More progress! You might be wondering where Day 9 is, well, day 9 took place a couple of weeks ago and I never got around to posting it! I’ll put it up later this week. (Day 9 posted 6/1/08)

When last we left the continuing saga of the Mame Arcade Cabinet back on the update following Day 8 the cabinet had been painted primer grey and the T-Molding still wasn’t done.

We join the saga on Day 10 and it’s been painted black (most of it), the T-Molding has been installed and I found a TV! It was my first Craig’s List purchase! I had been watching Craig’s list for 25″ TV’s for several weeks and hadn’t really found anything promising. Then I saw this posting on there for a JVC 25″ TV with a good picture, broken remote and for the low low price of $20. So, I contacted the guy and he said he’d let it go for $15 because he was eager to get it out of his house.

So, I get the TV home and it works great but…it’s 3/4 of an inch to wide to fit in the cabinet! Just 3/4 of an inch!
My first thought was…where’s my Dremel?

So after a bit of hacking the TV fit into the cabinet nicely. Next I plugged my Satellite TV into it to make sure the thing still worked and it does!

So here it is as it stands. I still need to paint the speaker panel, the front main door, the shelves and a little touch ups here and there. Then I need to get the computer hooked back up with the joystick. Next comes getting a piece of glass that will serve as the bezel in front of the TV as well as some sort of artwork for the sides of the cabinet. Oh, and I need to get the artwork at the top printed by Kinko’s or someone. Currently I just printed it on two sheets of paper on my inkjet printer and put them together, but when the light is on you can see the seams. It’s looking more and more like an arcade cabinet!

Day 10 hours: 2
Next :: Goto Mame Arcade Cabinet – Day 11

Day 9 brings in routing the edges for T-Molding, black paint and wiring switches and lights on the speaker panel.

After my first encounter with the router and doing the T-Molding I was really not looking forward to this part. But, once I got the depth set correctly and went after it, it worked like a charm. I do recommend doing this part before assembly of the cabinet, but since I had only done the primer coats it turned out great. I zipped around the edges and had a good clean groove in no time.

I’m not sure what it is about painting that I don’t like, but I really hate painting. Maybe it’s the monotonous motion of rolling or brushing on the paint, I don’t know. So, I started in on the black paint.

I got bored with painting so I turned my attention to wiring the switches and LED lights on the speaker panel.
I wanted to be able to turn the computer on and off without having to open the front door of the cabinet. So, I took an old computer case and removed the green LED, red LED and the connections running from the power switch and reset switch. The I grabbed a long piece of cat5 cable and connected the motherboard connectors to the ends of each pair of the cat5.
I forgot to get a shot of the wires as they connect to the motherboard on the computer I’m using for the arcade, I’ll add that later. I ran the cable up to where the speaker panel is and connected the wires to the corresponding color pairs that I used at the motherboard end. The LEDs are mounted on the speaker panel by just drilling a small hole and pushing the LEDs into the hole. I’ll get a better shot of the front of the speaker panel later so you can see what I’m talking about.
What you see here is the back of the speaker panel.

One thing I found with the speaker grill is that since my speakers aren’t mounted right up against the speaker panel I was able to see through the speaker grill into the upper area of the cabinet.  I took care of this by cutting circles out of a black t-shirt that were slightly smaller than the diameter of the speaker grill.   This let’s the sound through and you can’t see anything behind the speaker grill now!

I still have the drawer, front door and a bunch of touch up painting to do yet.

Day 9 hours: 4 1/2
Next :: Goto Mame Arcade Cabinet – Day 10

Since it’s been to cold to work on the cabinet I thought I would work on a list to help keep track of what I need to do and give me a place for reminders for things I want to do. Hopefully we only have a few more weeks of Winter left and Spring will be upon us. Then I can get down to business!

Goto the main Mame Arcade Cabinet Project page.

To do:

• Route the edges with slot cutting router bit for T-Molding
• Second coat of primer paint
• Add adjustable lights to speaker panel
• Find a 27″ TV to replace monitor
• Get Marquee artwork printed professionally
• Paint the whole thing black
• Attach T-Molding
• Create stencils for side art
• Get coin door for front
• Get glass for front bezel
• Find somewhere to mount speaker volume control

Winter has frozen progress on the Mame cabinet. We’ve had a couple of ice storms and it’s been a cold wet Winter. My workshop (which is my garage) isn’t heated so I just haven’t brought myself to work on it.

I did manage to pick up this snazzy chair yesterday. It’s a bar stool with a funky red leather seat. The height is adjustable and I thought it fit the arcade perfectly!

Hopefully we can break out of this cold weather so I can get back to working on the cabinet. I’m still looking for a 27″ TV to put in it. I’ve ran across a couple of them, but their were either to big or didn’t have s-video inputs.

Next :: Goto Mame Arcade Cabinet – Day 9