MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a project that was started by Nicola Salmoria in 1996. Today, the current version of MAME (0.115) supports 6659 ROM sets, with 3607 being unique games.
My interest in MAME begain in 1999, when I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Today, I work for Epic Systems Corporation as a software developer.
UPDATE 9/2/2007 - I'm now using SDLMame with Wah!Cade as the front end on Ubuntu. More to come ...
The first thing I wanted to make sure of was that the cabinet was large enough to accomodate a 25" TV, yet slim enough to fit through any door. The maximum cross-section of the cabinet is 33 1/2" x 27". Using Turbocad, I designed the cabinet to require 3 sheets of plywood (A ,B ,C). I could have used MDF I suppose, but since I wanted an "all wood" look, I constructed the cabinet using 3/4" Birch veneer PW.
The cabinet was cut using a standard circular saw. After the 2 side pieces were cut, they were layed upon one another and a router and straight-edge were used to "square" the pieces.
Next, the front, top, bottom, coin-door, speaker, and monitor shelf panels were cut to the same exact width. Again, a router was used to "square" the pieces. Dado-cuts were then made in the upright side pieces. This is where we made our first mistake :). Because I don't know how to use a tape measure, we made one Dado-cut in the wrong place.
Not a big deal, we just cut another one :) After this, the cabinet was glued together and wood clamped and then allowed to dry overnight. At this point, the "shell" of the cabinet was finished.
The coin-door is fully functional and accepts brass tokens (not quarters). This is the coin-door I got with my first cabinet and it originally came from Happ Controls. It is wired to my I-PAC keyboard encoder and works great! People are amazed when they see credits appear after inserting a token.
Additionally, there are two buttons on the control panel which simulate Player 1 and Player 2 coin inserts. But I don't need to tell anyone that! I can just charge them cash for tokens :D
