 A.I. Wars
 Shareware  R3D Player  Screen Saver  Armor Commander  CAICLPro  BattleShell  Chinese  |
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| Standard Arcade Cabinet Project |
 Cabinet Changed design from yellow to black... Blue marquee later changed to red/yellow design shown above.
Earlier Iterations and Design Aspects
Well, I’ve finally decided to build a full-fledged arcade cabinet. It’s been something I wanted to do for a long time (at least 20 years). Being a video game player (addict) since 1978 and developer since 1987 the only thing left for me to do was become a manufacturer (limiting myself to the production of just one system – for now…) Below is a list of my costs, tools, software and materials I used to create it. I’ve decided to share my home grown design documentation with anyone who visits this page hoping that someone other than me may benefit from my work and have as much fun as I did pursuing their arcade at home dream.
 Marquee  Bezel 
 Left and right menus (not in final design)  Control Panel Background  Joystick Base Q: It looks like you have plexiglas mounted on top of your control panel? A: I didn't like how the simple black painted wood looked and felt so I used a sheet of plexiglas on the top (I had to size it and drill the 11 [1 1/8"] holes in it to match the wood panel). This allowed me to insert some simple printed artwork under it to give it a more polished look. Q: Regarding The MAME marquee, did you just print a couple of transparencies on an ink jet printer and put them behind a clear sheet of plexiglas? A: You guessed it, I printed the logo onto transparencies (3 sheets) and placed it between two sheets of Plexiglas. The top and bottom plastic edges are the typical 4' clear plastic corner wall guard you can get at the hardware store cut in half ($1.99). I placed a flourescent light behind it ($12.00). Q: How do you switch between games? A: I use a program called ArcadeOS (see link above.) Q: Which MAME program do you use? A: v37b I guess any DOS version of MAME will work fine. Q: What OS are you running? A: DOS 7 (i.e; a hard drive formatted from a bootable Win95 (SR2) floppy with sys.com and format.exe on it using the format c: /s command.) Q: It looks like the monitor is mounted 90 from upright? If so, how did you straighten out the picture to be upright? A: You can set that in the ArcadeOS setup, it calls MAME with a switch that tells it to rotate the screen. Q: Did you ever consider buying an old arcade machine just for the box? A: Yes, but the dealers here in Cincy wanted at least $1000+ for cabinets (even the broken ones). I saw some on e-bay for around $400 but with $150 in shipping I decided to build my own. Q: How did you do the graphics? Stencils? A: Yes, I removed the stenciled MAME name on the sides and left only the Space Invader icon. Q: What are the PC specifications? A: My MAME box is a Pentium 667 celeron with 64MB memory, 10GB HD and a SB16 sound card. PC Installed software:
-Brand specific CD Rom DOS Drivers installed -SB16 Drivers installed -MAME 37b for DOS installed -ArcadeOS installed -It's autoexec.bat file simply launches ArcadeOS which uses my joystick/fire buttons to navigate and select the desired game.  |
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