"I'M BACK BABY" - George Costanza

For reasons I will not document here, I have not worked on the project for over 2 years. Well the hiatus ends today. Tools have been purchased, the garage is being cleared and work benches are being constructed.

Oh yes, there shall be games..............

phase One - "Test Box" Is Complete

So I went to town on actually hooking up the buttons last night. This was a piece of cake compared to the RGB drives and went rather fast since I was somewhat confident on the stripping/tinning/crimping parts now. After hooking up the buttons, I still needed to daisy chain the ground wires together for each of the buttons. I did not even need to tin the wires because I was using 20 gauge wire I had picked up from Fry's and it was plenty thick and secure after crimping.

I cut 10 lengths of 6" wire (few extra just in case). Stripped both ends of each and grabbed my crimpers!

Two ends of 20 gauge wire twisted together fit perfectly into my .187 Connectors.

Ahhhh, my first ground chain.

Side Note - The ratcheting crimpers I borrowed from my friend totally rock and are 100 times better than the crap ones I had. You can get a pair very cheap here. I think I'll order myself some eventually.

Hooked up all my buttons with my ground wires and plugged the two USB cables in (one for joystick/buttons one for LED-Wiz) and it works!! Its such a great feeling just getting this small piece done! Now I can do all kinds of testing and setup for MAME, LEDs, Mala, etc....

phase One - "Test Box" Is Alive!!!!

After borrowing some tools (soldering iron, ratcheting crimpers and wire strippers - Thx Brad) I could now go about hooking up my RGB drives and buttons. After mounting my LD-Wiz on the box I set about wiring up the RGB drives. Taking the advice I found on several sites/posts I decided to "tin" the wires, which basicly keeps all the strands of wire together as well as giving you some added thickness. The add thickness is really nice since the RGB wires are about 28 gauge and kind of hard to get secure in the screw terminals of the LED-Wiz without "tinning".

After hooking up two of the LED's I decided to test and see if I'm remotely doing this correctly:


Success!!!! I'm pretty sure I can hook up the rest now!! Tinning the wire turned out to be pretty easy. Only melted one test wire, so i think that's pretty good!

After getting the rest wired up I twisted the 7 power wires together and soldered them together. That worked pretty good for putting them all in securely. Any more than 7 though and I think I'll have to A) get the power from the PC instead of USB and B) chain the wires together differently because 7 soldered together seems kind of like the max. Luckily, I'm only using 7 right now. Anyhow, hooked up the rest and they look AWESOME!!

A rats nest already, guess I'll have to devote some time to "wire" planning too....

phase One - Planning/Testing/Config Started

Planning - Started thinking about what I really wanted the cab to look like and what not. Still not solid on what I would like but one thing that is being really helpful is SketchUp, which is a FREE 3D modeling tool from Google (well Google bought the company that makes/made it at least). Pretty easy to use and its really helping me visualize my cab and my control panel. I recommend it to anyone, it rocks.

I have decided to use a TV for the monitor to start with and get the super cool/exact replica type arcade monitor as one of my very last things (paying the $600+ later being the main reason). After reading lots of posts on the topic of what TV to get/use and what features it needed to have I decided on these:

• 27" TV
• No more than 26" wide or 21" deep
• Component Inputs (would settle for S-Video if I had too)
• Tube/Rounded TV (No flat screens)
• Power Return feature (TV turns itself back on and remembers channel after being unplugged)

After a week or so of watching craigslist and almost buying 2 or 3 other TV's I found EXACTLY what I was looking for. A 27" toshiba 27A34 with component inputs, power return, 25.5" wide and 19.5" deep. Only $75!! Totally happy about finding it, especially after almost settling for a few that were missing several features!! Here she is:

Testing -I wanted to start by testing some different buttons, switches, joysticks, etc. I figured a good way to do this was to just build a test "box" that I could stick some controls in and just play around with them. This would also let me test out my non existent soldering/wiring/electronic skillz. I put in an order for an UltraStik 360 (with extra spring and longer shaft for testing), 7 Electric Ice push buttons w/ RGB-Drive's, LED-Wiz 32-port USB controller. Also ordered one of GGG micro-leaf switches to test out the differences between normal cherry switches and leaf ones as I really have no feel as to which I prefer.

Pretty much all of the wood working for this project will be done at my father-in-laws house. He has all the tools I will need, actually knows how to use them and loves putting them to use. I knew he would jump at the chance to build something so I let him know what his new project was a few weeks ago when my wife, son and I went down for a visit (He lives in Portland, we in Seattle. Not ideal but we'll make it work).

We quickly set about making the "test box". He had some ply wood already in the garage and I figured this would be a good time to test out using that instead of MDF and see how it would work. I had sketched out the button/joystick layout in SketchUp and had that with me. I did not however have the actual buttons with me so would have to just hope for the best on my layout. The box came out great but I think I want to get a piece of MDF as well and just do some test cuts with it as well (Sorry no pics of box construction). As soon as we got home I was very excited to try out the buttons and see if it all fit. Of course, they fit perfect!!

Config - I've begun gathering ROM files for the various games I hope to play on my cab. Successfully found all Nintendo (NES), Super Nintendo (SNES) and Sega Genesis game roms as well as the current version of MAME (.122b or something like that) and all the ROM files for that (16gigs!!! ouch). So I'm really happy about that. Once I finish configuring my "P1 test box" I'll be able to dive pretty deep on the software configuration side of my cab and a front-end loader program (like Mala).

let's Do This In Pieces

In order to reach my ultimate end goal I think I'm going to take it on in multiple phases. That way I can sub in cheap parts or alternatives to get things moving forward and working while still keeping an eye on my end goal. This may cost $100-$200 more overall but will let me get up and running for about 40%-50% total cost.

I have read numerous times that this could be a really bad idea. Many a MAME cab has ended up completely unpainted, totally unfinished, and just barely holding together because they got it up and running and it was just too much fun to play to bother finishing it!! I'm hoping things like this blog and friends will make me push on, even after I get something cobbled together that allows me to start playing games.

I currently see the phases playing out like this:

1. Planning/Testing/Config - Planning cab design, control panel design, color scheme, LED testing, button testing, joystick testing, Emulation testing, front end testing, part searching.
2. Cab Building Part 1- final design, constructing basic form.
3. Cab Building Part 2 - Component fitting (monitor, speakers, ventilation, admin panel, etc), painting.
4. Control Panel Part 1 - Finalize design, built, painted, plexy overlay, P1 + P2 + trackball purchased and installed.
5. Build Computer - Transfer current software/roms/emulators.
6. Finalize Software - Finish Front End look and feel, all emulators installed, games selected, playable.
7. Art Work and Color Scheme - Finalize color scheme/theme, order artwork for control panel overlay and marquee.
8. Cab Building Part 3 - T-Molding, Marquee installed, one button power-on, coin door, admin buttons.
9. Control Panel Part 2 - Add Spinner, P3 + P4 controls, NES and SNES usb game pads.
10. Cab Building Part 4 - Install arcade monitor, ArcadeVGA.

i Think I'm Going To Build Something

It was a rather slow day at work and I was hitting a few web sites that I check when those kind of days come along. An interesting blog entry talking about building a MAME cabinet caught my eye. Clicking through I found this video and was immediately blown away!! I knew you could emulate just about any game/system/console if you put enough time in searching and tracking down ROM's, but I had no IDEA you could make your own freaking cabinet to play them all!! I've allways dreamed of having my own (or a couple) arcade games but allways thought that it would be so hard to just pick a couple games and be stuck with those forever. But now I can have every single one of them!!

It instantly became an obsession. I starting reading and reading and reading websites (all of which will be listed somewhere on this blog, pry on the side over there). All that reading led me to saint's book Project Arcade and his website (System also mentioned the book in the above video).

After reading Project Arcade cover to cover twice and reading countless message board threads, posts and how-to's, I'm convinced I can do this without killing / maiming myself or anyone else.

I figure its going to take me a year to get it all the way I want it. Mostly due to overall costs of doing everything I want. Plus the amount of planning and testing I think I will do is going to take some serious time.

Overall I Want To Build This (Dozens and dozens of details for each, but you get the gist):

• 4 Player capable (7 buttons for P1 & P2, 4 Buttons for P3 & P4)


• Trackball (for Golden Tee, Missile Command, etc.)


• Spinner (for Disks of Tron, etc.)


• Real 27" Arcade Monitor to replicate exact display of games


• Working Coin Door


• Custom Artwork for the Control Panel Overlay and Marquee


• MAME, Atari, Nes, SNes, Genesis, PSX, Pinball emulation


• Keep costs under $1,500

This is the first of many, many posts that I hope will document my project fairly well, as others have before me. The blogs and posts I have read have been soooooo informative, I hope mine serves a similar purpose. I'll also have a list of "example" projects that I have "borrowed" ideas from or found inspiring over yonder somewhere too -->