Arcade Construction

Reminiscing about the original design. Scans from my research notebook on my original arcade project.

History

The original cabinet ran a PS1 with a Williams Electronics Arcade game disc (Joust, Robotron, Defender) connected to a spare PC monitor.
The control panel was connected with some modified (non analog) PS1 controllers. This worked very well and also explains why my original control panel design was diamond shaped (like a game controller).

Very cheap design. Used minimal hardware. I already had everything I needed except these few items. I purchased a VGA converter online (connect the PS1 to a monitor), some wood from Menards, and joysticks & pushbuttons from the local vending company.

Things left out of the original design was a marquee, front bezil, and lower door access. These were just left open.

About a year after original constuction, a marquee was added. Using large photopaper, a blacklight, and some weather stripping plastic I made another cheap fix. The smallest poke would have ruined it and eventually it was (transporting the cabinet laid down in a van + dog in vehicle). A black curtain was also added to cover the lower cabinet, a vinyl shower curtain cut to size. At the same time, I made the switch to PC emulation and an ipac keyboard encoder. Frontend was Mamewah. Now with thousands of games going back to the 70s, my creation was popular with the family and our basement rec room became a gathering point for my younger brother’s friends. This was the state it remained in till 2008 when renovation started.

Notebook Scans

My original misguided research (before I took all those college tech writing and drawing classes).

Links