Arcade Cabinet v1.0

Okay, so I posted a while back that I had a PICADE that I had built and I was very happy with, although it wasn't the same playing XEVIOUS on it as it was the original arcade machine.

Well.....some time went by....I bought an arcade cabinet - well, I bought just the pre-cut wood (it took a while to be delivered but I got it in the end).  It also did not come with any fittings, fixtures or instructions, apparently this was so I could "customise" it as I wanted.... hmmmm.... as you'll see this meant having to layout the pieces of wood and attempt to figure out what went where and use masking tape to hold it together as I figured it out.  It stayed in this format in the middle of the lounge for a few weeks :-)

Then I went to B&Q and finally got some screws (wrong size, so had to get more), got some space blocker thingies that you use in the kitchen cupboards and some other bits & bobs.

All put together and up-right, it looked HUGE from this angle!

I also had to purchase the buttons and joysticks that plug into a USB controller to plug into a Raspberry Pi.

Yes, I opted for a Raspberry Pi 4 setup running RetroPie.  Now, this did also delay things a bit as the price of an RPi4 previously was about £54 (for the 4GB version), due to the "shortage" they were now selling on Amazon/eBay for around £270!!!! F----that!

I was willing to wait until the prices dropped.......and then I was sitting in my home office, working away - probably on a webex conf. call, when I looked at the Freenove robot-cat/dog that I had previously built and then my eyes lit up, I had put an RPI4 inside of it!!!! oh yes!  It doesn't "need" an RPi4, it can run perfectly well on an RPi3...so out it came and into the cabinet it was going to go!

However, another little blocker... as the RPi4 was being used in a robot, I didn't need any accessories, like PSUs, odd HDMI convertor thingies, so I had to order those.

I fitted the buttons and joysticks into the cabinet, I fitted a nifty 60cm brass hinge for flipping that piece of wood over if I needed access.  I also fitted some nifty "whatever-they-are-called" brass fitting thingies that allowed me to rest the wood at an angle and lock into place - very sturdy it is indeed! genius idea for about £3.50!

In the meantime, I was umming and arring about what monitor to use/get.  I purchased an AOC 22" monitor, which, when it arrived I placed into the "space" and thought to myself, "nope - that's way too small".

I measured the gap, it's 600mm (60cm).  I looked at the specs for the 24" and it said 53.5cm, close enough I thought, so I ordered that one as well... it arrived...and well... it's "O...K.....", I could probably have gotten the 27" monitor and it would have fitted snuggly edge to edge, but that monitor on it's own was £250 and I'd just spent that on 2 monitors already!

I ordered some chrome trim, as you can see it fits okay, just need to finish it off... I also ordered some speakers too - however the HDMI monitor does actually have decent sound, I'll still connect them up just for the bass/boom-ness.  I also have some LED strip lighting to put into the top area for when I decide what marquee thingy I want to put into place.

All in all, it was a nice journey, setting up the RPi4 with RetroPie was simple, I even set it up to use the NAS drive that contains the 10,000+ ROMs so I didn't have to manually copy them all to the 256GB SD Card I have in the RPi4 (yes, it's only using 2GB now...what a waste, but maybe I'll copy it all over later?).  It also means that all the save games/high scores are also saved to the NAS. yay!

I have one last thing to do and that is to make the monitor surround fitting (and screw the monitor onto the shelf to stop it from moving!) and then find the right external decals and possibly to fit a front coin insert slot door.... although I did make a rear access flap, I now realise that was a bit silly as the back of the arcade cabinet will always be against a wall, so a bit daft, however, if I now use the flip up joystick/button piece of wood and the coin insert slot door as front access I can put the PS4, XBox 360 and whatever else I want inside the cabinet as it has ooodles of room! As they both connect to HDMI it'll be fine.  Oh, did I mention the AOC 24" monitor does 75MHz and is AWESOME! wow, it was 60MHz by default and it was 'O....K....', but after switching it went full edge-to-edge and the colours just brightened up really well.  very happy with the monitor.

First game I loaded was XEVIOUS and I actually got further in that first game than I have EVER gotten since I was about 14years old!  I got to the end of level 1, killed the end of level mothership and got to half way through the 2nd level.... oh yes, this was worth all the effort.  Then naturally, along came Mr.Do! and the others.

What now?  well, with not just Arcade ROMs, but all the "other" console ROMs on the NAS drive, I think I'll be a little busy just "trying out" games, ranging from 1979 up until very recently.  Oh, and yes, the RPi4 4GB is more than enough for the PS1/2 games and any S/NES games also - absolutely no lagging.

As this is now in a prominent location in the lounge, I plan to use it pretty much every day after I drive home, spend 20-30 mins either doing something challenging or just killing / shooting / kicking some pixels... and then feel refreshed enough to make some dinner and not fall asleep watching YouTube videos by 8:30pm!  If I feel drowzy, I'll go load up a 10-pin bowling game or Golden Axe and wake those brain cells up.

Oh and yes, it does play DOOM! from many different platforms too.....

  ....now I just need to build the "man cave / shed" at the end of the garden and get a real Pool table :-)