Constuction Pics

Control Panel Guts

Ultimarc MiniPac with Trackball, Joysticks & Buttons, Oh My!





My Buddy Gizz being very precise. This is one side of the cabinet.
Gizz is marking up by the area where the game marquee will eventually be.

We opted to build the sides first and then decide how wide to go--we even talked about making the cab narrower at the back to accomodate the Game Screen, but the geometry got frustrating and we were kind of wary of making it front heavy, so we left it according to LuSid's design.

We did scale up the design a little to make the top a little taller than 6 feet with 2" casters--metal, too small, too expensive, and dummy (me) bought two swivel & two straight rollers and put them on the machine so that it won't go anywhere smoothly.




Below:
Close-up of the top of the right side. The cleats were amazing. We made a jig which put the cleats exactly the distance away from the edge to match perfectly with MDF Panels it would receive.

Here you can see the cleats for the Top panel, the speaker angled shelf and the top back 45degree angle cleat.






Controll Panel

MiniPac
Ultimarc Trackball with mounting plate
Two Players, 6 Button Fighter Array
Two Mouse Buttons
Green Credit Buttons
P1 & P2 Starts
Admin Buttons


Added later Oscar V2 Spinner



Below:
Right side panel with scrap for mock up of width.
Actually kind of an overly cautious move, but it ended up working ok.

I decided to go on the cheap and recycle an old TV for the screen, around the house I had a 24", a 19", but I really wanted to put in a 27", so I put off making the final width decision until I could afford the 27", which I eventually found at a pawn shop for $125. SOLD!


So this is what Jeffy's Arcade looked like after about 1 day of marking, cutting , and screwing--er, mating (no that's worse)-- ASSEMBLY!



Some little custom pieces
(MAMed Wireless mouse and Keyboard)



1st day of Assembly with the control panel--can you feel it?

In its first home.

A Chronicle of the Origins of Jeffy's Arcade.


In 2001 I discovered MAME, I played Gyruss and Pac Man from Evening to Morning. And It was Good. But I played on my computer keyboard and that sucked. UP, DOWN, RIGHT, LEFT. BORRRRRRRING!

In 2004 I decided to build my own arcade cabinet.

I asked my friend Gizz to help. And he was good. Really good.Stupendously good in fact. He was so incredibly, mind boggelingly, sensationally good that if I were to tell you how really, realy good he is, you would be very impressed with his goodness. Eh?

I visited many new friends along the way:
www.arcadecontrols.com
www.retroblast.com
www.mameworld.net
In fact I went there every day. And twice on Sunday.

In January 2004 I designed the control panel. And it was good.

In February I built the computer and it was passable, and it still runs, so there.

In March I bought a cheap TV with SVideo inputs for $125.00. And it was good.

In April I set up the test rig and Gizz and I build the Control Panel. And it Rocked!

In May I bought the MDF and it was heavy, very heavy.
We cut out the sides and used cleats to hold the cabinet together. The Plans were LuSid's. I designed the Control Panel--mine, all mine. We then spent two months playing with wood.


And Behold, the fruit of our labor...