This is the cabinet page

Although I greatly enjoyed playing MAME games on my PC, I decided that the "full experience" required a cabinet. As I've said elsewhere, there's a big difference between seeing the actual game running on your PC while controlling it through the keyboard (fun) and playing while standing up, slamming a real joystick and arcade buttons.

Building the cabinet was a really fun experience. I definitely learned a lot during the process. There are so many things to decide on. In addition, if you want a cabinet customized to how you want to use it, for the games you want to play, you need to carefully consider things like control panel layout, overall size, etc.

The linked pages below walk through some of the key steps of discovery that I took when planning, building, and finishing my personal cabinet. Hopefully they will be of some use to people.

Step 1—Planning

Step 2—Measure twice

Step 3—Cut once

Step 4—Cabinet assembly

Step 5—Control panel

Step 6—Lights and action

Step 7—The PC guts

Step 8—Interface

Step 9—Exterior finish

Step 10—Play!