Jubei:Rob's Arcade Cabinet

Prototyping

• Prototype
• Slicing & Dicing
• Control Panel
• Assembly
• Software
• Playable Beta
• Detailing

If there's one thing I know, its that practice makes perfect. And when you're going to do something that you've never done before, the more practice the better! With this in mind, I decided to build a working prototype to make sure I could get all the controls working. This also would let me mockup a control panel and see where buttons would go, and what buttons I would need in order to function without a keyboard when I was finished. Also note my acoustic guitar in the background. Its made by my friend Del, the most talented luthier I know (technically the only one, but that doesn't detract from his work ;)

I used a iPac and an Opti-Pac to interface with a PC. And I even had to solder all sorts of little bits and pieces together. And because I'm anal, I coded a nice frontend in GTK-Perl to provide a simple interface under X11 to Xmame. I decided on Linux simply because its what I'm used to.