I wanted this, my second machine to be one that
I built on my own. But after finding out the
complexity of building my own cabinet... I
decided to go the route of buying an empty
cabinet, brand new.

I worked with a company right here in Wisconsin
that builds cabinets for actual arcade game
manufacturers. (Like Midway, for example)
Funcompany Games www.funcompanygames.com
(The link seems to be dead - looks like they are not around anymore.)

They gave me a quote for an empty showcase-style
cabinet and were willing to help me customize the
control panel to exactly what I was looking for.

I was quoted a halfway decent price, and for
a delivery charge of $50 (since I was on
'their route') I couldn't pass it up.

They included a fully operable coin door and
mechs, and a light for behind the marquee,
speakers, glass and a black bezel.

I picked up a 32" Television at Sears that
was on sale or clearance for dirt cheap, and
gave Funcompany games the measurements
of the TV and they made sure everything would fit.

After giving them my measurements, they
actually quoted me for the time to design
and create the control panel, but in the
final bill, they just threw in the customizing.
Can't complain about that!

This is the plan they came up with to
access the underside of the control panel.
Next, I threw the tv in place, and started
spreading out all of the parts - getting
ready to start drilling holes in my nice
new control panel...

First I had to lay out where the parts went..

Next, I printed out templates using
the sizes and spacings of the buttons and
joysticks.

I used painting tape under the templates,
for when I drilled through, I did not want
to ruin the black finish on the control panel.

Once I got to the trackball, I used a
jigsaw to cut out the needed hole.

Everything turned out pretty good, as
you can see in the next picture.

Everything fit just about perfect after
dropping in all the buttons and screwing
them tight.

The button layout seen here is what
I ended up with... but not nececssarily
the same color combination that you'll
see in later pictures...

Next came the tedious task
of wiring all of the buttons to the
I-PAC4 unit. The IPAC-4 acts
as an interface, where every
wire that runs into it represents
a button on the keyboard
more or less.

This unit basically plugs into
the same PS2 port that your
keyboard uses and it DOES have
a passthru so you can hook up a
regular keybord if needed.

Next, I opened up the cabinet under
the TV and mounted my Sega
Dreamcast to the inside walls.

Then just below the dreamcast is
where my PC tower sits.

I'm using a 1.6GHz machine with
256MB of ram.. more than enough
for the games that run on this machine.

Placed the bezel over the television,
put the glass over the monitor, and threw
in a temporary marquee since I
didn't have one for this machine yet.

Then I met with a friend of mine
and he was able to come up
with a sweet looking marquee, that
had all of the logos included that
were running on this machine.



Here are 2 more pictures of the final product:


Yeah Baby!!! Dance Dance Revolution!