u/PhotographOdd4657

About 10 years ago I bought an arcade1up MK2 machine. That started me down the path of home arcades and emulation. Since then I have acquired a total of 5 machines that are all either customized or modified in some way by me. Roughly 5 years ago I found batocera while googling how to fix a cheap KinHank super console and thought immediately that this was how I was going to round out my collection with a shooter arcade. I currently have a 2 player fighter, 2 player multicade, driver, 4 player and single player machine.

I bought a refurbished dell optiplex 7010, a Seagate 2TB USB SSD, and an 8bitdo sn30 remote and set off on my journey. I'm a mechanic and don't know jack shit about programming of any kind. I'm also not a carpenter and I can't cut a straight line to save my life. 4 years I worked on adding games and bought 2 sinden light guns for it. Had everything pretty well dialed in and then I changed the theme and it was stuck in a boot loop. I talked to the good people on the discord server about it and nothing would get it out. So 4 years flushed down the drain but I was back to almost where I was in about 3 month after I nuked the drive and started over.

Sitting in my garage 1 night with a glass of whiskey I looked at some left over lumber in the corner and thought maybe I could make something. I wasn't planning on an arcade at the time, just felt like building. My son came out and saw it and asked if it was going to be an arcade. He likes to tear down pallets and build stupid shit when he's bored so we decided to call it the "The Pallet-cade". I used furring strips with the rough side out to make it look like pallet wood and used a MAP gas torch to char and weather the wood. I thought the 50x30 deck was going to be too big, but thus far it appears to be just about perfect sized. I added an external HDMI port to the back wall of the deck and 4 USB to the front was to plug in controllers in the event you want to sit down or just not play with joysticks. I also have a remote power button that I have a plan to put center in between the 2 center USB'S.

Its almost done at this point and I have verified the machine is functional and plays games very well to this point. I have about 12 more button holes to drill (start and select for each player, 3 buttons for the trackball harness and 1 button hole spinner) and then I can seal and paint the mdf. It does have 2 lift struts or gas springs under the lid to open it for service and storage that i am really anxious to hook up and test out.

I want to start by saying forgive me, I'm a mechanic and not a carpenter. As the title says I'm sure my work will look like hack work because it is lol. I'm buildung pedestal arcade that has been a pretty fun project. I wanted it to look like it was made from salvaged pallet wood. Unaware of how shitty pallets are to take apart instead of reclaiming pallets i used 1X4 furring strips with the rough side out and hit them with a map gas torch to give it the old weathered look. The base is severely over engineered as i made the frame out pressure treated pine 2X4's and I'm pretty sure I could support a damn truck with it. The base was kind of built on a whim with left over lumber that progressed to where it is now and now im pot committed to finishing this thing. The control deck im planning is 3/4 mdf 50"X30" that will be about 6" with a 3 degree slope down in the front. I was using google Ai to help with some if the design and dimensions, because again I am absolutely not a carpenter. I figure the lid for the control deck being that size plus 4 joysticks, 43 buttons, a trackball, a spinner and the wiring to be somewhere around 40 to 45 pounds.

My question is this. I want to put lift struts / gas spring inside to aid in opening and hold it open but not force it open. I do have a standard cheap spring style door catch just help keep it closed. I would like to mount the lift struts from the floor of the control deck to the lid to keep all hardware hidden. I have 2 22 lbs struts and 2 45 lbs struts. When the Ai explained mounting the struts it makes no damn sense to me. Can someone help a knuckle breaker understand how to mount them? The cabinet is 50" wide and 6" deep in the back. I'm using 3 12" piano hinges and was thinking safest to mount the spring center in between the voids between the hinges? I attached a few pics of the base but I have not started the control deck cabinet yet so that Pic is a shitty scribble basic design idea

I've been asked a few times to post so here it is. The end result will be a 4 player pedestal running a dell optiplex 7010 with batocera v43. Only have the base built to this point but most everything else that I need should be here by the end of the week. The last thing I did was fire side petena with a MAP gas torch. The burn turned out a lot better than I thought it would.

So i shared a little while ago the beginning of my pedestal running batocera with 2tb hard drive damn near maxed and running on a dell ootiplex 7010. It was conceptualized to be a shooting cab and morphed into quite the multicade. Well heres a quick update. Sinden light guns are hidden behind the doors and I added a little petena from a map gas torch. I'm planning on building a 54" x 27" control deck with 4 players 8 button each for wii games with a trackball and spinner too. Hopefully starting the control deck withing the next week depending on delivery of all the parts. With any luck should have it running in 2 or 3 weeks depending on life and time. I really like the way the burn turned out. When all is said and done the deck will be custom painted by my nephew and the deck should have 3 to 4 layers of shellac on it to seal it all in

So i need to start with the fact I'm a mechanic not a carpenter. But, for years I have wanted to build my own cabinet. I have 4 arcade1up machines and 1 from Cameroon solutions. Out of those 5 I figured I had 1 of control layout and minorly modify the a1ups. But I didn't have a shooting game machine. For a few years I have been working on a pc running batocera with sinden light guns. So over the last week I started on my own cab. They all have branding to them (simpsons, dig dug, kombat, ridge race, and time suck). So my creation is being dubbed the pallet-cade. Initially was going to be built out of old pallets, turns out I'm not good a disassembling pallets. So instead I have some 2x4's I built the frame out of and the exterior is 1x4 furring strip's with the rough side facing out. I have 1 of 2 doors built for the guns and in the end I plan on using a map gas torch to patina the exterior for a weathered look. It's final form is going to be a pedestal arcade with a 4 player deck including a track ball and a spinner. At this point I have become very aware that I severely over engineered it by using 2x4's as this thing is pretty damn heavy. Just figured I needed to share it with strangers. Not looking for validation or praise, just wanted to post it for shits and giggles