Sure comrades! Here's a little more info on her along with plan details.
First, I there are several plans available online for MAME cabinets. Most of them (as in almost all of them) encourage you to build your own control panel. While it doesn't look -too- hard, I knew I'd find a way to mess it up (i knew this 6 years ago when I bought my x-arcade stick ha). Plans from
ArcadeCab.com were unique in that their plans incorporated the x-arcade stick right in to the cabinet..quite nicely too.
I showed the plans to my comrade Matt who is 302% more constructionally inclined than I am..as in he has power tools and knows how to use them and not get us killed.. well, I almost lost my thumb but my ninja`ish skills allowed me to pull my hand away at the last minute before the jig saw made flesh contact.
We both learned from the CzArcade Mark I and did not want to repeat some of the catastrophic mistakes. First, don't get me wrong, I loved that old cabinet and played it for 3 years. However, some of the imperfections were beginning to bother me, and while I provided me with hours of non-stop arcade fun (thus serving its purpose), I wanted something that I could show off to visitors. Thus, the quest for the Mark II began. The first time around, we met up on a Saturday morning and went to Home Depot to gather all needed supplies.. This was a BAD move as we felt rushed, wanting to get the ball rolling, and cut some corners with supplies. Thicker than planned wood was purchased and all that..causing the cabinet to be a massive beast weighing WAY more than needed. We got our build on and once we got the sides on and the monitor shelf in place, we threw the guts in and played in the garage for hours with the bare wood, no top, no marquee, saw dust up to our ankles. The job was sort of rushed at the end, wrong paint applied, bezel didn't line up..threw it in the living room. But ya know what.. is served it purpose for me. I even told the wife "You're the reason I get up in the morning.. The CzArcade is the reason I get up early."
This time around, I gathered materials for about a month prior to the construction date. My plans called for top-o-the-line birch plywood which rang in at $45 a sheet (4'x8' and I needed 3 of em..) Whenever I was out, I'd pick up a few items on the shopping list. Some were omitted as they were features that I didn't really want. Such as a coin door, wheeled casters. The Mark I marque was painted on the wood as I borked the nice plexi glass that my other comrade painted a marque on for me. This time, I used emdkay.net for the marque and was able to design my own. They even cut plexi to match my measurements. Total bill for emdkay was like $25 with shipping.
A few other items were bought online. I really wanted T-molding on this cabinet as the edges on the mark I were rough..but that was mostly due to the crappy MDF board I used. Even though this birch plywood wouldn't do that, I wanted to do this right.
http://www.happcontrols.com/pc/pc.htm had the t-molding I needed along with their super special marque retainer. Shipping was HORRIBLE as they sent the retainer in a 5' box. Ugh. Oh well. I only needed ~30 of t-molding but 50 was the min order. Meh.
Game day came and I still had the mentality that it would be done in one day.
*BUZZER*
The plans we had were flawed with one major measurement, causing us to take about 90 minutes to realize that freehanding the measurement would be the best solution. The end of day 1 had the cabinet upright with the monitor shelf installed. The temptation to throw the guts in and rock out until night fall was strong..but we resisted and schedule another encounter. In fact, I think this took 3 sessions of construction and some time by myself doing sanding, wood filling, patching, and painting.
The computer inside was donated to me. A dude at work told me of this computer he had that was `hit by lightning` and didn't boot up. He offered it to me for parts. *shrug* Sure. So I brought it home, threw a new HD in it.. Bingo. AMD Sempron 3100+ gig-o-ram, and my old 6600gt. Perfect for emulators.
I flipped the option in the bios to have it turn on after a power outage. As a result, the whole thing can be turned on with one switch located on the back of the cab.
List of construction modifications that deviated from the plans:
- Measurement from the front to the arched tip in front of the controller was freehanded
- Keyboard drawer was narrowed after we mistakenly put monitor shelf supports in that were larger than called for
- Rear support beams omitted
- Back panel omitted (since you wont see the back!)
- Speaker grooved omitted as we sucked at using a router..majorly
- Bezel glass retention method used in the plans were yucky.. so we cut the plexi long enough to rest on the top of the serial output of the control panel.
- Extra piece added between top of front door and bottom of drawer face because the piano hinge was 30" and we needed like 34" or something.
- 1/8" slot cutting router bit used instead of 1/16" bit. Had to hot glue t-molding in place (A PAIN!)
Some more stats:
- MAME with all 6000+ games available as of March 08
- NES, SNES, N64, GBA, Genesis totaling ~2400 roms
- Frets on Fire with GH I, II, III, Rockband songs and PS2 guitar with a Playstation/USB adapter
- Stepmania with 3000 songs and a very nice stainless steel dance pad using the above adapter
- Dreamcast emulator with Marvel vs Capcom 2 (as its not available on MAME yet)
- Mugen with an ungodly number of characters
- X-Arcade Dual Player controller
- 21" CRT monitor (like 50lb)
- USB extension cables hidden behind cabinet
Too bad I'm at work or I'd fire it up now and rock out!
Topic: BEHOLD! The CzArcade (Mark II) [Pic Heavy] (Read 3422 times)