Ever since I was a kid, I wanted my own arcade machine. Arcades now are struggling, and you can pick up a decent cabinet for peanuts.

This is my machine, it's a generic machine which wasn't working when I bought it. It cost me £50. I ripped out what was left inside, replaced the monitor and installed a PC running MAME.

It operates exactly like a real machine, you even have to put coins in to get a credit! The only difference is you can change the game to whatever you want.

The hardest bit is finding a cabinet in decent nick. Arcades are really struggling at the moment so coming by an old machine isn't really hard. You can check Ebay but often all you find is hugely inflated prices for generic cabinets.

Original machines are sought after by collectors, so you're best bet is to find a generic jamma cabinet. Or even one that's not working, as you can rip the insides out and replace them with a PC.

The first job was to sort out the monitor. Arcade monitors run at 60hz (NTSC) so are not usually compatable with PC's. However you can get mame versions which output the correct signal that the monitor can understand.

I grabbed a copy of this Mame of the net and after some playing around, couldn't get it to display an image at all. So I had to ditch the arcade monitor and replace it with a PC monitor. I picked up a second hand 19" monitor and installed it on a wooden shelf in the machine.

Next step was to get the controls working. When working on the first machine I owned, I hacked a PC keyboard and wired this to the micro-switches on the machine. An easier way is to get hold of an IPAC. It's a programmable circuit board which basically interfaces your PC to your switches. Once this is done, you can reconfigure which keys the buttons press via a software update. So it will work on any game or emulator!

This photo is of the coin mechanism. When you insert a coin, it drops through a metal slot which checks the weight and size of the coin. If it is not right, it is routed to the coin return. If it passes the checks, it drops past a micro-switch and into the coin box. I wired the switch up to the IPAC. You can see the wires coming off it in the photo.

Bingo! One working arcade machine - but with the added advantage of having almost every arcade game ever made installed! Result.

 

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