Missing something?

This is what I have collected and bought so far:

1. 4 Joysticks
2. 4 player start button
3. 24 push-buttons in 6 different colors
4. I-PAC4
5. Used 17" 4:3 LCD screen
6. ATX Power-supply
7. SATA to Compact Flash adapter
8. 8GB Compact Flash card
9. Motherboard with Intel Atom
10. 1GB DDR2 Ram
11. Crimps
12. Crimp tool
13. Wires

Seems allot? I missed something, I'll tell you about it later in the post.

The 4 joysticks I bought were colored Blue, Red, Yellow and green. I wanted to build an arcade cabinet for 4 players. Yes I talked to my wife but I didn't tell her how big the machine will be - fatal mistake, this was after I bought the 4 joysticks. Oh well, at least I got enough push-buttons and joysticks for another table ;).

The push-buttons are in 6 colors, White, Green, Yellow, Red, Orange and Blue. I wanted to have a 6 button configuration for each player.

I also bought an I-PAC4.

The push-buttons and I-PAC were bought from Ultimarc. The Joysticks were bought from SUZO-HAPP.

God bless the wide screen age. Looking for a used 17" LCD 4:3 screen was easy enough, and I even found one who's seller is an Electronics guy who fixes Electronic devices for a living, so he gave me the LCD screen for less than 53$ with 3 month warranty.

The power supply is a simple ATX power supply, nothing special here.

Notice that the LCD screen came with an external power supply.

For a hard drive for the machine, I decide to go with a Solid State device. Solid State devices are rather pricey, so I decided to go with a Compact Flash card with a SATA adapter. The Compact Flash is a fast Card is comparison to other forms of flash memory. The SATA adapter was bought from DealExtreme for 9.22$ and the Compact Flash card was bought here in Israel in a local shop for less than 40$.

The motherboard was also bought from a local store. I chose to go with something that will run the Arcade games and not cost too much. I chose to go with a dual core Intel Atom with no special requirement for the graphic card. The graphic card does not provide any added benefit for games running under MAME. The motherboard I chose was ASUS AT5NM10-I. One of the benefits of ASUS motherboards is the "MyLogo" feature which allows the user to customize the bios boot screen. This will come in handy for making and authentic Arcade machine.

Finally, I need wires, crimps etc... to connect all these components somehow together.

These were bought from a local store.

A word on the Software I will be using: After searching the web for many hours, I decide to go with MicroXP. This is a stripped down Windows XP with many features gone from it. I did my initial testing for this OS on a Virtual Machine and it proved itself well.

I later tested it on the hardware I bough and it worked just great. It's fast light and FREE!

Remember I told you I missed something? :) well, I missed a few push-buttons.

I need the following:

1. Adding Credits push-button
2. Power-On push-button (Illuminated would be nice)
3. Exit game push-button

I will probably order them from Ultimarc, but the cost of shipping is rather high. If I don't come up with a good idea, I'll have to settle with the fee :(.

What I...

You may download the current sketchup from here.

Note that the table is not complete and will most likely change

What I do like:
The idea that I will have a table with no visual buttons or joysticks. The table is rather compact and will fit anywhere in the house.
The table is designed for two players one on each side of the table. The idea is to configure the arcade games in coocktail mode.

What I dislike:
The size of the cabinet that will hold all the parts of the arcade is rather big, it's height is 25cm which is half of the table's height. I wish I could make it less, but I don't see how.
The table will probably be heavy, which is a little problem when we want to move it for the kids, especially for my wife, I know she will complain about it.

What I don't know:
I will need some massive wiring in the cabinet, and I need to make sure they won't interfere with the air flow.
I need to find a way to build the table with the ability to open and modify anything inside without having to remove screws.

What I really don't know:
Will someone ever read this blog? Will it help someone? Will it inspire someone to do this venture? I'm not sure, but I know I'm having fun documenting and building this arcade table.

Easy part/Hard part

I have started this blog with a little delay, I already have almost all of the components I require to build this venture. I started ordering the equipment at the 31st of the July.

The items and tools I need are the easy part. The hard part here is to build a table that will pass the approval of my wife. The idea was to replace a table that already exists in the house used as a small coffee table and also as the kid's table for drawing and eating (yes the table has to have a basic "waterproof" ability, otherwise, well you know :)).

I will upload picture of all of the components parts to the blog, hopefully today.

The easy way to go would be to buy a small net-book or something similar to the Zotac MAG HD-ND01 and add to it an LCD screen and your almost done without too much to spend, but where is the fun in that? :).

So I started buying what I need and I will place another post that will list them and have pictures as well. I know that I need to fit everything in something similar to what I have today in my home - a 55cm x 55cm square table with a height of 45cm. The table was bought from IKEA.
To start, I need to make sure I have the correct design of the table, so I downloaded Google Sketchup and started designing the table. I created boxes that represent each component I want to fit in the box and started juggling them around. It was not easy, but I got everything good and packed until I measured the Joystick that I bought and it turns out it's 15cm in height (bottom including micro-switches to the top of the joystick). This caused the table to get modified and, well, it's fine but I'm still not satisfied and need to think it over and see what I can improve.

I'll add the Google sketchup as well for referance. The sketchup is not complete, and I will update it as frequently as possible.

Crazy Idea

Well, a long story short, I love Arcades and I decided to build an arcade machine that will add so much fun to my wife and kids.

The idea started about three years ago when I decided to join a new development group that was building a new product in my company. We had to come up with a theme for our project name for this product. The first project name should be alphabetical and start with A for the first project and then continue to B for the next version so on.

I gave my idea of an Arcade game name theme and the idea got accepted! Later on we decide to name the first project Arkanoid and we even bought an Arkanoid Arcade Machine from eBay for 300$ and we placed it in the hall near out group.

And then the fun began, I searched the Internet but did nothing. Until the next project came and we decided to give a name to the project. I was chosen to provide a name and this time I decided to not wait anymore and create an Arcade Machine.