CSE Arcade Machine

In graduate school, my friend Kevin built an arcade machine for our student lounge, and I helped.

We built the cabinet itself out of particleboard, MDF, 2x4s, and acryllic. I recall the acryllic in particular being a real pain to cut. It was painted with perhaps some of the last high-VOC oil-based paint sold in California.

The PC that originally powered it was scavenged from university surplus, as was the monitor. We wrote a simple PyGTK frontend for it that launched emulators for playing various console and arcade games. Eventually, both PC and monitor were replaced by a massively over-built gaming PC. The buttons and joysticks were hooked to the PC with a special joystick-to-USB PCB.

The arcade cabinet was really popular, so much so that the joystick reed switches were literally pulverized; I remember opening the cabinet to replace them to find the inside coated with fine plastic switch dust.

Thanks to the Internet Archive, some documentation of the project still exists online. The arcade machine itself still exists and, I’m told, is still being used by students.