Introduction & Cabinet Origins
Components
Control Panel
You can build your own control panel using joysticks and pushbuttons from Happ Controls. The Competitions and Supers seem to be the most popular 8-way joysticks. Likewise, the Happ pushbuttons with horizontal microswitches are popular pushbuttons. A Hagstrom or an I-PAC programmable keyboard encoder are popular ways to interface these controls to your PC.
The HotRod™,
SlikStik, and X-Arcade™
are some standalone arcade control panels that interface to your
PC. I used the parts from a Hanaho HotRod™ on my cabinet's
new control panel; it came with Happ Super Joysticks, Happ
Pushbuttons with horizontal microswitches, and Hanaho's own keyboard
encoder.
The HotRod™ also included the following game ROMS: 1941, Block Block, Commando, Exed Exes, Ghouls'n Ghosts, Magic Sword, Mercs, Sections Z, Side Arms, Son Son, Street Fighter Hyper Fighting, Strider, U. N. Squadron, and Varth.
In addition to the HotRod™ controls, I added a custom 4-Way Super Joystick to my control panel. Reversing the actuator on my Happ Super only made the diagonals less sensitive. To create a true 4-way joystick, I combined a Super and 4-Way Tulip Joystick. [more info]
Tip: If you like the look of the Happ Super Joysticks, but prefer the operation of the Happ Competitions, it's possible to use the Super's knob, shaft, and sleeves on Competition Joysticks.
To complete my control panel, two buttons were installed on each side of my cab. In MAME, they are used to pause games, escape, and add coins for each player (they are also wired to the coin door). In Windows®, they are used for pinball games (flippers and nudges).
Monitor
I wanted to be able to run Windows® games (VGA or better resolution) as well as emulate arcade games. Also, I didn't want to hassle with cable hacks, isolation transformers, capacitor kits... Finally, due to a relatively steep angle, mounting a standard PC monitor in my cabinet would have been difficult.
The
Wells-Gardner® D9100
18" XGA Digital Display Monitor was my choice (a 19" version wasn't available). The Happ
19" black plastic bezel completely covers the monitor's
edges. Some of the black area around the outer portion of the
screen still shows, but it you can hardly notice it.
The D9100 18" monitor has a 0.26mm dot pitch, up to 1280 X 1024 resolution, a standard power cord (no isolation transformer), a VGA cable (no cable hack), a remote panel for the controls, and it is easily shelf mounted. Wells-Gardner® offers a full line of arcade monitors.
Warning: Use extreme care when handling exposed monitors (do not attempt to handle a CRT with exposed parts unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing). In addition, if your cabinet has an exposed monitor, please be certain that it's properly locked and not accessible to anyone else.
Computer
My PC was built to run Windows® based games. I'm running a 1.4GHz AMD ATHLON XP CPU, 256MB memory, Geforce2 64MB video card, and motherboard with integrated audio (amplified with the guts from a PC speaker system). Note: For a dedicated MAME machine, I'd recommend a different video card.
MAME
I'm using Windows® 98 SE. However, due to some limitations from my video card and keyboard encoder, I'm currently using MAME v0.37b16 (DOS version) and ArcadeOS v2.47 as my front end.
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