Wednesday, May 25, 2011

More About the MAME Cabinet

So in case you're wondering, MAME Stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. What this means to you, is that with the right know-how, you can actually play old arcade games like Pac-Man or Galaga on your computer. Not content to just use the computer keyboard, many people (including me) decide to make an arcade cabinet, just like you might find in an arcade. I have been wanting to make this for a while, but I never had the money or the time to make it happen. So of course, I decide to build it the summer before I leave for college. Anyway, I spent innumerable hours on BYOAC (Build Your Own Arcade Controls), reading everything, from how to make your own keyboard encoder, to how to make a rotating monitor, as well as looking at probably over one hundred different cabinets, from upright to desktop to cocktail. After a lot of research, I finally decided to go basically with LuSiD's design. This is probably the most widely used design, most likely because it just works out really well. It can all be cut from 3 sheets of MDF. I might have to expand to 4, because at 6'1", a just over 3' high control panel doesn't really work, and I'm building it for me, so I can do what I want! I am basing the control panel layout on the Doughcade II (I think). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get his website to work. You have to remember that most of these websites (and a lot of the MAME stuff in general) have not been updated in about 10 years.
Anyways, I haven't figured out where I will put it, but I have some time to figure that out. Here is a panorama of my room if you want to suggest where to put it. Maybe later I will model my room in Sketchup and post it, so y'all can rearrange my room.
What I do have modeled in Sketchup however, is LuSiD's cabinet. I had to go from his 4 page PDF, and I just thought it was too confusing to try to build from, so I spent a few days trying to figure it out. All the PDF had was some tips on construction and the cut plans, so I modeled it in 3D to get a better visualization.
This is a picture of the model:
And here is a link to the model in the 3D Warehouse, so you can download it if you want, and play around with it.

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