MAME Cabinets

[Flack]

MAME Cabinets! If you have one, you've spent way too much money on a machine that emulates ROMs. Don't hide your inner geek; show us what you've got! Pictures preferred!

Although I've had my IPAC controller for over three months I've been putting off installing it because I thought it would be complicated. Last night I went out to try hooking it up and in ten minutes I had the whole left hand side of my cabinet wired!

[ddockery]

Hopefuily in the next year I'll have one to post here. I'm planning to buy a kickass controller and build the cabinet from scratch, but plans can change of course.

[Flack]

Here's the story of mine.

My sister is the Queen of Tetris. One year for her birthday, my dad bought her a Sega Bloxeed arcade machine (it's a Tetris clone). Everybody thought it was really cool and we really liked it, but eventually the novelty wore off. Over the years the monitor went out, and the game eventually just began collecting dust at my dad's after my sister moved out.

Last year when I began collecting videogames again I was checking the internet and discovered MAME cabinets. All I would have to do is fix the monitor, buy and install a computer, and get everything up and running!

I bought a 2ghz motherboard at a local computer sale for $100. I bought a 21" computer monitor for $75 at an auction. I bought an IPAC for the controls for $25. I had a spare 20gig HD which holds all my ROMs.

That's basically it. I threw all that into the cabinet (which is actually a Nintendo DK Jr. cabinet), wired up the controls to the original control panel, and voilal! Instant MAME cabinet!

My next step is to install a front end and get some more emulators (like NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari 2600, etc) installed. Eventually, I'll have to replace the control panel if I want more than 3 buttons per person. I also want to install two buttons for inserting coins instead of using the "shortcuts".

Asthetically, the game has tinted plexiglass which I want to replace with clear and a bezel, plus eventually I'll sand and repaint the cabinet so people don't go "hey, is that Donkey Kong Jr.?" everytime they see it.

As far as playing games goes, it's up and running!

[leonk]

Flack,

why didn't you just repair the monitor? What was wrong with it?? Arcade monitor + ArcadeVGA is as real as it gets. I don't find computer monitors to be very "warm" and realistic.

As far as your cab goes.. post pics!

[Flack]

Let me know if this doesn't show up.

http://68.12.156.214:533/arcade/mame.jpg

The plexiglass on my MAME cab was replaced with a tinted one, which I hate. That's why I haven't added a bezel yet; I'm also going to create a custom marquee when I replace both tinted pieces of plexy.

As you can see, it looks pretty stock except for the outline of the monitor. That was my goal. I don't want something that says MAME CAB OMG all over it. I wanted to keep it looking as stock as possible, so it would blend in with my other cabs.