MAME Cabinet project complete!

After nearly a year's worth of on again, off again work, my MAME cabinet is finally finished. It has been ALMOST done for a long time, but after getting our tax return, the wife let me get my widescreen TV (Toshiba 50H82), so the 27" was freed up for the cabinet.

I have a lot of "cleaning up" work left to do, and some logistics I didn't quite figure out at first, but hey, the damn thing works. Eventually I will paint it, stick some lights around it, get a marquee and some other things. I will clean up the underside (I know you can see under the panel. Some bad measuring But for now I'm just enjoying it.

The cabinet is made from MDF. The buttons and joystick were bought from www.happcontrols.com. The keyboard interface is from www.ultimarc.com, it's called an IPAC (SO simple to hook up too. Run a wire from each button to the appropriate terminal, and daisy chain a ground to everything in the cabinet.)

I'm running an 1600+ XP on an Epox 8kha+ board. The TV-Out is a Radeon64. The computer is overkill for the MAME stuff, but I upgraded my main rig and thought, what the hell.

Here are the pics!

Control Panel:




Joystick underside:



IPAC:



Cabinet:





And here are some of the games I played today.

The whole reason I built this thing:



A little Ms. PacMan for the wife:



Some SFII:



TMNT:



X-Men:




All told I probably spent about 250-300 on this, not counting the cost of the TV and computer. Took me about 20 hours of labor, at least. And it was ALL worth it.

Hopefully you own all the originals of the games you are planning on playing.

That looks cool. I wish I had the tech knowledge to know how to do it, and an understanding spouse LOL

IBTL

Looks nice. I never really understood the interest in the MAME stuff before, but the pics make it look pretty awesome. How many games does/will it have?

I only know a little bit about MAME (mostly from this site), but I didn't think there were copyright, etc issues with MAME.

You are violating the law of copyright if you have the roms and not the original arcade boards.

Mame supports thousands of games.... the limit is his hard drive, really

What does this accomplish?

Very cool project.

I actually had an interesting argument about this with someone. His argument is that as long as you aren't profiting and/or distributing the merchandise you aren't violating the copyright laws. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for using the roms (or music for that matter). The people who need to be careful are the ones making it available.

Keep in mind this was his argument and I'm not sure I buy it (though I can't refute it very well).

Not being a handy type person I bought a MAME cabinet off eBay, it's very well built and everyone who has seen it thinks the concept is incredible (most have never heard of MAME).

Your cabinet looks pretty cool too, like you said, a little clean up and it's perfect.

Great job!

You game theif... I bet you use to use napster too!






























-k
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Nice work!

That looks great, congrats!

Looks very sweet! good job!

I dunno, no marquee? Doesn't sound very COMPLETE! to me.

j/k - nice job!

Great work!

If you ever feel like putting more work into your cabinet for less than $80 I'd suggest rigging it with insert coin slots. I got mine at www.happcontrols.com and I gotta tell you there's nothing more satisfying than dropping a coin into the slot and hearing the game start up.


Edited to add: There was so much pleasure in putting my system together last year. To me it was the perfect hobby. Since I built my computer from scratch, building the cabinet combined the knowledge of computers, woodwork, electrical wiring, eBay hunting, videogames, and heavy doses of nostalgia.

I totally agree. Firing that thing up for the first time and seeing everything work (well, I wired one of the joysticks backwards at first ) made it all worthwhile.

Thanks for all the compliments!

I had thought of building my own Jamma cabinet a year or so ago.. once I get my raise I may perk interest in it again.. Main reason for the interest was Namco Classic Collection 1 and 2, and several Capcom and Psykio shooters. All vertical monitor games mind you..

Ah.. will be so nice.. Dimahoo at home. I love that game.. *tear*

Nice work. I have a few questions if I may.

1. Are you using MAME32 or some other modified MAME port created specifically for cabinets? An interface to MAME that is easily navigated by the joystick and buttons would be nice.

2. Exactly how easy was it hooking all the buttons together and such? That is one area where I think I would have problems since I know nothing about soldering or electronics.

3. Is it easy to add a trackball to a cabinet like this?

This is one of those projects that I'd definately like to do sometime once I get all the plans and details figured out.

WOW!!!

That looks fantastic...nice job.

You've just inspired me to make one myself (when I actually have a house to put it in).

I am using Mame32. I don't have a frontend (can't find one I like) but I use the keyboard/mouse to pick the game and then, once playing, use the joystick for commands.

For example, hitting P on the keyboard pauses the game. You can also hold the 1-player Start button and pull down on the 1-player joystick and it does the same thing. Holding 1-player start and pressing 2-player start escapes out of MAME. Things like that. It works well enough.

VERY easy. You can see on the closeup for the joystick that I used female disconnects, so no soldering. I got 22 gauge wire from Radio Shack. You daisy chain all the elements together with a ground wire, so I attached a disconnect to a button, twisted two wires together in another disconnect and connected it to the next button, twiste another wire together for the next, and so on. The other wire from the button goes straight to the Ipac's screw terminals. They are labeled "P1 Start" or "P1 B1" (player 1-button 1), etc. You then check the connections in Notepad. Check out www.ultimarc.com for more info

Yes. You use an Optipac, also from Ultimarc. Just as easy as the Ipac. My wife tried out Centipede last night and announced she could live without the trackball I was planning on adding.

That thing is cool, I want one... To bad I'm only in an apt. and no room.

Very nice!!

I think I just found a new hobby!

Quick question for you:

What is your output to your TV? You said you're using a Radeon64, with composite out?

i assume you could also pretty easily make it into a jukebox with mp3s?

What kind of computer do you have running this?

that's very nice, i'd love to be your next door neighbor