MAME Machine
For me, programming is a pretty intense mental exercise. I keep myself sane by taking a cognitive break a few times a day. Luckily, when I worked at Griptonite Games during the summer of 2003 I had a selection of arcade games to play during these breaks. My game of choice that summer was definitely the wonderful old Midway space shooter, Omega Race.
Naturally, after working full-time a short while at my current employer, Polimetrix, I began to miss this important part of my day. My search for Omega Race arcade machines turned up a couple of results, but the machines were expensive and shipping proved to be even more expensive. Jamie and I decided that it would be cheaper (and more fun) to build our own arcade cabinet and equip it with one of our old computers running a whole slew of games on MAME. This project page will chronicle the construction of this beautiful piece of classic gaming furniture.
Parts Have Arrived
The initial supply of parts have arrived in the form of a Christmas gift from my loving parents. Naturally I'm starting with the fun stuff: the arcade controls. All controls were ordered from Ultimarc. Here is the parts list:
- 1 Red Mag-Stik Plus Joystick
- 1 Blue Mag-Stik Plus Joystick
- 6 Red Pushbuttons
- 6 Blue Pushbuttons
- 2 Green Pushbuttons
- 2 Start Buttons (Players 1 and 2)
- 1 Orange Pushbutton
- 1 I-PAC2 Interface w/USB Cable
- 1 Wiring Kit
All my new parts spread out on the table. I have already begun the wiring.
The red and blue pushbuttons belong to their respective joysticks. The green buttons are the coin buttons. I don't really have a clear purpose for the orange button yet, but I have a feeling it will come in handy.
Attach the Switches
The first thing I had to do was attach the switches to the pushbuttons. This has already been done in the picture above. The switches are the small beige units on the bottom of every button. The joysticks came with the switches already attached.
I chose the Mag-Stik Plus joysticks mainly for the ability to switch them from 4-way to 8-way from above the control board (using the joystick itself instead of the switch on the bottom). The bottom of the joystick bumps the 4 surrounding switches when the joystick is moved.
Wire the Grounds
The first thing to be wired are the ground connections. Since the I-PAC interface (more on this later) only has 2 ground connections, the ground connectors on all the switches need to be daisy-chained together.
Note how the buttons and the switches on the joystick have their ground connectors daisy-chained. Eventually all of the components will be connected in this way.
