Working on the WOW effect

I have finished installing Mame Plus! and Mala and also placed a few ROM images to test with.

I would like to show some of the tweaks I did for the table. These tweaks were done earlier before even starting the painting process of the table.

USB ports
The Arcade table is a computer as you all know, and I will probably want to change the games that it provides, for example remove games that we don't play and add new ones. To do this, I will need to transfer the games to the hard-drive. The USB ports are the most elegant way to transfer data, but opening the table and connecting one from the inside is not that comfortable.

I bought from eBay 5 USB ports that can be placed in a cabinet. They are connectors that have a round body with a square face and have a female USB A socket on one end and a female USB B socket on the other.

You may find this on the net by searching for the keyword NAUSB.

I placed two USB ports in the table and connected them to the mother board.

Power plug
To make the table much more comfortable and give it more WAFE, I took a power socket filter from an old network switch and used it in the table. This way I can unplug the cable, and the table won't have any noticeable sockets and cables.

Following is the bottom of the table:

On the left you can see the two USB sockets and of the right, the power filter socket.

Following is a top opened view of the table:

Notice that I connected a 25-pin female plug to the I-PAC on each side for each joystick panel. This allowed me to build the table and connect the parts easily, and also will probably come in handy when something breaks and require fixing.

I'm planning on finishing the software part this week. My wife is exited about the table, and to make her even happier I will probably install the classic PAC-MAN for her. She loves PAC-MAN. She used to be very good at it.

What I still need to complete:

1. Configure the I-PAC (or software) for the EXIT game button to function
2. Make the MALA interface look nice and pretty ;)
3. Tweak the windows to load without any noticeable messages to make the table look authentic.