So for the longest time I've always wanted an arcade cabinet of my own. I've always played the games from normal home consoles on my computer. A couple of years ago I found out about an emulator called MAME which is used for Arcade games. Figuring it makes more sense to have a computer than an arcade, I ignored my urge of having one giant game in my house. About a year ago, I came across a couple of sites where people have put together their own arcade cabinets using old computers to run everything off of it. I've finally decided to make my own a couple of months ago when I was thinking of what to do with one of my old computers that were just lying around. I was originally planning on designing and making my own housing from scratch until one of my friends knew someone getting rid of a couple of cabinets. Of course, I jumped on the opportunity and gutted it for my own equipment. I have a ton of old TV's lying around as well, so thankfully it fit perfectly into the monitor bracket already inside the cabinet. Instead of creating my own control board like most people do, I just bought two USB arcade sticks. This is still a work in progress. I still need to build the controller housing, keyboard and mouse draw, wire a power button, get two USB PS2 style controllers, and get two lightguns.
As you can see I just left the PC in it's casing and threw it inside. The computer is hooked up to a RF Modulator using an S-Video cable which is then connected to the TV. I wired up the original arcade speakers up to the PC using old computer speakers. You can see the volume knob taped to the wall in the middle picture so you can still change it. I may splice the wires longer so I can move the volume knob to a more suitable position. Everything is powered by an Energy-Saver power strip that cuts the power to all devices unless the PC is on. So once you turn the PC on, everything else turns on. The computer is loaded with loads of Emulators and Roms, but I'll elaborate more on the programming stuff at a later stage in this progress.
