Bartop Arcade Cabinet - Part 5: T-molding
T-modling gives the arcade cabinet that nice finish on the edges. I have chosen bright red that match the joysticks.
Bartop Arcade Cabinet - Part 4: Control Panel
The most important and fun part of the arcade cabinet is the control panel. It consists of two joysticks and eight buttons per player. On the sides of the cabinet there are two additional pinball buttons.
Bartop Arcade Cabinet - Part 3: Skeleton
After all the boards were cut I could proceed to construct the skeleton of the cabinet. It turned out to be a time consuming task.
Bartop Arcade Cabinet - Part 2: Cutting the boards
With the finished design I could proceed with cutting of the boards to correct dimensions.
Bartop Arcade Cabinet - Part 1: Design
After deciding to build a bartop arcade cabinet I had the option to buy a prebuilt kit or create everything from scratch. I have chosen for the latter as I though that it would give me more freedom in design and in the end more satisfaction.
Sawing and painting area
When you don't have a garage or a barn where you can saw and paint you are forced to be creative in creating an isolated area for that purpose. I have made such an place and would like to share it so maybe you will find it useful.
Debounced clock circuit
The most important part of a computer architecture is a clock circuit. The circuit described here has the option to run freely in a-stable mode and also operate in single step debugging mode. In this post I will describe how to implement this design in KiCad and manufacture a double sided printed circuit board.
Etching 555 astable timer PCB
There is something about blinking leds. Numerous projects are created with the 555 timer chip. To continue the tradition I will describe in detail the creation of a 555 astable timer board that was designed in the previous blog post.
Designing PCB with KiCad
KiCad is a great schematic and PCB design tool. It is easy to learn and fun to use, above all it is free. In this blog post we are going to design a simple circuit based on the 555-timer chip in astable mode.
PCB fabrication - Part 2: Etching
After the dry film is applied to the copper layer, it can be etched. There is an option to use ferric chloride (FeCl3), but it can not be reutilised and needs to be disposed.