The ULTIMATE DIY Arcade Machine Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,855 words · ~9 min read
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Hi, I'm Lionus Sebastian. There's no
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greater source of joy in this world than a personal computer. But every day,
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elderly devices like this one find
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themselves without a home, discarded,
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abandoned, forgotten.
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So, I'm here today to ask you not for a
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donation, but just for a moment of your time to listen as we show you a path to
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a future where you and your slightly obsolete gaming PC can pone together
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once more. This is your chance to say,
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"I won't sit by while a computer suffers.
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EK Water Blocks's all aluminum fluid gaming lineup offers great water cooling
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performance for an affordable price. Learn more at the link in the video
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description. So, when Taran first came to me and proposed building a custom
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arcade box, I immediately demanded he
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get back to work and stop wasting company time. A short while later,
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coincidentally, I independently came up with a brilliant idea. Why don't we
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build our own custom arcade box? So,
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first then, we set out to construct the
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computer that we would build the arcade box around. This is Linus Tech Tips. So,
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we could have easily strapped SLI Titans
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and an 8K monitor to a piece of plywood and called it a day. But the hardware
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demands of emulating ancient software are actually very light. And besides,
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silly intro bit aside, we wanted the
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focus of this video to be on showing how you can get a little more mileage out of
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your components that are nearing the end of their useful life. So, it was
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important to us that every part of our computer was something that would be
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coming up on replacement age and readily available secondhand. In the end, for a
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really reasonable price, we were able to put together what would have been a
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respectable mid-range gaming PC, Circa
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2011, with just one unusual requirement.
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We wanted a video card with an Svideo output because we are totally going to
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rock a CRT in our finished build for authenticity.
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Once all of the hardware was in place, we were ready to set up our front end,
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the program that wraps everything together in order to use MAMEim, the
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go-to but notoriously command lineon
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arcade emulator that's been around since the mid90s. The front end allows us to
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peruse our vast collection of legally obtained software and then run it in the
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emulator. Our first pick was RetroArchch, a front end that handles a
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number of different emulators and uh has an infamously innovative menu design.
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While it took a little internet archaeology to assemble all the files we
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needed, we were actually able to get it up and running, just not quite to our
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satisfaction without endless tinkering.
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It messed with MAME's control layouts too much to try to conform them to its
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own, and a lot of our legally obtained software couldn't be detected. So, we
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had a conundrum on our hands. We wanted to stick with open-source software, but
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most of the purpose-built arcade frontends that met our standards, well,
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they're proprietary. So, we dug deeper into the depths of the internet and
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discovered a relatively new front end called Attract Mode. With a healthy
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community making skins and plugins, attract mode gave us the perfect storm
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of form and function. It even supports scripting, which will be important later
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on in our project. Well, that's all fine and good, but at this point, all you
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got, Lionus, is a geriatric PC running
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emulation software. That's a far cry
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from the full-on arcade experience that uh I was expecting. I mean, look at this
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thing. So yeah, you're right. We needed joysticks, buttons, light guns, and a
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big, beautiful monitor to show it off on. So I tasked my staff with scouring
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Craigslist and eBay for some previously loved accessories that we could dust off
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and put to use again. We were able to find multiple sources for everything we
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needed. This was actually the smoothest experience we've ever had buying guns
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off Craigslist. When it came to buttons and joysticks though, we found the
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secondary market to be basically non-existent. You can order one of the
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pre-built arcade decks that are out there, but we really wanted to customize
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our own. So, we did. After some research, we reached out to Andy over at
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Ultimark in the UK, which is one of the better known arcade part suppliers for
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enthusiasts. And after a couple minutes
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of browsing their website, found exactly
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what we wanted. RGB. Yes. So, we asked for 30 of their
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classic RGB buttons with seven Ultralux
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Chrome buttons for special functions. And yep, that's right. They even have
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RGB sticks, too. So, the two servo
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sticks we went with have interchangeable handles. And with some clever software,
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they can automatically change from 8-way to four-way, which is great when you're
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switching between your completely legitimate copy of PacMister to
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something like Street Conflict. But what
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about games that use analog controls? Haha. Well, that's where the Ultra Stick
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360 comes in. It uses a hall effect
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sensor in order to determine where the stick is, making it incredibly accurate
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and durable. Add in their RGB track ball
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and a spinner, and we are covered for all of our button and stick games. But
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what would an arcade box be without
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slick shooting games? Your House of the
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Recently deceased or time conundrum. Well, we plugged in those
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light guns that we bought, expecting to be immediately putting zombies back in
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the ground, and that's where we hit a major setback. Who could have guessed?
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While the GunCon twos that we obtained were technically functional, the drivers
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they require are ancient, and in order to install them successfully, we would
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have had to use composite video. not
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good enough for us from a retro purist standpoint. And the other set we picked
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up was a used pair of ACTL Labs uh USB
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light guns, but we ended up running into another problem with them. They were
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designed specifically for PC main cabinets. So, we would have ended up
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using janky USB to game port adapters,
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and frankly, they just felt kind of crummy anyway. So, we ended up reaching
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out to Ultimark. Hey, it's us again. And
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they sent us these bad boys. These Aim
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Track IR light guns worked perfectly with our system. And they even fire
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sideways, batches. Which brings us then
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to finding the right TV. If you want to
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use traditional light guns, you will need a CRT. You can learn more about why
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that is here. So, these ones we got
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locally work and the prices were definitely right, but Svideo ended up
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being pretty disappointing and scaling games from different eras was
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problematic. So, back to eBay we went
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and there we managed to procure a Toshiba Pure Flat CRT out of a Namco
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machine that takes both retro RGB and
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VGA. That's important because this thing
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can take signals that range from the chunky dots that pack gentleman eats all
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the way up to the super fresh sprites in Street Conflict 3 and display them as
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they were originally intended. Okay then. So, we have our hardware together.
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We have all the software set up. Now, we
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just need something to put it all into.
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Now, our original plan was to either
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find a decommissioned arcade cabinet or just build one ourselves out of scrap
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plywood. But while both of those are valid options for sure, we wanted to
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make the final product as cool as possible to show you guys just how far
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you can go. So, we reached out to Scott over at North Coast Custom Arcades, and
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this this is actually how it went down. basically begged him to let us use one
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of his Ultimate Arcade 2 cabinet kits.
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He was happy to oblige and actually for good measure even threw in the classic
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control panel kit and all the mounts we'd need to get our display in place. A
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major potential issue for these large and heavy CRT monitors. And the end
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result goes without saying is absolutely
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breathtaking. I mean, you don't need to
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go all out like we did. And with high-end CRTs no longer in production,
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some parts of the experience are going to get harder and harder to recreate as
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time goes on, even if you did want to go all out. But we're really glad that we
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took on this project. With a home arcade box, you can play your favorite games
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with your friends, just like you might have as a kid way back in the 80s, 90s,
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or 2000s. With the buttons and joysticks
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feeling exactly how you remember them,
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the screen and emulators surprising authenticity help drive that home. And
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with our custom cabinet, the whole thing just exudes quality like we just put
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together a kit from Sega or Namco themselves for our bowling alley quarter
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muncher. Not that it needs to munch quarters anymore. That's the real reason
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people invest hundreds and hundreds of dollars in these things. You just have a
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button to continue.
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Woo. But even more than that, the real
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reason we built it is that a custom cabinet like this adds a touch of retro
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gaming class to any room. No
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exceptions at all. Ting is the mobile
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carrier that's focused on customer service and customer
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satisfaction. I know, what a concept.
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When you call Ting to talk to customer support, you actually get put through
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directly to a person. And you're not
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paying extra for that level of TLC. The
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average TING bill is just 23 bucks a month per device. And if you're stuck in
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a contract and switch to TING, they'll even cover 25% of your cancellation fee
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up to 75 bucks. They have lower mobile
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data rates. Data is now just $10 a gig beyond the first gig. And every single
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TING customer gets the benefits of any
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rate changes that they make. So head over to Linus.ting.com. We've got that
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linked below and try their savings calculator to find out if you'll save
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money on TING. When you sign up at our link, you'll also get 25 bucks in
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service credit or towards a shiny new
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device. So thanks for watching, guys, and coming along on this journey of
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resurrecting retro hardware. If you disliked it, you can hit that button.
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But if you liked it, hit the like button. Get subscribed. Maybe consider
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checking out where to buy the stuff we featured. Well, most of it's views, but whatever. At the link in the video
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description. Also down there, you'll find our merch store, which has cool
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shirts like this one, as well as our community forum, which you should
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totally join.