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Go to My MAME Project Page: 1 2 3

My MAME Project

I can't get into my machine to upload a new icon, so you'll have to wait for a new one!

2002-08-23: Mame - It's My New Obsession

Mame, it's not even a question.

I have now shelled out a total of $250 to Ultimarc and Happ's Controls. I habitually visit Commander Taco's site, as well as Seanhat's Site. At night I download ROMs and configure a new Gentoo machine to be put into my cabinet. Later, when I'm trying to sleep, I fantasize about how much my new Arcade machine is going to rock.

I can't even think about pgDesigner for more than 5 minutes. My fickle obsession gland has found a new focus. For those of you who don't know, MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. The brilliant and benevolent hackers of the world have pooled their efforts to write a program that emulates classic (and modern!) coin operated arcade machines. Then they dump the ROM (Read Only Memory chip) images into a .zip files and voila! You can play the original Pac-Man in all of its glory. Or Galaga, Street Fighter, Bezerk or whatever. And it is such a beautiful thing. These are not rewrites of a classic game for a new platform. These are the original games completely unaltered.

The only thing that it lacks is that arcade feel. And to make up for this I am going to construct my very own Arcade Cabinet, complete with authentic arcade controls. The guts of the machine will be my old PentiumII 300 running Linux, XMame and GXMame.

As I type this Gentoo is compiling on that box at my house. I love Gentoo. I have grown to love Gentoo more and more. Simultaneously, my distaste for RedHat is increasing. The other day I was trying to get Commander Taco's (crappy) Mame frontend, Jubei, up and running on my RedHat box. I needed GtkPerl. I tried to install the RPM, but I needed (FILL IN RANDOM RPM HERE). I went to install that one, and I needed another. And another. And another. Finally, I just couldn't find the files I needed for an RPM and I was stuck. An hour wasted for nothing. So I popped the Gentoo CD in that puppy and here we are. Redhat can kiss my ass.

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2002-08-26: Mame Cabinet Step One - Plans and Cutting

First I downloaded some plans from LuSID's Arcade Flashback. This is pretty much the best site I found on the subject, but unfortunately it is a bit vague.

For the wood, we purchased 3 sheets of 8x4 5/8" plywood from Home Depot. This plus the stain ran me roughly $100. LuSID used black contact paper on his cabinet, but I wanted something that my future wife won't make me throw out so I opted for a stained wood look. Hopefully she'll be fooled into thinking that it is furniture.

We stuck almost exactly to his design for the cuts. The only thing we did differently at this point was opt not to cut the extra control panel top. His plans save a piece of wood to create an extra control panel top. I decided that this was pointless, considering that the electronics are the real expense of a control panel, and if I ever decided to make a new control panel the 20$ for a new piece of plywood would be the least of my worries. It turns out that this was a really good decision as we ended up using the extra wood the improve upon his design later.

The cutting took my dad Chris and myself roughly 4-5 hours using a circular saw for the initial cuts, a skillsaw for the smaller cuts, and a jigsaw for that curvy part of the cabinet front. I don't really have any advice here other than make sure you know how to cut wood. We found that the most sensitive pieces to error are the cabinet top, cabinet back top, and the cabinet back angled section. These three pieces need to fit together rather snugly so try to be very accurate with their measurements. Well, obviously, you want to be careful with all of the measurements. We also found it very helpful at this point to label all of the pieces to match them up with the pieces in the design document. Later on, during assembly, you will need labels to make sense of all of the chunks of wood you have lying around. Use a lead pencil to label them, and label them on the rough side. (i.e. the side that will be facing the inside of the machine...not the side anyone will be looking at)

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2002-08-26: Mame Cabinet Step Two - Assemble the Base

The first thing we did was try to assemble the base. We used #6 wood screws and predrilled the holes with a countersink bit. This allows the head of the screw to be embedded in the wood rather than stick out. Right away we ran into difficulties with the vagueness of the instructions. The picture drawn of the base in the design looked nothing like what would be possible with the dimensions of wood we were instructed to cut. Add to this the fact that the actual machine screenshots on his site didn't seem to have a base at all. From what I could figure out, he never actually built a base for his cabinet, but realized that he needed one and threw it into the plans, never actually having seen what it would look like. The first picture on the left is what we ended up with.

We were unhappy with this because it looked rather flimsy for the base of an entire arcade cabinet, so we added three more support boards in the middle, and completely filled the top with boards. All of these boards came from scrap and the wood we saved by not cutting the additional control panel. Note that all of the screws come from the bottom. The sharp tips of the screws poke about 1MM out of the other end . If we didn't do this, the screws would poke out of the bottom and badly scrape any surface we drug the cabinet across.

After the base was complete we screwed the cabinet bottom on top of it, once again screwing in from the bottom. We ended up with a very sturdy base that had much surface area available for screwing in the side panels of the cabinet. Had we stuck with the original base design, we could not have screwed the side panels in as sturdily as I would have liked.

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2002-08-26: Mame Cabinet Step Three - Control Panel Assembly

The control panel was fairly self explanatory. The dimensions given in the design were good and the pieces fit together fine. The only problem here was that the 45 degree angle we were instructed to cut on the control panel back should actually have been more like a 55 degree angle. Note that the sides slant so that the control panel top angles towards the player. The angle on the control panel back should match this slope. Our back is 45 degrees and is slightly off. It still fits pretty snugly and isn't really a problem, but if you're a perfectionist you will want to cut at a different angle.

We used the skillsaw to cut this angle. We adjusted the blade to be at 45 degrees and tested it against several scrap pieces. Once we had adjusted the blade and the guide so that it made good cuts on the scrap wood we then used it on the control panel back.

You will not screw the control panel top onto the control panel box. Rather you will affix velcro to the edges of the box top and to the bottom of the control panel top. This allows easy access to the innards of the control panel (which you will no doubt need). It may seem like this is not strong engough, but given the weight of the control panel top and the relatively snug fit of the top onto the box, it should be able to withstand reasonably rough play. You may also notice that we used quite a few screws. We certainly used more than suggested by the documentation. As Chris said, screws are cheap and if we're going to go through all of this trouble to build this thing it might as well be solid.

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2002-08-26: Mame Cabinet Step Four - Attach the Sides

This was an exciting step. It is the step where the cabinet actually started to look like a machine you see in an acrade! The two steps I was the most excited about were this part and the electronics of the control panel.

We spent a fair amount of time on this step to make sure everything was put together straight. The plywood I purchased has a slight warp to it, so at every step we had to make sure that we bent out the warp before screwing it in. At this step Chris stood on the base to remove warp and held each side while I screwed it into the base. It's kind of hard to see in this picture but we put in a buttload of screws. We screwed each side into all three layers of the base (Bottom support, cross boards, and cabinet bottom). Most of the screws went into side of the cabinet bottom board.

Also, up until this point we had done everything on top of a table. We originally tried to do this on our table, but the table itself was warped and it was just difficult to do that high up. We then tried it on the ground, but the concrete of the carport was also too rough. We ended up using the garage because it had level concrete with tile on top, and so was a good flat surface to work on.

Since we had built such a solid base, once we were finished with this step the sides were already pretty sturdy. I highly recommend you do the same, because I can't imagine doing the rest without a solid foundation. In this picture it may appear that there is a back to the cabinet already, but that it just a spare piece of wood leaning against a bench. There is nothing actually attached to the back of the cabinet yet.

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Go to My MAME Project Page: 1 2 3