My MAME Cab

[machjas]

I completed this a few years ago, works great to this day. I never got around to doing the top half of the cab, but I haven't had any real motivation to finish it. It's 100% fully functional, and has the capability to do PS1, N64, NES, SNES, and of course, MAME. It does have the CHD images on there, but only a few of them work for a couple reasons: MAME compatibility, and the specs of the system. It all runs through a frontend called GameEx, so when you go to choose your game, the menu system is uniform, regardless of which emulator/system you are running. It hides the emulator frontend perfectly.

Pictures:

But yeah, just thought I'd share, and prove to everyone that I'm not a TOTAL n00b. Any questions, ask. I should still be able to recall almost every detail of this process, I just didn't want to do it in one post.

 

[Basement_Modder]

I want one.

 

[Bush]

That is sexy.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Very nice.

 

[Tibia]

Kick ass! That is some beautiful work!

 

[XCVG]

The CP is very nice, and very black. The rest of it, meh. But the CP is really the heart of an arcade cab, so I guess that makes it very nice and very black overall.

On a side note, I'm using GameEX for Candytop as well. I downloaded MaLa, but couldn't figure out how to set it up. That was when the computer was a P3 and I was worried about it being powerful enough. Now I have an Athlon XP 2600+ for it. Still kind of weak, but it's much smoother for N64 and can (sort of) emulate Dreamcast.

 

[machjas]

Thanks for the compliments, everyone.

The rest of the cab was made from a couple modified carpet store display cases. I cut them up and bolted them back to back, then mounted the control panel on top, then the surface for the tv to sit on top of. The color/wood paneling effect was already on the display case before I got a hold of it. I thought it looked fairly decent.

As for the computer, I believe its a mid-grade P4 (2.4 ghz maybe?), with a mediocre ati graphics card, probably 64mb if I remember right. I sat down and played through Resident Evil 3 on it along with a bunch of n64 games, and experienced no slow-downs, no choppiness whatsoever. It doesn't take much to build an decent machine.

EDIT: Quick side note, and I can't stress this enough, I HIGHLY recommend using the I-PAC interface boards when wiring the CP to your PC (heh). Once the buttons are all wired up and grounded, works perfectly!

 

[Bibin]

I have an i-pac. It's the bomb.

 

[XCVG]

I'm too cheap for an I-Pac. Padhack time!

Hacking the gamepads may not be the cleanest, best, or nicest solution, but hacking things is fun!

 

[oniak]

Not that bad of a machine really good for being homebuilt. Kind of an insult to someone who collects arcade machines like I do as it looks almost nothing like a real arcade machine and is quite sloppy.

 

[Pik4chu]

Not that bad of a machine really good for being home built. Kind of an insult to someone who collects arcade machines like I do as it looks almost nothing like a real arcade machine and is quite sloppy.

Yes its true that it doesn't look at all like a real arcade but having seen plenty of DIY arcades myself this is a pretty common design people use to make construction easier and keep the weight down. It takes a ton of work to make an arcade cab look professional due to the size really (same to be said for very small portables). What is most important though is if you are happy with your own work (assuming you aren't trying to sell it of course). And we all have to start somewhere

Some wire management inside would make me a lot happier with this project. When you build stuff like this you should take pride in your work and make it clean That is just my opinion though I guess. I still give mad props to anyone that builds their own, well, anything on their own. And I do love arcades more than any other retro system I think (well certain games anyways) My most favorite of all being my Ninja Turtles arcade hehe.

As for decals and stuff asked about earlier, there are many printing companies and retro shops that have reproductions and NOS decals from arcades. Usually made from very high quality/durable vinyl. And for half height and control panel pieces they don't cost very much and give things a much more professional look to a cab.

Also for anyone looking for a PC to run MAME, even a P4 is overkill for old Arcade emulators so don't think you need a lot of PC to do this. I got one running off an older model 1ghz ITX board with no issues (and it can run up to N64 games w/o slowdown even with XP installed) Saves on power/heat issues too.

*edit* grammar fail

 

[oniak]

Not that bad of a machine really good for being home built. Kind of an insult to someone who collects arcade machines like I do as it looks almost nothing like a real arcade machine and is quite sloppy.

Yes its true that it doesn't look at all like a real arcade but having seen plenty of DIY arcades myself this is a pretty common design people use to make construction easier and keep the weight down. It takes a ton of work to make an arcade cab look professional due to the size really (same to be said for very small portables). What is most important though is if you are happy with your own work (assuming you aren't trying to sell it of course). And we all have to start somewhere

Some wire management inside would make me a lot happier with this project. When you build stuff like this you should take pride in your work and make it clean That is just my opinion though I guess. I still give mad props to anyone that builds their own, well, anything on their own. And I do love arcades more than any other retro system I think (well certain games anyways) My most favorite of all being my Ninja Turtles arcade hehe.

As for decals and stuff asked about earlier, there are many printing companies and retro shops that have reproductions and NOS decals from arcades. Usually made from very high quality/durable vinyl. And for half height and control panel pieces they don't cost very much and give things a much more professional look to a cab.

Also for anyone looking for a PC to run MAME, even a P4 is overkill for old Arcade emulators so don't think you need a lot of PC to do this. I got one running off an older model 1ghz ITX board with no issues (and it can run up to N64 games w/o slowdown even with XP installed) Saves on power/heat issues too.

*edit* grammar fail

I completely agree with your points and I would like to mention I'm not trying to bring the guy down, he did a good job especially since this is a somewhat largescale project .
And yes your right, I was able to get MAME going on a Pentium III running at 866mhz and it did decent.

 

[machjas]

Not that bad of a machine really good for being homebuilt. Kind of an insult to someone who collects arcade machines like I do as it looks almost nothing like a real arcade machine and is quite sloppy.

Like I said, It's an unfinished project. I had big plans for it, but never got around to it for a few reasons (money, school, work, etc...)

I'm not at all hostile to criticism, but I think calling it an "insult" is a little over the top. It's an unfinished (yet functional) machine that I built when I was 18. It just needs a bit more time and money put into it, and it'd be a fairly legit cab.

It needs, paint, decals, lights, plexiglass cover, a better screen, and the top half needs to be cut out and put together.

 

[robm]

No matter how it ends up, MAME cabinets are always very cool.

Behind robm is behind, adding to the megasticky.

 

[machjas]

schwing! My first Mega-Sticky! Thanks, robm!

 

[XCVG]

Also for anyone looking for a PC to run MAME, even a P4 is overkill for old Arcade emulators so don't think you need a lot of PC to do this. I got one running off an older model 1ghz ITX board with no issues (and it can run up to N64 games w/o slowdown even with XP installed) Saves on power/heat issues too.

*edit* grammar fail

I completely agree with your points and I would like to mention I'm not trying to bring the guy down, he did a good job especially since this is a somewhat largescale project .
And yes your right, I was able to get MAME going on a Pentium III running at 866mhz and it did decent.

Yes, you can run MAME on a crappy PC. However, MAME isn't the only game in town. There are lots of great console games to be emulated, and even some PC games that would work for a cab. I have an Athlon XP 2600+ with 1GB of RAM and a GeForce 5200 for Candytop. It can run MAME and emulate older consoles just fine, does good on N64 without all the fancy enhancement, and somewhat fails at Dreamcast. Oddly, sound-intensive games are the ones with problems. Crazy Taxi is messed up but SoulCalibur is laggy but okay. As for PC games I currently only have OpenTyrian; most of my arcade-style games are Steam games and I don't want to install Steam- it would horribly slow it down. Anyway, I hope to get a better machine sometime, for Dreamcast and SFIV.

I've also found that arcade cabs seem to fall into two categories. Big, 2- or usually 4-player machines with every control imaginable, snazzy interface, and the best computer money can buy. The other category is a machine, 1- or 2-player, usually bartop or cocktail, made for a few games and having an absolutely horrible PC in it, sometimes even running DOS. There are very few in between.

 

[machjas]

You'll want a decent machine if you want to run the MAME CHD set though. With those you're talking the PS1 hardware-based games: Area51, Maximum Force, the Cruisn' games, Tekken, Ehrgeiz, etc... The problem that you run into a lot with those games though is that MAME isn't 100% compatible with all of them, so they're hit and miss. I don't see a lot of cabs that bother putting the CHD's on for that reason, and you can get alot of them using a PS1 emulator anyways...