Help with construction of a arcade cabinet?

[kuehnau]

Hey folks,

Long time lurker, first time poster. I noticed on the forums here, there has been a lot of threads about stuff such as arcade cabinets and cartridge reproduction, it seems like there are a lot of people with technical know how on the forums, so I decided to register and see if anyone could help me out.

A friend of mine ended up breaking the monitor of a old netbook he had laying around. I bought it off him for $50.00 and was intending to replace the monitor, but then I remembered a long time dream I've always had, building an arcade cabinet.

Realizing the netbook itself was small, I decided I wanted to go with a bartop style arcade cabinet, knowing that the netbook wasn't as powerful as a desktop computer I decided I wanted to make a strictly Nintendo based arcade cabinet.

The general idea is I want to build a small bartop cabinet using the netbook I bought from my friend, I am going for strictly Nintendo Entertain System emulation here and it will be single player only. The cabinet will be using a single joystick and a total of 4 buttons (A,B, Start, Select).

For the monitor I am planning on using a 10.2" computer monitor. For the controls I will be using a I-PAC arcade interface controller. I am not sure on the software side of things yet, except the netbook will most likely be running Windows 7 Starter Edition.

So that is my basic plan of action, but I have a lot of questions and I was hoping someone around here might be able to help answer some of them for me.

1. Like I said, I will most likely be using Windows 7 Starter Edition for the netbooks OS. Can anyone recommend a good NES Emulator that is also compatible with a good emulator frontend, in the end, I'd like it so people may not even realize they are running on Windows 7.

2. As I said in above, I plan on using a I-PAC arcade interface controller. I have never had any wiring or soldering experience in my life ever. How hard is it to set up the I-Pac to the PC? How much actual programming is required? Is there any easy to follow guides for the process?

3. Would anyone care to recommend any brand of joystick or buttons? I'd like something dependable. Can anyone recommend any arcade marquee printing service that won't break the bank?

4. Any recommendations for the kind of wood I should use?

Any other thoughts, I'd appreciate it. I am 110% new to this entire thing, but am finding myself with some of the resources to start what has been a life long dream.

[AppleQueso]

BYOAC's forums will be a lot more helpful than here, I can tell you right now. It's a great place to check out for help with this since the entire board is dedicated to MAME cabinet making. A dedicated NES cab would pretty much be the same idea so yeah.

Anyhow, for buttons and sticks, assuming you want traditional american-style arcade buttons and sticks, go for Happ buttons and IL sticks. For japanese style, you're good with Sanwa or Seimitsu.

For wood, just use good-ol MDF. Cheap, flat, durable, very easy to work with.