MAME Arcade Cabinet Part 3 — Power, Volume Control, Computer
Power and Volume Control
I bought a “replacement power cord” that goes from the wall to some bare wires. I suppose one could cut up a regular extension cord for the same purpose but this was cheaper. This cord goes to an electrical box in the lower part of the cabinet that houses a dual outlet. However, the cord doesn’t go straight to the outlet. The outlet is controlled by a switch in the upper part of the cabinet. It’s a “Decora” switch housed in another electrical box. I placed it in this location to keep it out of reach of small children. The marquee light and a power strip plug into this outlet.
My speakers rely on a volume control inline between the PC and subwoofer/amp unit. I was using a Radio Shack pre-built device for this purpose but it was meant to be used for portable units and there wasn’t a good way to mount it on the cabinet. So I built a new volume control using more Radio Shack parts. The volume control is “Radio Shack 100K Dual-Ganged Stereo Volume Control #271-1732″ and the knob attached to it is “Radio Shack Volume Control Knob #274-424.” I wired up the volume control so that an audio cable goes from the PC to a jack on the control, then another cable goes from the control to the amp. The volume control was mounted to a cable TV mounting plate (which I spraypainted black) then the mounting plate was attached to the cabinet next to the power switch (it’s on the right in the above picture). I had to cut down the volume control shaft so that that knob wasn’t sticking out like a lolly pop. No instructions come with the volume control, but someone named Craig has some instructions here.
Computer
The computer is my old “main” computer, last updated in 2001. It is a Pentium II motherboard using a “slotket” to hold at Pentium III 850 MHz (yeah it’s old). It has 384MB RAM, two 60GB hard drives, 64MB GeForce2 and Voodoo2 graphics cards, Soundblaster AWE32 sound, CD writer, and 3.5″ and 5.25″ floppy drives. It runs Windows 2000 Pro. I occasionally get the bug to update the machine to run some of the newer games, but let’s face it, this one already plays thousands. The monitor is a Viewsonic 21″ SVGA monitor I found used for $40. The speakers are Cambridge Soundworks PC Works–fairly impressive for their small size. The keyboard is a low-end black keyboard (ignore the white wireless one you see in some of the pictures).
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