A big project....

The more research that I do on this project, the more I realize what a sizable project it is - if you want the finished product to look decent anyway. I've seen far too many examples of what NOT to do, so hopefully that will steer me in the right direction.

In the last 3 weeks since my last post, I have been switching my time between the computer side, and workshop side of things. As far as the computer goes, it has been slow going only because of the lead time to get anything shipped here. Seems like 99% of suppliers are on the coasts. Anyway, I added a 500gb slave hard drive to increase my storage space. I did not realize that IDE connectors were replaced by SATA some years back, So, add another week to get the small adapter to hook it up. The used graphics card that I ordered on EBAY ended up being DOA. Guess that is a chance I took, and 15 bucks down the drain. I also upgraded the power supply to a 480watt to replace the old 250watt one. Turns out most graphics cards, even modest ones require 300watts. Another week to get that in and installed. As of now I just ordered a brand new graphics card from Amazon. Should be here in 3 or 4 days. Maybe I'll actually get this S-video out working someday after all. Never thought it would be that big of a deal. In the meanwhile, I'll start loading up the Mame ROMS that my buddy Brett loaned me, and download a copy of Mame to see if I can at least get the games up and running. If all goes well there, I'll start messing with a front end program. A front end is basically the program that will serve as the user menu to navigate the arcade.



On the workshop side:

Two weeks ago I went to Home Depot and hauled home my new arcade cabinet:






















Well, as you can see it is a picture of the pieces of my future cabinet in the back of my trailer, just waiting for assembly. I certainly miss the flexibility of my truck, but there has not been much that I have not been able to haul home in the 4 x 8 trailer behind the Civic.

I next carefully sketched up some rough plans for the cabinet sides from browsing many, many different pictures of other peoples cabinets on the Internet. One thing I was sure of was that I wanted it to be as small as possible, but still proportioned. While I do have space in the basement, I don't want some hulking monstrosity in my rec. room either. As ridiculous as it sounds, it took 3 tries and several hours to sketch this design:





The problem is that so much depends on correctly laying out the sides, especially regarding the depth of the monitor, height of the controls, and so on. Once I felt fairly satisfied and measured every line at least 5 times, I started cutting and came out with this:




After the first was done, I rough cut the 2nd one, clamped it down to the first and used the flush-cut router bit to match it up. Everything seemed to turn out okay. I guess I'll find out later. In case you are thinking the bottom looks a little short from the floor to the control panel angle, it's because it is. I'm making a base that it will sit on and raise it up 3 more inches. It will kind of look like a recessed kick panel of sort. Saw a picture on the net and really liked it.




Today I made the base. After I was done, I sized it up and checked things out for fit and proportion. Everything seems good. It took way longer than it should for such a simple project, but without a table saw, each cut I have to carefully clamp a straight edge down for the best possible cut. It takes time, but the results have been better than many of my past construction attempts. The base was only 1/16 off square. I think I'll let it ride.




Here is a picture of the base:



I really toyed with the idea of adding casters, but it seemed like it would really add to the instability of the cabinet. Instead of having the weight equally distributed on the perimeter of the base, (on carpet) the casters seemed like it would cause it to be wobbly. I figure if I need to move it, I'll just gently tip the sides up one at a time and insert some of those low profile furniture sliders underneath for the move. Besides, I plan on having front access only, so there should not be much of a need to get to the backside.

Well, that's it for this post. I sure didn't think it would be this much. I'll have to start being more succinct in the future. Next up, construct and install the back panel and monitor shelf.