"Where do you get this stuff?" The next biggest hurdle was finding suppliers for all of the parts I would need. Dealers that sold arcade supplies were an obvious choice, however to my amazement I found that there were quite a few vendors out there who catered to the Mame scene. Here is a break down of all the parts and materials I assembled for the project:

Cabinet: Since I was building my own cabinet I had to decide on what type of wood (or wood-based product) I was going to use. Kyle's plans suggested using 3/4" particle board for the main cabinet panels and pine for many of the other pieces. I instead decided to go with 3/4" MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) for the cabinet panels which I picked up at my local Lowes home improvement store. I chose MDF because its very easy to cut and work with (doesn't splinter like real wood or chip like particle board), is a bit more moisture resistant and it would give a very smooth appearance on the outside. This was important since I would be covering the cabinet with a vinyl laminate (more on this later) and didn't want grain from real wood showing through from beneath. One disadvantage of MDF is the weight - this stuff is heavy (accidentally dropping a sheet on your foot would not be a good thing). However I was not too concerned about this since a cocktail cabinet is fairly small in comparison to a full upright arcade cabinet, therefore I thought that the total weight would be manageable. Finding the right vinyl laminate to finish the cabinet in was not easy. The vinyl laminate on the original Pacman cocktails was of a wood grain type finish - I later on discovered that this particular laminate was called Presidentail Walnut. Happ Controls use to carry this but can no longer get it - they did have another wood grain vinyl laminate for sale but it was kind of pricey (sold by foot which would have ended up costing me around $50.00). Quarterarcade.com also sold this stuff but their pricing was not any better. So to make a long story short, I eventually found a vendor named Parts Express (an audio and speaker components dealer) who offered rolls of wood-grained vinyl laminate that looked close enough to the type used on Pacman, and was very reasonably priced ($9.88 for a 20' roll - more than enough to cover my cabinet).

Other parts that would be necessary for the cabinet were the glass top, glass top clips, underlay artwork, monitor bezel, and cabinet latches. Game Cabinets Inc and TwoBits.com both sell the cocktail cabinet glass top for $100.00 (as well as a few other vendors - some for $120.00), however I found a guy on Ebay who sold them for $70.00 (the Ebay "Buy it now" price which included free shipping!) which is where I got mine (and it was a perfect fit). Sorry I don't remember what his Ebay user name was but you can probably find him if you do an Ebay item search using the words "Pacman" and "glass". The underlay artwork was purchased from TwoBits.com - kind of pricey but they were the only vendor I could find that sold this so I think they kind of have a monopoly going on. The glass clips and cocktail cabinet latches (for the inside) came from Arcadeshop.com and the 19" monitor bezel from Happ Controls.

Wood grain vinyl laminate for the outside (inexpensive and a close match!)	One of the most important parts of all!	Bezel for 19" monitors from Happ Controls (needs to be trimed)	Glass clips and latches from ArcadeShop.com

Coin Door: The coin doors on the original Pacman cocktail games were fairly small since they only had only one coin entry slot. Initially I had thought it would be a piece of cake to get one these either through Ebay or through an arcade parts dealer - well, I was wrong! These are very hard to find (at least in my experience). Several dealers I called didn't have any and also stated that they rarely saw them unless they were already in a cocktail cabinet. I did find one for sale on Ebay, but it was in poor shape and didn't have the frame. So, rather than waiting around for weeks or months to find one I decided to exercise my loophole and buy a substitute part, which is this case was a Midway coin door that came out of a Ms. Pacman game (purchased from Ebay). The Ms. Pacman coin door (which is actually used in lot of other Bally Midway games) has two coin entries so it is larger in size than the original Pacman coin door, and fortunately the one I got was in very good shape! No dents or bends in the metal (usually from some hoodlum trying to break in) and all the wiring was intact. All it needed was a new paint job and dress plate (see the 'before' and 'after' photos here). I also decided to replace the original coin mechs with ones that could accept either U.S. quarters or .984 (25mm) arcade tokens (Happ Controls item # 42-3070-00). Other than looks its not necessary at all to use a coin door when running Mame, but I wanted to have the complete arcade experience in my own home, so I decided that I would hook up the coin switches in the door to the I-Pac encoder so that you would need to insert a quarter or token in order to play a game (perhaps I'll install a token dispenser next to my cocktail game?).

Monitor: Getting an arcade monitor to work with a PC is not exactly an easy task, but fortunately my research led me to a company in Chicago named Wells Gardner. Many arcade monitors past and present are CGA resolution (i.e. good enough to run arcade games but not Windows) and you'll have to wire your own connection to the VGA output of your video card. But Wells Gardner has an arcade monitor called the U3100 which already has a standard VGA connection and can display video up to 1024 x 768 in interlace mode. So this was the obvious choice for me. Normally the U3100 sells for around $350.00 or more brand new, but I was able to pick up a refurbished unit (with a 90 day warranty) directly from Wells Gardner for $160.00 (plus $14.00 for the power cord , $30.00 to have a WG technician adjust the monitor for use in a cocktail configuration, and of course the shipping charge). A big thanks to Jeff Herman who gave me the tip on the refurbished U3100's! Coincidentally, Jeff is also constructing a Pacman/Mame cocktail machine and has a very cool Web site detailing his progress.

My Wells Gardner U3100 19" arcade monitor fresh out of the box!	Rear view of the monitor - notice the standard VGA connection cable in the lower left.

Controls and interfaces: Early on in my research I kept reading about something called the "I-PAC". I found out that this is a keyboard encoder that was designed for use with Mame and apparently has a reputation of being a high quality and reliable product. It is not the only encoder out there that can be used with Mame, Hagstrom Electronics also makes one that looks pretty good, however for my needs and budget (not to mention all the good reviews I read) the I-PAC seemed the way to go, so I purchased it from www.ultimarc.com. I addition to the I-PAC Utlimarc sells an interface for Trackballs called the Opti-Pac (which I also purchased) and quite a few other products that can be used with Mame, including arcade controls. Two that caught my attention where the T-Stik and the 2 1/4" trackball. The T-Stik can be used as a 4-way or 8-way joystick by flipping a switch on the joystick itself (this would save me the trouble and control panel space of having dedicated 4-way and 8-way joysticks), but another feature of the T-Stik that I really liked was the small footprint! The mounting plate is only 2 1/2" wide which is smaller than most other joysticks - this would help to maximize the number of controls I could get on the panel. The 2 1/4" trackball was also a space saver *and* so reasonably priced in comparison to other arcade-quality trackballs. Incidentally, Ultimarc was out of the trackballs when I placed my order, but I found out that Wico sells the same trackball so I was able to order it from them. The original Pacman-style start buttons were purchased from www.arcadeshop.com which is another arcade dealer that has a lot of hard-to-find parts (including the 6" x 9" shielded speakers and speaker covers used in many Midway cocktail games).

For the control panels themselves I went with reproduction Pacman panels sold in a blank configuration by www.arcadeshop.com. At first I had thought I would need to do a custom job on the CPs due to the all the controls I planned to install, but fortunately as it turned out the Pacman CPs were just large enough (11" wide) for my configuration! I was also planning on sending them to ArcadeDepot for drilling (since I didn't have a drill press and all the saw hole bits I would need), so I worked up a full scale drawing in Microsoft Visio to send with the panels showing where I wanted the holes drilled and the sizes needed (okay, here's my 'plug' for ArcadeDepot - Scott and his team are the greatest!). This was a great way to not only visualize how the control panels would look, but also to determine if the controls I wanted would all fit in the available space. BTW, www.arcadecontrols.com has the Visio templates for creating your own control panel design. The templates didn't have T-Stiks, 2 1/4" trackballs, or the Pacman start buttons, so I had to draw my own from scratch - if anyone is interested in these let me know and I'll be happy to send them to you or put them up on the site for download.

I-Pac encoder and Opti-Pac interface - critical pieces of the puzzle!	T-Stiks from Ultimarc.com with top washers painted black (to match the control panels)	2 1/4" trackballs also from Ultimarc.com (one shown without the plastic housing)	Visio drawing with specs for my control Panels	And here are the completed control panels from ArcadeDepot - excellent work!

Computer system: As I had previously mentioned, the computer system that I was going to use was made up mostly from spare PC parts that I had in storage. The only things I needed to buy were the video and sound cards (which I ended up getting from Ebay for very cheap). Here is a breakdown of the hardware:

Component	Make/Model	Comments	Photo
System Motherboard	Tyan S1846 S (Tsunami)	I've had great results with Tyan boards in the past, so I didn't hesitate to put one in my machine. This board has the ATX form factor.
CPU	550 Mhz Intel Pentium III (slot 1 type)
Memory	Corsair PC100 (two 64MB sticks)	This is one of the memory brands that Tyan recommends for use with its motherboards (which I have used in the past without problems).
Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar 23200	Actually a test unit I acquired some time ago (when I worked for WD) and is still running strong. I really didn't need a large capacity drive since the system will only be running the OS, Mame software and ROMS, and a few utility programs.
Sound Card	Creative Labs PCI Sound Blaster (model CT5803)
Video Card	Matrox G400 (AGP)	This seems to be the card that a lot of users have had good results with when using a real arcade monitor (and is one of the recommended cards in the Official Mame FAQ)
CD-ROM Drive	Generic 16X CD-ROM Drive	Sufficient for the job. Not needed to run Mame but may come in handy if I need to load system software or drivers.
Power Supply	Generic 300 Watt PS	300 watts should be sufficient power, although I may consider replacing it with a more quiet model.
Keyboard	Generic mini PS/2 keyboard	For those times when configuring the OS and/or Mame requires extensive typing. At first I was planning on somehow keeping the keyboard inside the cabinet for easy retrieval, but ultimately decided against this (now I'll just plug it into the MB when needed).
CPU Fan	Generic PIII CPU fan	Does a sufficient job of keeping the CPU cool, but I may replace it with a quieter model.
Case Fan	Evercool 120mm all-aluminum case fan with safety grills (model FAN-AL-12025B-AB)	This is the fan that will be mounted on the bottom cabinet panel to bring in cool air from the outside. I chose this fan because it had a lower sound decibel rating (i.e. quieter) and greater air flow than other fans the same size.

Sound System: This is another part of the project where I could have done things in a dozen different ways. First thing I needed was a sound card - nothing too difficult to consider here, just needed something that would give me good sound, was reliable, and would fit in a PCI slot. So I went with a Creative Labs Sound Blaster - it was easy finding one for cheap on Ebay and I have never had problems with Creative Labs products in the past. The more difficult task was deciding on what speakers to use and how to amplify the sound. A lot of people seem to go the PC Speaker route, that is, they buy an inexpensive set of powered PC speakers, rip the components out of the plastic casing, and mount this into their cabinet. This does seem like an easy and viable solution, however I wanted to at least try to be a bit more authentic before resorting to this. And if I wanted to be authentic (as was my objective) then I only needed to install one speaker instead of two (which is what the original Pacman cocktails had). So I started looking for an appropriate speaker, which in this case would be 6" x 9" and it had to be magnetically shielded (so as not to cause interference with the monitor or other PC components. You'd think such a thing would be easy to find, but I could NOT find one anywhere (and I spent at least a couple of weeks searching)! I finally located some at Arcadeshop.com - actually I had already known that they sold 6" x 9" speakers, but what I didn't know was that they were shielded (this little feature is not mentioned on their Web site). Too bad - this would have saved me quite a bit of frustration! Anyway I purchased two of these (one for a spare) and the speaker grills (another hard to find part).

The other problem was figuring out how to amplify the sound. Whatever I chose had to be small and compact since there is not much space inside a cocktail cabinet. But while doing my research I stumbled upon a tip at another great Web site (www.mameworld.net) that would solve my problem - use a car amplifier! This sounded great as the car amp would not take up much room and could be powered by the PC power supply. So I ended up purchasing a new 150 Watt (75 Watts per channel) car amp on Ebay for $20.00 which had a very small footprint (a little bit larger than a deck of Uno cards - check the photo that has a U.S. quarter for comparison!). I'm sure that 150 Watts is more power than I need, but my speaker is rated at 8 ohms and most car amp wattages are rated for speakers at 2 or 4 ohms, so at 8 ohms I will be getting roughly half the power of the amp (and the model I purchased also has a gain control that I can set so that the speaker is not overdriven).

Pacman Cocktail-sized car amp for the sound system	6" x 9" shielded speaker and speaker grills (also for use on the vents)

Software: Okay, I'm not sure if software should be included in the 'parts' category, but since software is a major component of the system (and I didn't really want to make another button on my navigation menu) I decided put the info here. Since the Mame source code is available to anyone to tweak and play around with, there are at least a couple dozen (if not more) ports of Mame available (a good place to find these are at www.mameworld.net). I haven't tried every port out there, but the one I like best so far is the DOS version of AdvanceMame, mainly because it has a plethora of configuration options (especially for video including direct support for my Wells Gardner U3100 arcade monitor). For the front-end software I chose AdvanceMenu (available from the same author as AdvanceMame) again for the sheer number of options it has (I like having choices as you can probably tell). The OS running on the computer is Windows ME (yes, I freely admit it). In my opinion Windows ME has got to be the worst computer operating system known to Man, hands down! So why did I use it? Well, convenience I suppose. It was already installed on the WD hard drive I have, which saved me the trouble of installing and configuring a new OS from scratch. So far it has not given too much trouble (probably because of the minimal amount of drivers and software installed on the drive), but if it does I'll probably have to switch to something like Windows XP (which is, in my opinion, a rock-solid OS).

Parts and Material Sources: I get a lot of email asking where I bought certain parts and materials from. Most of that information can be found in various places throughout the pages of my Website, but to make things easy I decided to consolidate all the information into this table complete with links (if available).