This is the quick and dirty of my cabinet construction. I will try to improve the page when I have more time.

The first of many trips to Home Depot for supplies

Time to prepare my workspace

I used a modified set of Lusid's Plans. Basically I took those plans and reorganized them so that it wouldn't waste as much wood. You can find jpg's of what I did here here and here. In the first picture I made some changes as I was cutting. The 2 sides for the control panel box got cut from the scrap pieces left over from the angled back. I also cut them a little bigger. The original plans are designed so that the control panel box goes together so that when you look at the side you see the ends of the front back and bottom with the side piece fitted in between them. I made the sides larger so they covered all the ends.

I also didn't use the bottom pieces. This was mainly because I hadn't cut them and started putting the cabinet together before I knew what the hell they were for. Turned out for the best anyway because I wanted to put the cabinet on castor's anyway. However if you decide to do that you'll need to trim a couple inches off the bottom of your side panels etc. I didn't and my cabinet sits a little higher then it should. Not a big deal. It's an easy fix.

The most important tool in my garage.

Laying out the stuff I need. I got the I-Pac from Ultimarc and got the buttons and Joysticks from Bob Roberts.

It's hard to see but I have marked up my wood and am almost ready to cut.

One cut lot's more to go.

Creating a fine mess.

I'm trying to test fit some templates. I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the layout but trying to get it somewhat symmetrical was the goal.

I started putting the cabinet together. This is where I made my first mistake. See how the bottom is even with the bottom of the sides. Apparently it's not supposed to be that way according to Lusid's plans.

I started to put my control panel box together.

Man it's really beginning to look like I know what the hell I'm doing doesn't it.

More layout and my precision hole marker.

Got it all drilled(1 1/8th bit in case you didn't know).

Time to test fit the buttons. Here you can also see how I put it together. I didn't want screw holes on the outside so I bought some 1 inch wide 3/4inch thick strapping and cut it to fit. I then used 1 1/4 screws from the inside to hold it together. I also used wood glue. On the back I didn't care but I wanted the side to be unblemished.

That iron on the floor is for the iron on birch veneer that I put on instead of black t-moulding. My main panels were 1/2inch birch veneered plywood and the iron on stuff was 3/4's so there was some trimming to do but I couldn't find 1/2inch.

Time to start staining. This was a pain in the ass because it took so much time between coats. The color is Fruitwood.

More coats...

It has now been stained and polyurathaned. 3 coats of each with light sanding with 220 grit sand paper. The 1/3 sheet sander I had was probably the most important tool I had. It worked well to make the cabinet look good and to fix up little errors I had made.

Time to move the cabinet inside for the finishing work.

The most important tool in my basement.

Here the wiring started. I found good wire and quick disconnects at Canadian Tire. I don't remember the size of the disconnects but the fit perfectly on the microswitches which is a plus because I can't solder worth shit.

I had the 1-player stuff hooked up so I figured I would test it out to make sure it worked before continuing on. I had a little trouble initially getting the i-pac controller to recognize in Win98 but after updating my motherboards USB 2.0 drivers and uninstalling the unknown USB device(i-pac) and plugging it back in it detected and installed fine. The monitor shelf looks a little saggy so I beefed it up with some scrap wood to give it some more support.

Time to install the speakers. They are just some cheap computer speakers. I took the back cover off and mounted them through the board. Incidentally the board that the speakers are mounted on is the board that I mentioned in my plans. I'm not to sure how you accomplish this with Lusid's pans but I have already proved I'm an idiot so what do I know.

Once again it almost looks like I know what I'm doing.

Here I have tried to put in a Marquee. It's still not right. For a light I went with some of those Christmas rope lights. It was cheaper then a small fluorescent and has a life of 25,000 hours. I coiled it up and mounted it to a scrap board with twist-ties. Originally I had tried taking on of the game marquees(Joust) and printing it out on transparencies. I printed it on 3 of them. Well it looked like shit. It let way too much light through and the lines were completely visible plus the detail wasn't great. So then I grabbed some stuff from Oscar Controls and printed it out at work on a designjet 500. It's not too bad but not perfect. I have a lot of light that bleeds around the edges. If I could trim it out it would be good. So it's a work in progress still. It looks ok when the marquee light is off so that's how it will be till I figure out something better.

Leaning up against the cabinet you can see the piece of plexi that was to be my monitor bezel until the bastard decided to crack.

So there it sits for now. I finally fixed my bezel and have secured my control panel down(velcro). I have also removed the castors because it wasn't as steady as I would like. And I still haven't decided what to do with the door. I don't know if I should put hinges on or just velcro it in place. You may also notice a whole in the back of the cabinet. I have a piece for there but haven't put it on because that opening was handy while putting it together.

I had bought a couple of other buttons to put on the side as pinball buttons but haven't installed them yet. When I designed the control panel layout I tried to leave enough room in the middle that I will be able to put a track ball in there down the road.

The computer is a Celeron 1.7 with 256mb's of ram. 40GBHD and a Radeon 7000 64mb video card. I had the case and motherboard and powersupply and stuff so I just bought what I needed to get that going. I got my mame roms on DVD from Free Mame Roms. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Haps13@yahoo.com