.plan

My plan (cause ya gotta have a plan):

1. Primarily a MAME system, running MAME32.
2. An MP3 jukebox
3. 3D games .. I have some 3D arcade games and 2 pair of shutter glasses I want to incorporate into the system.
4. Capable of playing other non arcade-style games. (I love my 3rd person RPG adventures like NWN, Baldur's Gate, etc). Dependent on difficulty of keyboard mapping or having keyboard available. These require lots more keys than arcade games.
4. Play C64/Amiga games via emulator.

Cabinet mods:
Will need to have a cabinet-mounted CD for non-MAME games and music uploads.
A set of good speakers mounted alien-antenna style off the top sides of the cabinet, curving around to face the players.
Subwoofer mounted in the cabinet base. Will probably require some holes/grillwork in the bottom.
The control panel housing will have to be enlarged to accommodate a new layout with more buttons and a trackball.

Control panel:
Original control panel will be replaced. The buttons and joystick seem functional, but they are old and cheap enough to replace. (Maybe keep the buttons for the pinball sides and use the existing stick in locked 4-way mode?)

The control panel housing will have to be enlarged and modified to accommodate a good standard MAME setup with 3 joys, 16 top buttons, 4 side buttons, trackball and spinner.

Basic layout, with pinball buttons on the side not shown:


J3 is 4-way stick.

x1, x2 are 1/8" jacks for 3d shutter glasses. They may get moved to the front of the cabinet. They connect to a video-synch splitter, not the key controller. Depends on the amount of room underneath the CP.

System:
I'm buying a new pc, so I will just move my old one into this cabinet. Strip it down and reload it with nothing but games and mp3's.
The 3d games only run on an Nvidia card, which I'd like to move to the new pc, so may need to locate another old one.
I'll need a 19 or 21" CRT monitor. (Must be CRT for the 3d games.) My old 17" just isnt big enough.

Software:
WinXP on my current PC.
A MAME32 front end.
There's a particular MediaPlayer skin with a full-screen jukebox mode I want to use, but cant remember the name of it just now.

I'll write a custom front end that boots at startup to choose between MAME, MP3, 3d games, CD-based games. Maybe with Flash.

Cabinet graphics:
I'll paint them on myself. Being a part-time artist has its advantages ;) No ideas just yet though.