitor, the Hanaho Hot Rod rather then the X-Arcade, had a spare PC ready and my Dreamcast VGA adapter (I said years ago, didn't I?) ready. I just never had any place to actually put it in my apartment/house so I never built it. =( Someday .. .someday.
Hey, did you find that your Xbox didn't have enough power sometimes? like the 64mb of ram wasn't enough to run certain emulators. I have an Xbox debug kit and some spare ram chips to solder onto a regular Xbox board, but never did try it again. i had some issues playing Mario Kart on the Xbox and a couple other ROMs and abandoned the thought of using the Xbox as the main system for the MAME cabinet. Yup, X-Arcade makes various adapters. including, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360. if you don't want to buy an X-Arcade online, Fry's sells them in store. THANKS! as for the frontend, i was going to use MAMEWAH, but i've decided on mGalaxy, b/c it already has MAME built into it, and all i have to do is edit the .xml file to add/subtract games from the list. i've seen GameEX but didn't like the fact that you had to pay for it. i've created a batch script to run at startup so that it will go straight to running the emulator. i have some NES, SNES, and Genesis games too. my pc is an old one, i have an old AMD FX-51 w/ 2gb ECC DDR memory, and a 320 gb hard drive, Lite-On dvd-rw. it's weak by today's standards but will run an emulator with ease.
Nope nope...I never had any problems, but then, this was a very specific set of circumstances... It's true, there are a few rare console games and quite a few later Arcade games, usually 3d titles, that the system doesn't like to emulate but most stuff up through MAME, CPS1, CPS2, and Neo-Geo will run without a hitch. I never saw the need to try and solder more ram into the system and deal with the custom firmwares and all the other hassles that come with it. Not for my purposes, anyways. Rather than use a PC for this one, I'm using an Xbox with a softmodded HDD, a RGB/VGA mod tapping from the video-out, and a Sync-on-Green CRT. The controls are a butchered 3rd party Xbox controller, rewired to 3 cherry switches and a Pac-man joystick. See, since it was a Pac-man machine, I didn't want to stray too far from the original design, so I made it look and act like a modified Pac/Galaga cab, kinda sorta. It has 1p/2p buttons, an 4/8 way joystick from HAPP, and a single "Fire" button. It's only running MAMEOX, and I limited the romset to only the classic games that can be played with one button, like pac-man, donkey kong, space invaders, etc. I've got the key combinations set up so that pushing 1p and 2p together exits back out to the menu. Easy as pie. (Though I do have a second controller plugged in around the back, in case I get stuck somewhere)
Looks awsome, you did a great job. I've been thinking about making a a mame cabinent myself. I have an MKII machine that I've (very) slowly been converting into a close as possible dedicated unit. I'll most likley just buy an empty junker cabinent to toss a pc and monitor in it. I plan on using a wired 360 pad modded into the sticks and buttons.
