Help With Making Mame Cabinet

[chumpitacs]

I am hoping you guys could give me some ideas for this. I have been considering this for a while and just wanted to get some opinions on how to go about it on here. I have this arcade cabinet that I paid $150 dollars for a while ago. It is a semi cheaply made after market one that was sold in target stores around 2004. You could see a picture of the whole thing below.

It's basically a circuit board with, I don't know the terminology for it, but some arcade control wires basically hot glued to the board. A 2 pin connector for the speaker and vga output to the monitor. It's kind of like a plug and play machine but with a monitor and speakers attached.

I have been thinking about turning it into a mame cabinet for a while. What I want to do though is spend little to no money. I have an old computer and you can see in the first picture down that there is plenty of space to mount it in there. I can easily hook it up to the same monitor in there. And I don't know if the picture gives you a good look but the speaker wire is basically a small cable that just fits into 2 exposed wires. Would that plug directly into a motherboard?

If anyone has any thoughts or opinions on the easiest way to go about doing this, I would like to hear it. If you need more pictures just ask.

Thanks






edit: fixed picture links

[CRTGAMER]

I have been thinking about turning it into a mame cabinet for a while. What I want to do though is spend little to no money. I have an old computer and you can see in the first picture down that there is plenty of space to mount it in there. I can easily hook it up to the same monitor in there. And I don't know if the picture gives you a good look but the speaker wire is basically a small cable that just fits into 2 exposed wires. Would that plug directly into a motherboard?

The speaker will need to plug into an amp hooked up to the PC sound card audio output. Maybe the Arcade PCB amp could be used between the speaker and your PC?

The existing PCB inside the cabinet looks interesting. I am guessing a fixed set of emulated roms on the chips of the board? Probably not worth salvaging, but it would have a dedicated front end. However, a PC with hard drive gives more versatilty in the selection of games in addition to console emulators and even PC games that could use the Arcade controls. You will need to adapt the arcade controls to a PC Keyboard encoder or USB controller.

[SpoonyBard]

I'm thinking you're going to need to wire those buttons up to USB and run them like controllers. (Unless there's a jamma edge that i'm missing somewhere)

I think TSTR had some parts for sale to make that work.

[chumpitacs]

I don't know much about amps. So you're saying I may need to get something else to plug that speaker into the computer. If I remember right from when I built my computer the audio jack plugged into something similar to what the USB jacks from the case plugged into. Like two exposed wires sticking out. That is what the wire from this speaker looks like. I'm not sure though.

I was thinking I would use this for the controls, http://www.ultimarc.com/a-pac.html
The A-PAC from ultimarc.

[SpoonyBard]

I don't know much about amps. So you're saying I may need to get something else to plug that speaker into the computer.

The speaker needs something to drive it. From what I saw in the picture it looks like it goes to a 2-pin connector. You could cut that and wire it to a 3.5mm jack and run it into the headphone output. It probably wouldn't be very loud though.

If you had spares laying around, you could substitute a set of computer speakers for it.

I was thinking I would use this for the controls, http://www.ultimarc.com/a-pac.html
The A-PAC from ultimarc.

The A-PAC board should get the job done.

Have you seen the back of the buttons? Do they have switches or do they just make contact with a PCB?

[chumpitacs]

I am pretty sure they have switches, if I remember right, they make a click sound like any other arcade button.

Would you guys know if it would be possible to make it so I can switch between the original board and the computer, with a button press or something?

Also there is already a power switch on the side, I think there is probably a power supply in there, I just don't think it would work with my computer, so I would want to wire my computers power to that switch, I'm not exactly sure how to do that though.

[CRTGAMER]

I don't know much about amps. So you're saying I may need to get something else to plug that speaker into the computer. If I remember right from when I built my computer the audio jack plugged into something similar to what the USB jacks from the case plugged into. Like two exposed wires sticking out. That is what the wire from this speaker looks like. I'm not sure though.

I was thinking I would use this for the controls, http://www.ultimarc.com/a-pac.html
The A-PAC from ultimarc.

As I already mentioned earlier, there should already be an amp on the Arcade existing board. All you have to do is figure ou the input side of the amp. If too much trouble then add a small amp, maybe even a pair of better speakers. Use the standard sound card (not USB) audio output from the back of your PC.

That A-Pac is the easy method for wiring the arcade controls to the PC. The USB output will be picked up as a game controller which then can be configured thru Mame and any other game.

Would you guys know if it would be possible to make it so I can switch between the original board and the computer, with a button press or something?

Also there is already a power switch on the side, I think there is probably a power supply in there, I just don't think it would work with my computer, so I would want to wire my computers power to that switch, I'm not exactly sure how to do that though.

A KVM switch could be utilized for the VGA cable, you'll need to configure the Arcade Controls thru a keyboard encoder though. Relays could be another route for the Arcade Panel.

I would not risk the add on PC to that Power Supply, use the one one that comes with your PC. The Arcade Power switch could be used to "cut the cord" to the PC power supply.

[fastbilly1]

Easy enough. Monitor is useable as is. For controls, you will have make them work with a normal pc. I suggest getting something like an Ipac:
http://www.ultimarc.com/ipacve.html
Then all you do is push the wire into the hub and screw it down and configure it in the pc.

For speakers, I would go get a cheap pair of powered speakers and put those inside, instead of trying to power the existing speakers. Not all the pictures loaded for me so I do not know if there is an amp there, but based on the comments I imagine there is not.

[WatchingTime]

Hey chumpitacs, I had a favor that I wanted to ask. I got the same arcade recently on craigslist, but part of my decal is ripped and I was wondering if you could send me some photos of the ripped portion so that I can print out a replacement for the corner. I've searched everywhere for a photo with no luck. I'd be really grateful if you could send a dozen or so hi res images taken in good lighting with no flash or geometry distortion. If you still haven't done your project yet I'd also be happy to help out, as I'm doing the same thing for mine.

Here's the damage: http://imgur.com/a/06Fia