DIY arcade machine at home

Hello, I want to get away from politics and the coronavirus a bit, I decided to dilute the news a bit and share my project. The machine is made in the form of a Bartop and a stand that turns it into a full-sized one. I have individual feelings for just such a “modular” format, about the advantages of which I will write below.



It all starts with cutting out pre-prepared parts on a CNC machine. The assembly of finished parts does not raise questions, only at my own whim I always flush the hats of confirmates into parts and I have to cover them with putty. Smeared - sanded. Setup and installation of components. Sanwa buttons and sticks as the undisputed leader in quality. A 19-inch monitor with a 5: 4 aspect ratio is what the doctor ordered.




The productive and most importantly compact Intel NUC PC with 128 SSDs for the system and 1Tb for the media files of the HyperSpin shell. At this point, the most important question appears: why not the Raspberry Pi + RetroPi shell? What was needed was the Windows platform and more “horses” under the hood than raspberries. You also need the function of quickly removing the Intel Nuc from the machine and connecting it to a widescreen TV for a comfortable game with a joystick on the couch. The crimping tools for the control board are always at hand. The Ipac board itself allows you to reduce the Input lag to a minimum that is not noticeable in 90% of games, but is very important in fighting games and platform games. Mounted items on the control panel.







The control panel itself is on the front side. It is worth paying attention to the details of plexiglass located on top of the artifacts, this allows you to reduce the wear of the artifacts themselves from constant contact with the player’s hands and, in general, is a very beautiful element. The photo above clearly shows how the components are located. Then I wanted to show the process of applying art on the surface of the machine, but this is pretty routine work. It is better to give your eyes a rest and look at the objectively beautiful. Rack without Bartopa. Batop itself. Here it is worth recalling the “modularity” mentioned in the first paragraph. Since all the components are located in the bartop itself, you easily (having unscrewed two bolts) remove it from the rack and go play with a friend.



















View of the machine from the back. You can see the ventilation holes and the only button with a fuse on the rear panel for turning on / off the machine.



As a result, we have a machine with a huge number of platforms and tens of thousands of games of different decades, which you can play by pressing a single button. Comfortable and pleasing to the eye. The main thing is emotions, I immediately remember the moments of the game with the “professional” Mortal Kombat 3 Ultimate and his dissatisfied, but in some places fair remarks that he would have paid me two points on the Sega MD2 joystick, but it’s impossible to play these “Sticks and Buttons”! To which I began to read notations to him, going back in history, that the game was originally released on the Arcade Machine. It all ended with playing my favorite arcade football Super Sidekicks on the SNK Neo Geo platform, but the winner did not change there either. Good luck, patience and more positive, positive emotions in this difficult time!