What has equate been up to?

[equate975]

Well I am on spring break, so I decided to finish up a project I started about 3 years ago lol.

A little background, I started making an arcade for my dad for Christmas one year, unfortunatly after 2 weeks of work it wasn't done. It was super hard because I tried to build the entire thing in my grandmas garage with nothing but a circular saw.

This is how it sat for Christmas












After doing the whole thing in a 15 degree garage I was pretty burnt out, my dad said he would help me finish it later, and so it sat...

Every now and again I would think I would finish it, I would work for a day then get bored with the whole thing, so it sat some more...





Well FINALLY I decided to finish it once and for all, I have been working maybe 8 hours a day on it for the past 3 days now, and shes almost done!

The paint is black "chalkboard" paint, hence you can write all over the thing with chalk, I thought it was a pretty cool idea anyways. I pretty much took the whole thing apart and reinforced the inside of it, the original design didn't work out like I had hoped and it wasn't very sturdy.





You can tell wood work and painting aren't my strong suits lol









Quick mock-up after paint





It really looks a TON better in person, there was a lot of dust floating around so the pics didn't turn out so well, I'm not saying its any amazing wood work or the Sistine Chapel, but it looks better than the pics :)

Anyways, I just moved it into the basement and I am going to put the TV in now and start on the Xbox that will drive the whole thing.

[YAN-3]

ha ha, keep more pics coming man, looks cool

[325Projectz]

Lol, nice!

[Mike325]

Good job.

[equate975]

Almost fully assembled..

[asubimmer]

ha thats awsome, I've always wanted to do that

[Digitalwave]

That's pretty sweet, I've never seen anything like that before.

[equate975]

Well shes all done!



Got my xbox running the whole deal



I'm probably going to go to the pawn shop and pickup another xbox, just to dedicate to the arcade, then I can stuff it and all the wires inside so you don't see it.

I've been playing so many games on it! lol its fun


Edit:

There is only one problem, the remote control for the TV is busted, so I can't turn the volume up, Right now I have computer speakers hidden in the cabinet for all the sound, lucky the TV by default goes to channel 4 for the xbox! (although 3 woulda worked too)

[equate975]

Oh I just noticed my domain expired, all the pics can be found here

http://24.159.194.178/misk/Arcade/

[s0urce]

It'd be pretty cool if you found some oldschool Game posters on ebay and decoupaged them all over the machine to give it that arcade look.

God Damnit, I sound like martha stewart. Nevermind this.

[equate975]

Ive just been busy coloring on it with chalk lol :)

[Jscotty]

A while back Tech TV's "Call For Help" had this segment where they showed you how to (illegally) download install the old video arcade games into a PC and then mount it into a pre-fabricated video game cabinet. The company that manufactures it makes both the upright and table top versions of the console. All you need is a 486 PC or a first generation Pentium which can be had for dirt cheap with an 8-bit sound card and you are ready for action. And because it was in a PC with a 1-gig hard drive it can be configured to hold over 150 games. They sell you the game controller interface and the buttons so that you can mount them the same way that Equate did it in his "home made" arcade game.

[equate975]

Yeah theres tons of ways you can build one, pre fabbed ones, commercial controls, re-use an old arcade, or from scratch

http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

Has lot of info on all of the methods, if I were to do this again I would probably have someone make the box for me, or restore and use an old arcade and just rip all of its guts out.