Frank's MAME Cabinet

INTRO

First of all, I'm not much of a game player anymore...
Correction :
First of all, I wasn't much of a game player anymore, I used to be, back in college, heck, that's how I learned all about computers. How else could I have learned? after all, I was only studying Computer Sciences. Back then, playing a game wasn't all that easy. You had to configure your himem, your sound card settings, possibly change some IRQs on some devices so the game would recognize it...

My first real challenge has been playing a deathmatch of Doom 1 via modem (a really fast 9600 kbps). That wasn't all that easy, the modem config file had the settings all wrong and we had to redo it... When Doom 2 came out, it was a lot easier, AND A LOT MORE FUN. I spent most of my college time playing Doom 2 (and learning some stuff). Then came some even better games :

Heretic	That was fun
Hexxen	Didn't play much of it...
Quake	That's where I realized there wouldn't be anything better than Doom 2.
Unreal Tournament	That's where I realized I was wrong about Doom 2. This might not be the game I played most (cuz I was getting old, and had some obligations) but it truly is one of the best games I've ever played.

I've always loved Deathmatch games, but then I started playing some strategic games in coop mode : Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear, and Ghost Recon. Those can be a lot of fun too...

Then I got married, had a little boy (currently working on having another one), and I kind of let go of my game playing.

- Until just recently -

The friend I used to play with kept bugging me in finding another good game we could play late at night when the wives and kids would be in bed. He even found a nice joystick (the one from X-Arcade) we could buy just to make things a little more interesting. After looking into it for a while, I realized we could make a control by ourselves, and why not, a cabinet? So we started looking into some projects that people had done, some are very very nice. Then we fell on Chris' site

That's really when we decided to make our own cabinets. So the story really begins here...

THE CABINET

At first we thought we would use Chris' design, but we thought the controller wasn't large enough to accomodate the two of us, so we looked for some more sites of mame cabinets and took the best of all worlds. After seeing a lot of cabinets, we decided we'd use Chris' design, but with a larger control panel that would simply sit on the cabinet. Here is what the cabinets look like :





To make two cabinets we bought:

Qty	Items	Unit Price	Total Price
6	Sheets of MDF 1/2"	18.95	113.70
1	Sheet of Plexy-Glass 1/8"	78.95	78.95
10	2 * 3/4" * 10'	1.10	11.00
100	MDF Screws 1"	4.95	4.95
200	MDF Screws 1 1/2"	4.95	9.90
100	MDF Screws 2"	4.95	4.95
100	Wood Screws 3"	5.95	5.95
2	Rolls of Cont-Act paper	4.95	9.90
1	Verge of black cloth	2.95	2.95
2	Sets of Hinges	3.95	7.90
1	Gallon of Black Paint	42.95	42.95
For a Total Of			293.10

Here are the tools we needed to make it (I already had those on hand) :

Table Saw	(could have done all the work with a circular saw)
Circular Saw	You HAVE TO have a circular saw around the house...
Miter Saw	(again could have used the circular saw)
Jig Saw	(makes the inner joins much nicer than the circular saw)
Electric Drill	(For the holes)
Electric Screw Driver	(cuz an electric drill is just too powerfull to screw into MDF)
Dremel	(to buff off the screws that were too long)
Band Sander	(I'm really the POWER TOOLS kind of guy... you really could use only sand paper)

If you don't have any electric tools, well you really should get some, but you'll manage to do everything. It's just going to take a little longer.

THE CONTROLLER

Carl (my friend) didn't really bother much about the controller layout, the only thing that mattered to him was that it had to be large enough to be comfortable for 2 large guys. I on the other hand really wanted it to be perfect. I really took a long time before coming up with the design and the buttons disposition. I've visited a lot of sites, drew a lot of scetches then I came up with this design :





Notice how the buttons have a curve naturally fitting to your fingers... well, that's all crap. The idea was good, but the buttons are just too big for it to be comfortable. You just can't get them close enough to be able to relax your hand and still have every finger on its button.



Be sure not to fix the top panel to the case, that way if there's any problem with the wiring, you can access it very quickly.



I really like what I've done with the keyboard drawer. Carl programmed a gaming interface that can launch all his games, but I'm not using it right now, so I always need my keyboard and mouse. That's no problem... they're right there!


I promissed myself I'd build another one soon. I won't leave any space between each button. I'll keep you posted weither I prefer it or not... My guess is that I'll end up using the same design Carl did... 4 buttons straight on row 1 and 4 buttons straight on row 2...

To make two Controllers we bought:

Qty	Items	Unit Price	Total Price
3*	Sets of 20 Arcade Buttons ( got them from X-Arcade)	9.95	29.85
3*	Sets of 2 Joysticks (again from X-Arcade)	10.95	32.85
2	IPAC from Ultimarc	38.95	87.90
1	Wiring Kit again from Ultimarc	17.95	17.95
For a Total Of			168.75

* Note : We only needed 2 sets of each, but we thought it would be nice to have some spare parts...

We used some of the MDF from the Cabinet to make the Controller and we put a Plexy-Glass Layer on top of it to give it a nice look. Plus it makes it so much easier to clean.

THE BRAINS

At first we thought we'd use our old PCs to put in our cabinets, but everything was so cheap that we decided to buy some nice new stuff...

Here are the computer parts we bought:

Qty	Items	Unit Price	Total Price
2	Athlon 1800+	59.95	119.90
2	MB Asus Mother Boards All-On-Board (GForce/2, NIC, Sound)	96.00	192.00
2	300 Watts Power Supplies	31.10	62.20
2	20 GB Hard Drives (we already had those)	0.00	0.00
2	Used 21" Monitors (they're really ugly, but the picture quality is great... plus they'll be hidden)	155.00	310.00
For a Total Of			684.10

We decided we didn't need any Case, so we simply added a shelf in the cabinet to accept our boards. I even connected the Power Pins to one of the Controller buttons to switch the cabinet on. Plus in Windows XP, when you turn the power off, it automatically makes a soft shut down... Nice!

--> THE GAMES <--

Of course, the cabinet wouldn't be much use if we didn't have the games to play with. Of course, I installed MAME along with a couple of my favorite titles, but I also fell on EPSX which emulates playstation. So I took my old PSX CDs out of the closet and started playing with them too. There are also NES, SNES, N64, TG16, SEGA emulators out there... I'm planning on installing a NES emulator to play some of my oldies...

I have not installed any PC games yet, but I will (too bad I can't play UT which needs a mouse - If anyone know how to play it with a joystick please tell me - ) I'll try to find my old Doom 2 Game and install it. That will bring back some nice memories. :)

Time to go play a little! :)

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