I’ve attained the cabinet I’ll be using for my MAME cabinet. The co-creator (hereafter referred to as Pat) and I decided it would be lots cheaper and easier to use an existing arcade cabinet and convert it rather than building a completely new cabinet. I received a free cabinet (working game no less) from Pat’s friend in exchange for some computer help.

I’ll post pictures of the cabinet before it’s touched as soon as I can. As you will soon be able to see, the arcade machine is intended for 2 players, it currently has 2 joysticks and 4 buttons per joystick. The plan is to extend it to a 4 player game, each with 6 buttons. To do this, we will have to remove the dash and create a new one that is at least twice as long.

So the next steps are as follows:

1. Remake the control panel with 4 joysticks; 6 buttons each
2. Find, insert a display (27″ television is preferable if it will fit)
3. Setup, insert, mount the PC with MAME and Roms
4. Setup speaker system (with optional subwoofer)
5. Connect everything

I wrote this e-mail to Pat regarding the joysticks, pushbuttons, etc. for the arcade.

Pat-

I’m looking at things I need to buy. I’m using this page (http://spystyle.arcadecontrols.com/index2.htm) as a guide (for only the technical parts, none of the cabinet parts). I’ve come up with the following

JOYSTICK:
$9.40 each x 4 = $37.60: link
maybe a different kind? This looked the cheapest.

PUSHBUTTON:
30 buttons (6 each x4=24 + 4 “start buttons” + 2 extras)
$1.75 x 30 = $52.50: link
or perhaps any of the following. I’m not sure which we’ll need, so we can look at each:
$0.81 each: link
$1.80 each: link
$1.80 each: link
$2.10 each: link

KEYBOARD ENCODER
$20 link
or
$35 link

Not sure which of those we’d want.

I’m not sure if there’s anything else we need for this project to work… but I need to look at his list again.

The “spystyle” guy talks about putting a subwoofer in instead of a coinbox, and I think that is something I’d like to do. I can worry about building the enclosure for that later, much lower priority.

I also need a display of some sort. Did you have any recommendation for this? Should we try the TV you have upstairs (will that even fit in this cabinet)? If I can’t use the one upstairs, I can buy one. I need to measure to see what width will fit in the enclosure we will have. I’d prefer as large as possible; how much do you suggest I pay at max for a television?

Ray

I wanted cheap arcade cabinet for my MAME project, so I had a search at the local craigslist (rss) for arcade. It is near perfect condition, fully working.

I grabbed it, here are some pictures.

Edit 11/1:
I think this box was too good of condition for the MAME cabinet, so I put it up for sale.

Soon-to-be sister-in-law Kara just celebrated her 23rd bday. We took a couple pictures.

Instead of just complain about a service that will do what I want, but cost money, I decided to work on my own service.

It’s not 100% clear to me yet what kind of service it’s going to be. I’m going to work on getting it functional for myself as a personal online RSS feed reader, and scale it as necessary once it is sufficient for my needs.

I began work on this yesterday (Monday 8/22/2005) and have worked on it a little yesterday and today, and have about 40% of the basic functionality down.

I’m not very talented or keen at the aesthetics of web design, but I’ll do my best at making it look pretty. (Care to donate a design anyone? :P)

The development might take awhile, since I’m currently working (including commute) ~55 hours a week and am soon to start classes. My goal is to finish the most vital parts of this project before classes start.

Edit 8/29:
Proof of concept pictures are online. Took me about 6-8 hours of coding and design (honestly, most was on that ugly design), but it’s finally functional for a single user.

Edit 8/25:
Proof of Concept is completed. I’ll post pics if I can figure out what’s wrong with my gallery…
Next stage is Alpha!

My last year at University of Portland. I’m excited :). I’m still workin at Autodesk, and will spend between 15 and 20 hours a week this semester working if all goes as planned.

CS421 - Artificial Intelligence - 3 credits
CS441 - Software Engineering I - 3 credits
CS451 - Theory of Computation - 3 credits
CS480 - Senior Design Project Prep - 3 credits
CS491 - Indepent Study; Game Theory - 3 credits

And I’m currently enrolled in the following class, but will most likely be dropping it
CS443 - Computer Vision - 3 credits

Two of my classes are project oriented with other students, which will give me lots of experience for the job market hopefully.

These are the exact classes I projected I would take.

Classes start 8/29/2005 at University of Portland.