This week I started the process of adding a M.A.M.E. PC to my cocktail arcade cabinet. The PC is a 3.33GHz Celeron D with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. Probably a little overboard for a MAME PC, but I wanted some room to grow if I need it. I also wanted to make sure I had adequate horsepower to play games like Street Fighter II and the Metal Slug series, which can be problematic on slower MAME machines. The whole PC was under $300, but I also had to buy an ArcadeVGA card and a J-PAC from Ultimarc so that I could interface the PC with my vintage-spec arcade cabinet.

I decided to use Windows XP as the OS. I considered both Linux and DOS, but XP ended up being the best fit for my needs. I also installed a VNC client, an FTP server, and a wi-fi card on the box so I can administer and configure the machine remotely. That way I don’t end up elbow deep in arcade guts every time I need to make a simple software change. The arcade screen looks great with MAME, but using XP with a 640×480 interlaced screen is a nightmare…that’s where VNC comes in handy.

Finally, to handle sound I got a little unconventional and decided to modify a small car amplifier and an ATX power supply to drive the four 4″ speakers in my arcade cab. Most MAME builders just modify an existing set of PC speakers, but I wanted to try something a little different. Modding the ATX supply to work with the car amp was a lot easier than I expected and my bench test with a pair of junk speakers and a CD player sounded great.

Right now all I need to do is install the amp and tidy up the wiring and I’m done. I’ll post some pictures of the guts when it’s finished.

I thought I’d do a quick review of the company I purchased my cocktail cabinet kit from, arcade depot.

Packaging

Packaging was excellent. Everything was bubble wrapped and the outside edges of the box were lined with plywood to prevent any damage. Everything arrived without a scratch.

Quality

This definitely isn’t your average piece of Wal-Mart furniture. The plywood is very high quality and the staining and sealing is excellent. Everything fits together perfectly and has perfect right angles. Most arcade cabinets sold on the internet are MDF with a fake wood-like veneer. The arcade depot cabinets use real wood veneer over high quality plywood, which looks better and will probably hold up to more abuse than an MDF cabinet would.

Assembly

If you can put together flat-pack furniture from a big box retailer, you can build this cocktail cabinet. The instructions were fairly easy to follow, but there are a few things left to your own ingenuity and imagination. I would definitely recommend doing a dry run before gluing each part to make sure you know where everything goes. I would also recommend having some clamps, as there is quite a bit of gluing involved. I was able to assemble everything except the table top and vertical control panels in one evening.

I ran into a few snags with the Ultimarc joysticks I used, but that isn’t arcade depot’s fault. The mag-sticks fit in the vertical panels just fine, but they were too long for the horizontal panel. I ended up using a hole saw to put 2″ holes all the way through the bottom of the panel. The holes won’t be visible (unless someone happens to be lying on the floor) and the joysticks work fine.

Turnaround

For a product that is made-to-order I thought the turnaround was very good. I placed my order on March 15th and my shipment arrived on April 4th. A 3 week turnaround isn’t bad considering they built the whole thing from scratch, including staining and sealing the wood and installing the T-molding.

Communication

This is the one place I feel that arcade depot fell a little short. arcade depot is an online company and email is the only way to reach them. Unfortunately, they weren’t very quick in responding to my email inquiries. Most emails were returned within two or three days, but there were two emails that took almost an entire week and one email never received a response at all. I also didn’t receive a tracking number for my package, even though I requested one and got an email from arcade depot saying they would send it.

Maybe I’m impatient, but two or three days is pretty sad and a week is just unacceptable. My perception may be skewed because I work in IT and I’d probably be fired if I didn’t respond to an email the same day I received it.

Conclusion

Over all, I thought my experience with arcade depot was very good. I would definitely order from them again. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re the only game in town for cocktail kits that aren’t made of crappy MDF. If they improved communication a little I don’t think I’d have a single bad thing to say about them.

My cabinet kit from arcade depot arrived yesterday afternoon. I managed to get about 80% of the assembly completed last night and I’m hoping to have it ready to wire up by this evening. With any luck I’ll be enjoying a nice game of Galaga by Saturday afternoon.

I’ve posted about all the main ingredients of my cocktail machine, but there are also a lot of odds and ends that you need to complete a project like this. Things like speaker grills, bolts, and wiring harnesses can be tough to track down. Luckily, I found a one stop shop for all these arcade odds and ends. Mike’s Arcade has almost everything you need to restore or build an 80’s style Midway arcade machine. The prices are pretty reasonable too. He even sells his own empty cabinets, so you could theoretically get everything you need in one place. I bought my Galaga artwork from him as well all the hardware I’ll need to mount the monitor, speakers, and controls.

I’ve been having a tough time deciding which joysticks to use. The “free” joysticks that came with my 48 in 1 board aren’t very good, so I’ll probably just toss them in the parts bin. You never know when you’ll need a joystick or two. I wanted to match the 80’s cocktail aesthetic as much as possible, so a ball top joystick was a must. I also wanted a joystick that can be switched between 4 and 8 way operation. Nothing sucks more than playing games like Pac-Man without a real 4 way joystick.

Ultimarc makes a joystick that switches between 4 and 8 way on the fly so I ordered a couple of those to try out. I also won an auction for a pair of cheap Seimitsu joysticks that are supposed to be great for fighters and side scrollers, but they don’t switch between 4 and 8 way easily. Both types have the same mounting plate, so once I get the cabinet I can easily switch them out and decide exactly what I want.

I’ll need a total of four joysticks (two for cocktail panels and two for the horizontal control panel), so I just need to decide if I want the same type of joystick on every panel, or if the Seimitsu sticks in the 8 way configuration will work in the horizontal panel. Most of the 4 way games I like are vertical, so the Ultimarc sticks will definitely be going in the vertical control panels.

I received my coin door in the mail last week. I was debating on whether or not to put one in, but I wanted to be as accurate as possible. It will also serve as a way to access the PC and jamma boards without taking the top of the table off. I’m planning on wiring up the coin doors as well as two “secret” buttons under the horizontal control panel. That way I can put in a coin if I’m in the mood, or I can just press the secret coin button if I don’t want to take the time to feed in a quarter.

I’m currently working on putting together a cocktail-style arcade machine. I’ve had the idea for a few years, but the arcade bug has bit me again and I managed to convince my wife that our lives won’t be complete without our very own arcade machine.

After doing a little research I decided to go with a cocktail cabinet made by arcade depot. They have an excellent kit that matches the original Galaga/Ms. Pac-man cabinet, but with a lot of options for customization. I chose a cocktail cabinet because I want to be able to play both vertical and horizontal games in their original resolutions. A cocktail cabinet with separate vertical and horizontal controls is the only thing I’ve found that can easily pull this off. Arcade Depot also had some great links to a few other people who built MAME cabinets with their kits. This guy built almost exactly what I had in mind, right down to the button layout. This guy also built a cool cabinet, but didn’t go with the horizontal control option.

Once I knew what cabinet I was using, it was time to track down some parts. My first stop was eBay, where a few minutes of searching revealed another arcade treasure, the 48 in 1 jamma board. Evidently MAME has come full circle and you can now get brand new arcade boards that emulate dozens of classic games. They connect straight into vintage arcade wiring harnesses so there is almost no work involved to turn an old arcade machine into a multi-game machine.

This board gave me an idea. I’d still build a MAME cabinet, but I would wire it using the old 1980’s jamma spec so I could drop in old arcade boards if I ever wanted to play the real deal. You can even get special jamma adapters that let you switch between two different boards…perfect for switching between a real jamma board and a MAME PC. To start things off, I ordered a 48 in 1 kit from eBay, which actually included everything necessary to wire a vintage arcade cabinet, including joysticks, buttons and a power supply. I got lucky on the auction and the whole package ended up being cheaper than buying just the board, so I basically got all the controls and wiring for free. The only thing it didn’t include was a monitor.

Most of the other cabinets I saw on the internet used a hybrid arcade monitor that would accept standard VGA signals. That’s fine if you only want to use your display with a PC, but not so great if you also need to display CGA signals from a vintage arcade board. The good news is that they still sell CGA monitors and they’re less than half the price of their hybrid cousins. I got one from Suzo Happ for $135. The bad news is that I’ll have to buy a special video card so I can use it with a PC. However, the cost of the card plus the CGA monitor is still cheaper than a hybrid monitor so I’m coming out ahead in the long run and I’ll have a lot more flexibility. The CGA monitor will also look more authentic using MAME than one of the VGA hybrids.

So that brings us to the present. I’ve got everything I need to build an arcade machine except the cabinet, which I ordered a week ago. I couldn’t let all this cool arcade hardware just sit around unused for the next few weeks, so I went ahead and wired the thing up on my work bench.