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).
- View scan image – If I went with a dos batch file menu for a frontend.
- View scan image – First attempt at a control panel design
- View scan image – Marquee sketch
- View scan image – More preliminary drawings
- View scan image – Cutting layout
- View scan image – ISO drawing
- View scan image – Future thoughts
- View scan image – Wishful thinking
