The End is Near!

Over the weekend I made a ton of progress on the cabinet. I got the control panel built and wired. Man, that was quite an ordeal. I will get a shot of the wiring soon. But here is the control panel:

One of the toughest parts about building a MAME cabinet is designing the control panel. It has to accommodate the many different controls of many different games. I made a list of the 20-30 games that I would play the most, and designed mine around them. I don't have a rollerball, to accommodate Missile Command, or Centipede... they run about $125. A bit pricey and I was never that good at those games in the first place. I didn't put in a spinner to play Tempest, or Arkanoid. I enjoy tempest but not enough to invest the $45 for the spinner. Unfortunately that means no Tron as well, I can live with that for now.

The panel consists of (from left to right) an 8-way joystick, 2 game buttons, a Player 1 Button (Awesome, I was so happy to have found these), a 4 way joystick, 2 game buttons, a Player 2 button (double awesome), and another 8 way stick. The 4 way wasn't really necessary, but playing traditional 4 way stick games on an 8 way stick, just doesn't feel the same. So I threw it in there. And I had to have 2 8-ways to play Robotron, and Smash TV, and allow for some 2 player games.

Here is what it looks like as of this morning:

This week will consist of getting the computer loaded and configured... but my time machine to 1984 is almost complete.