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Control Panel

January, 2007: My Hobby Begins Many years ago I was introduced to MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), and was thrilled at the concept of playing original arcade games from my youth on a regular PC. However, it still lacked something from the 'authentic' arcade experience, and soon enough the novelty wore off. Late in December 2006 my frustration with the hollow gameplay and high costs of modern console games got me thinking about MAME again. This time a wave of inspiration made me want to turn this great software into 'the real thing' by building a full Arcade cabinet capable of running multiple arcade games using authentic controls and a dedicated hardware setup. So the concept was born, but little did I know there was a global hobby dedicated to the restoration of Arcade machines and the creation of cabinets specifically for the purpose of running MAME and other emulators. This gave me all the information & motivation I needed... and 5 weeks later (I get a little obsessed with my projects) the concept was a reality. This site attempts to document my project of building a dedicated Arcade Cabinet to run MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), and provide tips & resources to people thinking of doing the same. In saying that, every project requires a little ingenuity, some common sense and 'what's right for you'. What you'll find on this site is not the only way you can go about building an Arcade Cabinet and is intended for reference and/or inspiration. I cannot accept responsibility/liability for the information on this site or what you choose to do with it.

Update 2008-01-12 - One Year On (Updates around the site since original project marked RED) Approximately a year later, the cabinet is getting more use than ever. I have since added new features, such as:
	An "EMS TopGun" light gun for all of the great arcade gun games A USB Dance Mat (using StepMania software) Genuine SingStar USB microphones (to complete the Ultrastar/Singstar Karaoke setup) A Guitar Hero guitar to play Frets On Fire. Control panel and bezel artwork upgrade (the control panel now has a perspex cover to protect the artwork) Added an arcade trackball and two spinners to the control panel for expanded game options (Golden Tee, Super Sprint, etc) Upgraded the PC to a P4 1.7Ghz (which has substantially expanded the library of games I can play) Photos coming soon!
A quick overview of my Arcade Cabinet:
	2 Player Upright Arcade cabinet running MAME (Arcade Games), Gens (Sega MegaDrive/Genesis emulator), Project 64 (Nintendo 64 emulator), DOSbox (for running retro DOS PC games), Virtual Pinball (Pinball emulation) as well as Ultrastar Deluxe (Karaoke, like Singstar on PS2) and Jukebox software (for playing MP3s)... all running on a single front end (Mala) controlled by the joysticks. The whole unit comes on at once when turned on from mains (pc also has an illuminated green button on the control panel above the coin door for power override in case the PC crashes). The cabinet is painted with black high-gloss enamel paint and bordered with red T-Moulding. The display is a 21" flat screen (Trinitron) CRT Monitor (it had a black bezel - bonus), surrounded by a flat black 6mm ply bezel and covered by a piece of tinted hardened safety glass. (I definitely recommend tinted glass for the display) The bezel now has printed artwork applied onto the ply (underneath the glass) Marquee was home made and mounted behind 4mm picture frame glass and backlit with a 15 watt fluorescent lamp. The control panel has 6 colour-coded buttons for each player (2 rows of yellow, orange, red buttons), Player 1 & Player 2 start buttons, and side pinball flipper buttons, side tilt buttons, and an illuminated launch/front tilt button. This button also acts as 'Enter' in PC-applications while P1+P2 at the same time acts as the "Esc" key. The control panel surface has been remade using 16mm MDF with a 2mm sheet of perspex on top, protecting a new artwork print Control panel can function as a stand-alone unit (completely enclosed and easily removable - it is held in place with hook & eye locks behind the control panel (accessible via keyboard drawer and/or coin door) and also has velcro tabs underneath). Slide-out keyboard tray for system administration with mini-USB keyboard and top-mounted trackball. There is a USB cable coupled with the keyboard cable so its possible to plug in USB gadgets (eg phone chargers/mp3 players/console controllers, etc). The trackball can also be taken out to play Arcade games that use trackballs, like golf. Two original 20c coin mechanisms (not yet shown on this site) for adding credits (and reclaiming back my kids pocket money) 6" 3-way sony x-plod speakers hooked up to PC speaker subwoofer setupwith headphone bypass and auxiliary input (ipods/phones/etc) WIFI network card and VNC software for remote administration Audio & TV Out which can be used to plug into home theatre (surround sound/TV out) for jukebox function etc While not physically part of the cabinet, I also now have a light gun, Singstar microphones, a 'Guitar Hero' guitar and a dance mat that is used on the cabinet.

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