Space was rather limited inside the cabinet, so I spent a fair amount of time
trying different ways of installing the PC system. I decided to just put the
PC case (trimmed to size) into the bottom of the cabinet and work around it.
The photo on the left shows the case loose inside the cabinet. The powerboard
on the left was later covered with a shelf/shielding for the left speaker. The
photo on the right shows the final layout. The screen sits directly above the
PC system.
A really nice feature of the case I bought, was that the front panel controls
(power/reset/sleep switches & LEDs) were seperate from the rest of the case.
They were located on a small rectangular piece of plastic that was only attached
to the front bezel with two screws.
To maintain the illusion of being a 'real' arcade machine, the controls needed
to be accessible without having reach inside the cabinet, but not visible. The
best place for the controls was underneath the ledge for player 1's controls.
The control strip and external connectors are shown in the photos below. From
left to right are:
- sleep switch (unconnected)
- reset switch
- power switch
- Turbo LED? (unconnected)
- HDD LED
- Power LED
- 10/100 LAN socket
- external PS/2 keyboard socket
The PC speaker/beeper was installed at the top of the cabinet, just to the left of
player 1's controls (so it can be heard with the case closed). There is a keyboard
switch to change between the internal controls and an external keyboard. The switch
also allows for multiple mice/monitors too, if they're ever needed.
To see how everything else fits inside the cabinet, check out the
cabinet overview.
