I first built one 10 years ago and love every minute of it. It was something I always wanted to do, so i took the plunge and did it.
It wasn't amazing, but it worked and i had fun building it and playing with it.
It was made out of MDF, with a faux leather covering in black. Looked ok but rough on the inside as you will see from the pics. DO NOT attempt how i did this. I dont think it was very safe having a PC screwed to the wood inside.
I ran it with MAME. Which is an easy and great bit of kit. I had a circuit board from an old keyboard for the controller. And made it just one player. I did add a USB controller for two player games.
Here are some other pics:
It worked though, so i was very happy.
So ten years on i talked about building one. My other half said to me one day, "Stop promising to start things and never going through with them", So that was it.
The following days i ordered the following, all from ebay.
1. ARCADE MACHINE 2 X JOYSTICKS + 16 BLACK CONCAVE BUTTONS + USB INTERFACE - £47.99
2. 12mm x 8m CHROME CAR STYLING MOULDING STRIP TRIM ADHESIVE - £9.98
3. NEW 3 PIN 120mm SUPER SILENT BLUE LED PC CASE FAN 12CM - CASE COOLING - £9.90
4. Fan Guard 120mm 7 Ring Chrome G109-15A Steel Wire Accessory x 1pc ONO Free Post - £1.75
5. 10 x Metalic Chrome Silver Unicaps Screw Cap Covers & Washers Press On Fixings - £3.70
6. Microsoft Windows Vista Business 32 Bit With COA and Serial Number - £19.99
7. 2.4G RF Mini Small Wireless Keyboard Mouse Handheld Android Smart TV BOX HTPC - £8.99
8. HP XW4600/Intel Core 2 Duo PC. 3.16GHz CPU. 2GB Ram. 500GB HDD (XW4600) - £60
9. Quality 4 Ports High Speed USB 2.0 Hub Multi Splitter Expansion for PC - £2.53
Total up to now £165.68
I already had a Dell 19 inch widescreen LCD monitor and a wireless USB card i will use.
The overall size would be determined by the screen size. The next one i build will have a 19 inch 4:3, not a widescreen. It will fit the games better than widescreen 16:9.
I decided on a PC that would be good enough for running MAME. But also good enough to watch films, surf the web, play music etc.
Thats reminds me, I need speakers! (make mental note)
I need to get a top for it too. Toughened glass is expensive to get cut. So I am going to do it in perspex. 6mm think. I am sure it will do the job. The old one i build has 3mm perspex, which looked ok. Not the best but ok.
And so it began! I am committed.
The next step was to worry about building the thing......
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