All righty then. Who remembers going to the arcade halls back when the machines only cost 20c a go? Double Dragon, Street Fighter, Golden Axe, Snow Bros.... all the classics.

Well I've been messing around with MAME in recent months, and have built a setup which is portable, durable and pretty much fool proof.

As it turns out you can still buy brand new parts for arcade machines, and they're not even that expensive!

A local computer store in Brisbane Gamedude sells joysticks and buttons and all that stuff, as well as keyboard encoders to hook it up to a PC, which is really cool.

So, rather than build an arcade cabinet which is large and not very portable, I bought a bunch of buttons & a couple of joysticks, and mounted them into a pair of stable tables! I also added a couple of extra buttons mounted in the Player 1 table which allows for game swapping & shutting the PC down.

Each stable table has two cat5 network cables which run back to the keyboard encoder mounted in a dedicated MAME PC, which just runs a minimal install of Windows 98. The PC is pretty old and crap (you don't need much to run MAME), but has a basic 3d card in it with a tv out, and I've made a short 3.5mm to female RCA lead, so that all you need is an off-the-shelf RCA cable to run both video & audio into the AV input of any TV.

If you wanted to get hardcore portable you could possibly adapt this to suit a laptop or one of those barebones mini PC's.

Take a look, fire off any questions, and go build yourself one just like it! It's awesome fun.

I've been looking for a reasonably priced Twin Daytona USA arcade setup to have in my home. Love that game, cheapest I have found is 5k

Want it baaaaaaaaaaad!

My first job when I left school was with Goddards. I was a pinball tech, repaired pinnies, juke boxes video arcade games etc. I built some of the first batch of Space Invaders in the country. Galaga, Pac Man etc etc. I still have the original 45 that came with the Kiss pinball plus the T-Shirt. It's floating around somewhere.

Used to love it when I went in to arcades and the kids used to run up and call me the pinball wizard. I gave em heaps of free games..hehe.

So if you need one fixed, let me know. Happy to come around.

I've been looking for a reasonably priced Twin Daytona USA arcade setup to have in my home. Love that game, cheapest I have found is 5k

Want it baaaaaaaaaaad!

Hear you on that one!!!

Have come across a few also... but not cheap...

And most not in to good nick anymore....Such a shame...

When I have a mortgage that isn't stupidly ridiculous, I want to set up a hardcore games room, with all the old-school faves. Just need to knock another $400k off the loan and I'll be ready to roll!

Nice. Im thinking of buiding this sort of setup into my T carputer system. Where do you get your ROMS?

Nice. Im thinking of buiding this sort of setup into my T carputer system. Where do you get your ROMS?

From the local ROM-Grocer, of course.

My absolute all time favourite is Snow Bros, which you can get from here..

Enjoy!

Its a bloody great set up but....

How come you didn't put an extra three buttons???

You need six buttons for Street Fighter & Mortal Combat!!!

Regards

TUFXRT6

very cool man, good job!

get some pics up of you and yer mates in action!!

Its a bloody great set up but....

How come you didn't put an extra three buttons???

You need six buttons for Street Fighter & Mortal Combat!!!

Regards

TUFXRT6

Simple really... I S.U.C.K. at street fighter & mortal kombat.

...but I could easily add another three buttons, that's the beauty of it.

2 cat 5 cables, each with 8 wires.

A joystick takes 4 wires, one wire per button after that and one for an earth, so I could expand up to another 4 buttons on the Player 1 table & 6 on player 2.

Out of interest, it cost me around $150 to build both tables ($69 just for the kb encoder), and I already had the PC kicking around gathering dust.