So ... I bought an old and broken arcade cabinet from Gumtree recently.

Below are some photos of my progress (or lack of progress)

 

The glass is old and scratched. The bezel (purple bit) appears to be simply painted on the back, and has began to come away. Originally my thought was to replace the glass, but due to costings I have decided to overlay a new printed bezel over the top and then a piece of 2mm perspex to sandwich it all together. (photos to follow)

The control panel had been used a lot, the springs in the buttons damaged, the joysticks not always registering  - most of the micro switches had seen better days. The wrap that was around the (stupidly heavy) control panel looked old but not retro. I decided to replace all buttons , joysticks and wrap.

I used DC Fix Chequerplate sticky back plastic (Blue Peter style) that I bought from Wilkos.

I now feel that ANY other sticky back plastic idea would have been better due to the chequerplate being quite thick. This made it quite difficult to bend, and the stickiness of the adhesive wasn't always the best - Using a hair dryer to heat up the wrap did help.

I also replaced the buttons with LED Buttons from this ebay user.  I powered the LEDs using a USB cable that I cut and connected the black and red wires to a home made loom.

The joysticks I bought from another ebay user (I can't find that user now). I decided to go with the Japanese-style because I personally feel it looked more retro. This turned out to be a problem as the original mounts for the joysticks did not match. As a result of this, I now have 4 allen key bolts visible on the control panel - it think it looks ok.

all of the buttons are connected to an old ps2 keyboard controller (with a usb adapter),  this will most likely be replaced with 2 usb native controllers  but for cost I have not changed this as of yet.

The guts of the arcade is currently an old windows pc I had lying about. This is running Mame and works surprisingly well. I will be replacing this with my raspberry 2 in the next few weeks. This will then run RetroPie to include thousands of games. The change to using the Pi was decided as the pi runs on 5 volts and is quiet

Screen would have originally been a CRT old style TV I imagine, I have mounted a 22inch flatscreen monitor in its place which is displays a clear image but I would be lying if i denied that some part of me would like to have the original CRT style. Currently mounted vertically, the screen looks great for games such as pacman and donkey kong.  My idea is to allow it to be easily changed between vertically to horizontally to play games such as Street Fighter in full screen

The control panel will eventually house 2 usb ports to allow myself to charge a phone / plug in another controller. This will allow people to play up to 4 player games.

Audio jack will also be added to the back of the cabinet to allow the arcade to be attached to my room speakers (to integrate spotify into it). I am debating on added a coin mech.