Custom arcade cabinet
A $75 dead cabinet from a local repair shop, rebuilt into a full-size MAME machine — now running RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 4.
In 2001 I built a full-size arcade machine. I bought a non-working cabinet from a nearby amusement repair store for $75 — it was in excellent shape and all the necessary parts were still there.
I sanded the cabinet and painted it semi-gloss black, and replaced the worn trim molding with new parts from Suzo-Happ Controls. Out went the old monitor, game boards, buttons and joysticks; in went new controls with LED backlighting, a 19-inch monitor and a custom-built PC with a Pentium III and a 20 GB hard drive.
At first the cabinet ran a digital jukebox, complete with working coin slots, which my daughter loved. It's been upgraded several times since, most recently in 2024: it now runs RetroPie (MAME) on a Raspberry Pi 4 with the original joystick controller. The jukebox software has been archived for nostalgia's sake.
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