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