My goal is to take an old Ms.PACMAN arcade cabinet restore it to look as close to an original Galaga cabinet as I can. Add a TV for a monitor and an XBOX to serve as the system that will store all my games. I want the cabinet to look and feel as real as possible.

What does MAME stand for you may ask? Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. In other words its one machine (in this case its going to be an XBOX) that will play multiple games. Ok getting started, I downloaded a MAME program for my Mac and really liked it. After seeing my friend Jay's MAME cabinets I had to have one. Jay had an old Ms. PACMAN arcade cabinet that he was going to throw away, so I took it off his hands. When I got it the cabinet was in pretty good shape but it needed some TLC. Someone had painted blue over the original cabinet art.

After nearly 3 hours or straight sanding with 60 grit sandpaper, I had sanded down most of the dark blue overcoat hiding the original cabinet art.

Finally I got everything sanded to my satisfaction. Went over to Wal-Mart and bought 3 cans of gray spraypaint primer and 5 cans of black spraypaint. The 3 cans of primer was just the right amount. I let the primer dry for an hour or so. Then I started on the first of many black coats. I probably did 4 coats of black. Each time I did a coat I sanded it with a 220 grit sandpaper.

I did alot of running around on this day. Jay said the best XBOX to use for the MAME project would be one with a Samsung DVD drive (there are three drive brands that I know of Samsung ,Thompson and Phillips). I was told that the Samsung DVD drive would read some CDs that the other drives won't (CDR,etc...). The Samsung drive will have two round holes in the CD tray one on either sides. After looking at all the game shops in town I almost gave up. Finally I decided to go to a pawnshop. The first one I went to had about 15 XBOXs. The third system I checked had the Samsung drive! I traded an old N64 and a bunch of games that had dust on them and only had to pay $39.49 for my new XBOX. Went to Wal-Mart next and bought an inexpensive power strip (to plug the XBOX, TV, marquee light and speaker into). Got home after alot of running around and ordered 25ft of bright green Galaxian T-molding. Painted the last coat of black on the cabinet. I fixed the arcade light so I could plug it into a wall adapter and added the Galaga marquee that Jay had given me. I'm really impressed with the way everything is turning out so far. I can't wait to see the finished product.

Got my T-molding in the mail today! Talk about fast delivery I ordered it yesterday! I didn't realize when I ordered the molding that www.t-mold.com was only 90 minutes from my house. If you ever have to order T-molding I would recomend them. The molding is very nice and was shipped out so fast.

I guess I will call it day 5......it's hard to work one day after another on a project like this because I have to wait for parts to come in the mail. Earlier this week I got my Galaga sideart stickers in the mail thanks to a guy named Philippe. I think I got a great deal on them. I wont be putting the stickers on the side of the cabinet until after the monitor is installed. This morning I got an e-mail. Robert is done with my controller! I can't wait to get it in the mail it looks awesome (see the picture to the left). It has a Super T-Stik joystick on it that can be turned from 4-way to 8-way just by lifting the joystick and twisting. Did I mention this controller is going to work on the XBOX? Well it is! Hopefully when it arrives in the mail I will get some better pictures and will put a link up to Robert's site. Today in the mail I got a VGA BOX that I ordered off ebay. It will allow me to play the XBOX on an VGA monitor/arcade monitor. I ordered a 21" monitor last week hopefully it will be in soon. Everything is coming along great. I think the only thing that is going to be hard is installing the monitor in the cabinet since I am in no way a handy man. The XBOX is fully modded now and plays tons of games. I got a 60gb harddrive to replace the small 10gb drive that came with it. Once I get the new harddrive installed I'll be able to plays games right off of the harddrive instead of off of a cd. That'll be much better! Can't wait....Can't wait!

I decided to take another picture to add to the webpage. Here is a picture of the XBOX skin I bought off ebay. It's a vinyl sticker and matches the green T-molding really well!

Today I built a box for the controller to set into. I used a dremel tool to make the notch for the T-molding to fit into, and then I glued the molding in place. I went to Lowes last night and bought a camlock for my coin door. I installed it and it turned out nice. Hopefully I will have the shelves built on the inside for the Xbox and receiver. I can't really build the shelves until I know how big the receiver is going to be. Then last but not least I need to get the monitor installed, cut a sheet of plywood for a bezel and then get a piece of tempered glass cut to fit over the monitor. Almost done!

Not really day 7 but it is what I am going to consider my 7th step of progress. I got my monitor installed, and I must say it was really easy. I removed the monitor from the hefty metal case it was in and simply use the mounts that were already on the monitor to mount it to the original arcade monitor framework.


Will I ever go beyond step 7? I don't know. The truth is I am having WAY too much with the XBOX outside of the cabinet to put it in the cabinet. Especially with Halo 2 being newly released. If you haven't played it yet I strongly suggest it! Right now I have two xboxs in my living room networked strictly for Halo 2. The tvs are turned away from each other and most of the controller ports are filled at least a few times a week. For those of you that dont know that's 8 people playing at one time on two different tvs. From what I understand you can network up to 16 xboxs for Halo 2. I'm not sure weither that is for 1 player on each XBOX or if you can have 64 people playing? Someone tell me.