Arcade Build

Years ago, when I was a poor college student I decided to delve into the world MAME emulation.  

At first, like most people, I was satisfied playing through all these classic arcade games sitting at my desk, controller in hand.  Eventually I stumbled upon custom arcade cabinets people were doing for their MAME setups.  I quickly became very interested in doing this.  Not just for the love of gaming, or fun in tackling a project, or even to impress my friends, but because 10-year old me would have demanded it!

The testing phase consisted of piling a bunch of crap computer parts together just to form a working machine that would run my MAME cabinet.  This was also the same time that the computer dubbed The Boxinator was born.  

The Boxinator running MAME.

At the time I was in school, living in a town-house with 2 roommates.  Money was tight but luckily I stumbled on cheap arcade cabinet.  A few blocks away from our house was a billiards store and the guy there also repaired bar-style entertainment pieces.  When I called to ask the place if they had any old arcade cabinets for sale the guy on the phone really wanted to make sure I knew it didn't work.  Even when I went to pick it up he explained that the monitor didn't come with it and none of the internal boards were working - so it would take a ton of work to restore.

I ended up paying $50 for the cabinet, which saved me plenty of money and time building my own.

The cab was an old bowling game, but I can't remember the name.  First, I needed clean the thing - it was dirty.  I also took the time to dig out any old leftover electronics and remove the old control panel to cut down on weight.  Next, I gave it an amateurish paint job (that only got 3/4 done for some reason). I also painted the MAME logo on the side (meh).

I made a new control panel out of 3/4 particle board.  It turned out okay considering it was built an hour away from home where I had access to power tools.  This means I couldn't test anything.  All I had was a cardboard template to bring with me so I had some idea on what to do.  The control board I used was a PS/2 ipac 2 player controller.

The whole thing was a bit half-assed and you could tell.  I never made a bottom cover for the control panel so you could see all the ugly wiring just dangling about.  But it's as good as I could really do since I didn't have any power tools at our house, and I was doing most of this work in my bedroom.

It had an old 17” CRT for a monitor and some unmounted PC speakers.  This is the condition it sat in for something like 10 years.