Ignacio Sánchez Ginés

And there let be buttons…

Like I already said in my previous post, I ordered all the buttons, joysticks and electronics at Ultimarc.

The buttons and joysticks are controlled by an IPAC interface, that we can connect to a PS/2 or USB port of our motherboard:

I am going to use some spare parts I have from my old desktop PC to build the CPU.

This is the motherboard (MSI K8N Diamond Plus), with RAM (2GB Crucial Ballistix) and processor (AMD X2 4200) already mounted:

The hard disk drive. Segate Barracuda, 320 GB for loads of ROMs!!

The video card. I think this NVIDIA Geforce 7900GT is enough for my purposes:

Some wires and connectors to setup the IPAC and the buttons:

The joysticks. I have chosen the E-Stick model because it’s easier to mount:

This little thing is the switch itself. It is mounted in the base of every button. We use the connectors shown below to plug it to the IPAC:

I am pretty sure you know what are this buttons for…

Well, now begins the hard part: designing and building the cabinet itself from wood panels…

One of my current projects consists in building and old arcade cabinet entirely from scratch.

This would be a long process. I am planning to buy wood panels and cut them off to form the cabinet based on the blueprints I am finishing off.

I have the controls already ordered at Ultimarc, and I am currently preparing the computer I’m going to bundle inside the cabinet.

I have also a 21” CRT TV happily waiting to be dismantled and connected to the cabinet

For running roms I’m using Mame, of course, apart of some other good emulators for Sega and Nintendo game consoles.

Paired with Mame I’m using Mamewah, which is a Mame front-end that let you browse your rom list with the arcade controls, rather than with a keyboard and a mouse. It let you use other emulators as well, so we can select any rom, from any emulator we have installed, without leaving Mamewah.

In the following posts I will be explaining each step of the construction of the cabinet.

Wish me luck