Arcade Punk reader, Didds, shares with us what can only be described as a ‘spur-of-the-moment’ build, and what a great looking UNIQUE machine this is! All you need is a spare monitor, which he had laying around, and an old PC or in his case, Pi.
After Didds built the cabinet using some quality tools, buttons and workmanship the left to do was install the Raspberry Pi 3 into the cabinet and hook it up to the screen and the controller.
The Raspberry Pi 3 is tiny so there is no problem in fitting it inside.
The next issue I ran in too was because I wanted to keep the pallet arcade as authentic as possible I used a 4:3 monitor and not a widescreen. These older 4:3 monitors do not have HDMI ports so I needed to use a HDMI to VGA Converter to convert the HDMI out on the Raspberry Pi 3 to VGA for the monitor.
You can still buy 4:3 monitors brand new but my advice is to look on eBay or Facebook buy and sell pages for an old one. You could use a widescreen monitor but these retro games do not look so great on those if you ask me.
The Joystick and buttons were simple to setup and pretty much plug n play with USB direct in to the Raspberry Pi.
The speaker setup was simple too with an RCA to 3.5mm jack plug from the monitor to the Raspberry Pi. – Didds
See the full scope of his project HERE on his personal blog.
