Welcome to my Mame Cabinet webpage. I am in the initial stages of designing the page so things will look a little rough at first. I will have more details on building the machine very soon. Please click on the links below and hopefully they will take you somewhere . BEFORE and AFTER shots: (takes a while for these to load) 1 2 Early Years: I was a teenager in the early to mid 80’s when the big video game crazy hit so of course I spent all my quarters at the local arcade as well as spending hours and hours sitting in front of the TV playing on my Atari 2600 and 5200. When I moved to South Carolina in 1986 I got a job at Bally’s Aladins Castle (that was a big arcade chain for those of you who have never heard of it). What a dream job! Not only did I get to play all the games I wanted but I actually got to do a little work on them and play with the settings, etc. Five years later I found myself starting a computer bulletin board which eventually became one of the first internet services in the southeast. After selling the internet service in 1999 I found myself with lots of free time. Yes, I was working a full time job at a chemical company but I was used to working around 100 hours a week when I owned my business. I discovered MAME in July ‘99 when I was doing a search on the web for Robotron. I couldn’t believe it! Here was a way I could play all of the games that I had enjoyed so much when I was younger. I started reading everything I could on the web about Mame and even found a few sites by some really crazy guys who spent big money building arcade cabinets to hold their computers. Little did I know I was about to fall head first into the same trap. Beginning to build the thing: I purchase a PowerRamp Joystick to use on my computer but I couldn’t play Robotron (which requires two joysticks) with it so I ended up buying a second one. I figured I could just hook the two together but later I found something called a Hotrod Joystick which uses real arcade buttons and joysticks. Only $230, what a bargain (now all I have to do is convince my wife). She didn’t like it too much but I finally got one. That still didn’t satisfy the craving for a real machine so after 6 months of looking (there was absolutely nothing in the Charleston area) I found a machine that would be perfect for my project in Raleigh, NC (a 5 hour trip). It was a jamma cabinet (an old X-Men 4-player with a 25" monitor that had been converted to a 2-player Street Fighter). The seller pulled the SFighter PCB, marquee, etc and sold it to me for $250 (not bad for a big monitor and a good story). Oh, you want the good story – I got to Raleigh and started looking for the guy’s warehouse. When I pulled into his parking lot the first thing I saw was a pacman machine sitting outside. It was covered with snow and sitting in about 3 inches of water and mud. I wish I had my camera with me – there were probably 30 good old machines sitting there in the weather (rain, snow, sun, mud, etc). I couldn’t believe he was just letting these things sit out like that. If I had a big truck I would have loaded all of them up and saved them. I purchased an old X-Men 4-player with a 25" monitor that had been converted to a 2-player Street Fighter for $250 (the seller pulled the Street Fighter PCB, marquee, etc before I took it home): 1 Here’s what I found when I pulled the "skin" off the control panel: 3 It was pretty trashed! I started pulling the guts out (all boards, wires, coin doors, etc) until I had an empty shell (with the exception of the monitor and the fluorescent light fixture and their wires and switches). Next I started stripping off all the old paint: 4 I then sanded the sides and did all necessary repairs (there were a lot of rough edges, missing wood on the corners, etc). I also had to fill in the two holes left when I removed the coin doors): 5 After prepping the cabinet I coated it with contact cement and glued sheets of black formica to the sides, front, and speaker panel (I used a router to cut the edges to fit): 6 The control panel was just a 4 sided box with a bottom and top. The top was hinged so that the arcade could get to the joysticks, etc: 7 8 The bottom of my first panel 9 I use a Hagstrom KE-72 to interface the control panel to the computer. Here is my config file (joystick.cfg). The computer consists of: o Asus P3B-F Motherboard * Intel Pentium II – 400 o 64 meg ram * Western Digital 6400 meg drive o Hitachi CDR-7930 cd rom drive * ISA network card And runs this software: o MS-Dos 6.2 * ArcadeOS 2.35 * Mame 3.6 final with about 2000 roms (games) I’ve hacked the mame for: * Pentium II speed enhancements o No more startup screens * No more error messages o Ability to play the banned Neo Geo roms This is a list of the stuff I have purchased to build the MAME machine. Some of this stuff was not used so I will have to take it off the list (just haven’t gotten around to it yet). This is by no means the "REAL" cost of building the machine. I did a lot of crazy stuff like spending $300 on a drill press to cut the holes for the buttons/joysticks, spending $300 on a router and bits to trim the formica, etc but there is really no way I could account for these extra costs in the list. $55.98 2 PowerRamp Joystick $234.90 1 Hotrod Joystick $140.00 1 New motherboard $70.00 1 New soundcard $20.00 1 Combo Mouse Wal-Mart $9.55 3 Jamma Fingerboards $22.00 1 Fingerboard and Wire harness $84.57 1 Hagstrom JP24 $13.64 1 Large delux enclosure $8.36 4 12 position barrier strip $125.00 1 Hagstrom KE72 $6.00 1 6 pin DIN connector (keyboard) $250.00 1 "Jamma Cabinet with 25"" monitor" $21.00 3 PS Fan $10.00 2 DB25 Male / Female $63.59 1 ATI Expert 98 $3.38 1 18 inch fluorescent lightbulb $10.54 1 3/4 inch birch 2foot by 4 foot $2.76 2 Fluorescent light starter $4.17 1 18 inch fluorescent lightbulb $86.33 2 4x8 formica $3.38 1 hinge $32.78 1 plexiglass $8.46 100 female .187 quick disconnects $18.44 12 black horizontal push button $11.13 30 feet of 3/4 inch leather texture t-molding $3.29 2 white 1 player and 2 player buttons $50.67 4 super 8 joystick $3.07 2 white push buttons $5.55 1 1/16 router bit $15.05 1 25 degree laminate trim router bit $15.10 1 router guide $7.41 1 bondo $5.91 1 paint scraper and blades $6.35 1 contact glue $6.26 1 pictures $3.15 1 black paint $4.16 1 pictures $5.00 1 scrap formica $10.81 1 24x48 duraplex $2.92 1 pictures $1,460.66 Total cost so far

This is a list of the stuff I have purchased to build the MAME machine. Some of this stuff was not used so I will have to take it off the list (just haven’t gotten around to it yet). This is by no means the "REAL" cost of building the machine. I did a lot of crazy stuff like spending $300 on a drill press to cut the holes for the buttons/joysticks, spending $300 on a router and bits to trim the formica, etc but there is really no way I could account for these extra costs in the list.

 

$55.98 2 PowerRamp Joystick

$234.90 1 Hotrod Joystick

$140.00 1 New motherboard

$70.00 1 New soundcard

$20.00 1 Combo Mouse Wal-Mart

$9.55 3 Jamma Fingerboards

$22.00 1 Fingerboard and Wire harness

$84.57 1 Hagstrom JP24

$13.64 1 Large delux enclosure

$8.36 4 12 position barrier strip

$125.00 1 Hagstrom KE72

$6.00 1 6 pin DIN connector (keyboard)

$250.00 1 "Jamma Cabinet with 25"" monitor"

$21.00 3 PS Fan

$10.00 2 DB25 Male / Female

$63.59 1 ATI Expert 98

$3.38 1 18 inch fluorescent lightbulb

$10.54 1 3/4 inch birch 2foot by 4 foot

$2.76 2 Fluorescent light starter

$4.17 1 18 inch fluorescent lightbulb

$86.33 2 4x8 formica

$3.38 1 hinge

$32.78 1 plexiglass

$8.46 100 female .187 quick disconnects

$18.44 12 black horizontal push button

$11.13 30 feet of 3/4 inch leather texture t-molding

$3.29 2 white 1 player and 2 player buttons

$50.67 4 super 8 joystick

$3.07 2 white push buttons

$5.55 1 1/16 router bit

$15.05 1 25 degree laminate trim router bit

$15.10 1 router guide

$7.41 1 bondo

$5.91 1 paint scraper and blades

$6.35 1 contact glue

$6.26 1 pictures

$3.15 1 black paint

$4.16 1 pictures

$5.00 1 scrap formica

$10.81 1 24x48 duraplex

$2.92 1 pictures

 

$1,460.66 Total cost so far

For the past two years I had been thinking about building a shallow well so I could water my grass without having to pay a higher water bill. After finding a 15% off coupon in the Harbor Freight ad I decided to get started. It took around 15 hours of work to complete and cost around $200 for the project. It would have cost less than $200 if I knew in advance which pipe and fittings I would be using. I had quite a bit of waste. I found very little info on the web on how to build a shallow well so I vowed to take some pictures and post the details on my Miata website. I hope this helps a few people.


I wanted to put the well close to my back deck where I could use the outdoor electrical socket for my power:



I would "hide" it in between the deck and the AC unit. Perhaps I'll build a wall or something to eventually hide everything:



Here is the pump I used. It is a 1 HP shallow well pump (Harbor Freight #47906). The pump is $139.99 (pretty inexpensive as far as pumps go) in the store but I had them price match it to the $69.99 on their website and then used my 15% off coupon:



I used water pressure to dig through the earth. Here is a rig I used to supply water to my 3" pipe. I later added a Y-fitting (the normal type you find in Wal-mart to connect two hoses to the spigot on your house) and a second hose for more water flow:



I cut teeth in the bottom of my 3" pipe to help dig through the ground. I used my 3 year old $15 Harbor Freight 4" angle grinder to do this. It gave it's life for the project though. When it quit half way through the project I switched to my pneumatic cutoff wheel.



I couldn't figure out an easy way to turn the pipe while I was drilling into the ground. Most of the time I used two bar clamps as handles. They had a hard time gripping the wet pvc pipe and caused a lot of headaches. The orange fence post level was a good idea but I got so tired digging that I rarely looked at it:



Every few feet I would run into hard clay. Here are some chunks that I pulled out. Yes, they look like rock and are just as hard. I had to break them up by raising up the pipe and slamming it down on the clay layers. These clay layers were so hard that the teeth would grind the teeth on the bottom of my pipe smooth. I'm writing this 4 days later and my body still hasn't recovered from the 8 hours of hard labor it took to dig down the first 18'. Note the water pruned hands:



After going down 19' with the 3" pipe (I'll call this a sleeve and use it to keep above ground water from contaminating my well) I could not get any lower. There was another hard clay layer and after trying for an hour I just could not break through it. I sawed some larger teeth in a 2" pipe, put that inside the 3" sleeve, and went to work on the 19' clay layer again:



It is hard to believe this pipe drops into a hole I dug with water:



After another hour of drilling, breaking teeth, cutting new teeth in the pipe and starting over I finally broke through the final hard clay layer. Around 21' down the water and dirt stopped washing up and out of the hole and all the water started being absorbed by the ground. This was the "water bearing sand" layer that I had been looking for:



Once the 2" pipe hit the water bearing sand it would no longer move down because the sand was absorbing the water and not allowing it to wash out. I used 3/4" pipe inside the 2" pipe to help move my 2" pipe further into the ground. By holding the 3/4" pipe with two water hoses connected to it just slightly lower than the 2" pipe it would blast away just enough of the sand to help the 2" pipe sink a bit. After going through about 3' of the sand I hit hard clay again and pulled my 3/4" pipe up:



After around 12 hours of digging I was just about finished. I had a 3" sleeve 18' into the ground. Inside that I had a 2" pipe 24' into the ground sitting on a clay later with 3' of water bearing sand above it. I glued my 4' long wellpoint (nothing more than PVC with hundreds of slots cut into it to act as a screen) to 20' of 1-1/4" pipe and dropped it into the 2" hole. I pressed down on it a little, trying to sink the point into the clay so it wouldn't move around any. I hooked water to the top of this and started back washing it. I was getting a very small amount of water coming back up and out of the 2" pipe so I was worried that my water flow from the well would not be that great. I started having second thoughts at this point that I would not be able to water the yard with this well. If the sand couldn't absorb my backwash water how could it supply enough water. After backwashing for a few minutes I pulled the 2" pipe up (leaving the 1-1/4" pipe in the hole) and allowed the sand to fall in around the wellpoint.



It turns out my fears were unfounded. After hooking up my checkvalve (you can see it just above the 3" sleeve), filling the pump and pipes with water, and turning everything on I had more than enough water. With one hose hooked up I get about 10 GPM out of this setup and 12 GPM with two hooked up. The pump has a tank with a bladder and a pressure switch. When only running one sprinkler, the pump will run for about 25 seconds (building to 45 psi) and then shut off for 25 seconds (dropping to 20 psi). Since you should not let your pump turn on and off like that I will make sure to always be running more than one sprinkler at a time. When running two sprinklers the pump only builds to 40 psi so it runs continuously. I have not tested anything past that but I'll have some fun playing with it in the weeks to come. I plan on adding some details to this page when construction of my in-ground sprinkler system is built:



My well installation was loosely based on these instructions I found on the Brady site.