Cabinet
The original Doughcade cabinet was based off of Lusid's cabinet design and plans, but this time I wanted a smaller and sleeker cabinet. I decided to buy the Ultimate Arcade II plans from Mameroom. I not only bought the plans, but also the cutouts so I could avoid doing any major measuring work. This was well worth the dough. However, shortly after I completed the Doughcade II, Mameroom decided to come out with pre-cut building kits. UGH! I really could have used that. There is nothing I hate more than cutting MDF. It is the nastiest stuff and gets everywhere! When you cut MDF, it turns into a super fine powder.

I followed the instructions provided in the plans to a T and the cabinet came together surprisingly easy. I was able to do everything myself without the assistance of anyone to hold pieces for me. I wanted to use the same method of painting the cabinet as the first Doughcade, so I again used a can of wall texture to give it some bumpiness and finished it off with a high gloss black paint.

The plans give you an option to use laminate on the left and right top panels. I really liked the two-tone look of this and I had some pretty good luck in dealing with laminate when building control panels. So I ordered up 2 huge squares of navy blue laminate. Before you put this on, you must basically get the cabinet to an almost completed state and then put the cabinet on its side to put one laminate panel on and do it all over again on the other side. This proved to be challenging since I had to move the construction to a different room (one without a gas burning furnace--BOOM). Once the laminate was on, I borrowed a friend's laminate trimmer and completed that portion of the project.

I finished off the general construction of the cabinet by putting in a 24" fluorescent light fixture from Home Depot for backlighting of the marquee. Just in front of that, I mounted the speakers from the "Creative Inspire 2.1 2500" speaker kit with L-brackets. I followed that up by using black duct tape to seal around the speakers so that light would not leak through the speaker holes.

I finished the cabinet off by mounting the volume control on the right side of the cabinet, mounting the monitor control panel inside the keyboard drawer, putting drink holders on each side of the cabinet and putting a hook on the right side of the cabinet for a pseudo-holster for the light gun. I also put speaker grilles from Happ Controls over the speaker holes above the monitor.

The Monitor
My last cabinet had a 21" computer monitor. I started off this project doing the same thing, but after reading a review on the Wells-Gardner D9200 from Retroblast, I was convinced I needed this 27" beauty. I called Wells-Gardner customer service and asked if they had any refurbished units in stock. I was able to get one for $380. It arrived shortly after and I brought it down to the basement (by myself again) to see how this baby would perform. Now, I am kind of a wimp when it comes to dealing with high voltage so I was VERY skittish in handling this beast with no case around it. Careful handling paid off and the monitor worked perfectly out of the box.

After doing further research on the D9200, I noticed that a company called Ultimarc had created a video card that would emulate lower frequency refresh rates to really give this monitor the old-arcade feel. I ordered this baby up and after some minor tweaking of the MAME ini files with MinWah's Monitor Resolution Tool I had a totally new appreciation for this monitor.

My neighbor Reed and I mounted the monitor in the cabinet with some added strips of wood to get the perfect angle and cut the monitor bezel I had ordered from Happ Controls to fit perfectly. It was really starting to looks sweet.

The Marquee
I designed my own marquee in Photoshop just as I had done with the original Doughcade. The only difference this time is that when I took it to Kinkos, I found out they have a new backlit material they could print it on. Excellent! The printing only cost around $25.00. I sandwiched 2 pieces of Plexiglas around the backlit material and made sure to apply a bit of spray mount adhesive to prevent any sliding around. It fit on like butter with the Happ Controls marquee retainers.

The Control Panel
My next duty was to get the control panel together. Mameroom has control panel plans, but I wasn't really fond of them. I have found that a control panel is a very personal piece of the arcade. I LOVE my design, but others are comfortable with something different. So I decided to stay with the exact design as the second control panel I built for the first Doughcade.

The only thing different about this one would be that I would use two joysticks instead of three. The reason I used three joysticks on the first Doughcade was that I needed two 8-way joysticks and one 4-way joystick. Ultimarc to the rescue! I found the T-Stik Plus joysticks on Ultimarc's web site that claimed to be 4-8 way switch able from the TOP of the control panel. You just pull up and twist! GENIOUS! I got them and they performed better than expected. Switching from 4 to 8 way couldn't be easier.

PC Interface - I also ordered the Ultimarc IPAC4 for my PC interface. This thing is hot. Very easy to setup and the programming utility for Windows makes configuring all the buttons on the control panel SUPER easy.

Spinner - I used the "Model 3" spinner from Oscar Controls. I think I could have spent a little more and got a spinner with a little better feel, but the truth is, I don't play a lot of spinner games, so it hasn't bothered me too much.

Trackball - I am using the Happ Controls 3" trackball with translucent red ball. I backlight the ball with a 4 LED cluster powered by the 12V lead on the computer's power supply.

Misc Parts & Pieces
Coin Door - The coin door is such a hard piece of equipment for me to buy. I really don't use it, but I think the cabinet looks ridiculous without one. I got a simple multi player door from Happ Controls ($93).

Light Gun - I purchased the Act-Labs light gun. It worked great on the D9200 monitor until I put in the ArcadeVGA card and then things went bad. The thing wouldn't work any longer. Thanks again to my savior at Retroblast and to Andy Warne at Ultimarc...they set me straight. Apparently the Video Sync board in my D9200 was an old revision. I needed Rev D for the light gun to work properly with this combination. I called Wells-Gardner and they were gracious enough to do a warranty swap for this part and once I switched that part out, we were up and running without a flaw! Act-Labs has since stopped making this light gun and I would really love to have another one. If someone isn't using his or hers please let me know. I would love to take it off your hands.

Coin Door Lights - I got on this big trip with LEDs and found that if I switched out the 12V lamps behind the coin door with red led clusters I would get a brighter and more vibrant coin door. Not a huge deal, but in all honesty, it was a pretty good improvement.

Emulator Front-End - My last cabinet used EmuLoader, which is a sweet program, but now that I have a monitor that doesn't go above 800x600, Emuloader wasn't looking very good. I am now using MAMEWah. It is really sweet, but was kind of a pain to initially setup. It isn't for the non-tinkerer. I also created my own skin for it. I thought that was a pretty cool feature.

Dance Dance Revolution Pad - A friend at work turned me onto DDR and I thought that would be an easy upgrade to make the cabinet that much better. It works really well, and they neighborhood kids think its "the bomb yo".

The Future
Now that the Doughcade II is over a year old, I am going to begin trying to expand its capabilities. Here is my wish list of things to do...

• Run more emulators rather than just MAME
• Get another Light Gun installed
• Install a voice processor and microphone and turn it into a Karaoke box!
• Find a good jukebox front-end to play my MP3s over the network

If you can think of anything else, please let me know!