The retro PC has finally found its new home where it should be living for next so many years... So now that all the base pieces had been painted it was just a simple task of screwing everything together and enjoying the view, or was it? First of all I went about screwing in the back board into the baton frame on the right hand side, this was extremely difficult at keeping it straight as it was the first 2 pieces connecting and it was only myself with a slightly skewed piece of wood trying to keep everything in line. After taking me around 20 minutes to pilot drill and screw in 5 screws I thought this project is going to only get worse, but after getting it upright and chucking it into the corner of my living room I managed to get a fair amount of help from my wall to stop the unit from sliding around while I was trying to put the remaining 5 screws in. Continue reading to see some more pictures and how the rest of the build has gone so far.

As you can see from the image above some of the parts of the cabinet have all ready been cut with the marvelous skill of our woodwork technician at my workplace. I've not had all the pieces cut yet as I need to measure up how the cabinet will look once full built so I have the base parts which all need screwing together before I continue. The design has changed slightly to make it easier to create and move around my house, the main change is the side panels are 2 pieces of MDF glued together and held in place via a strut. Also some of the angles of cuts have been changed to give more space within the unit for cables and ventilation along with the roundness being remove to give a more retro feel. Keep reading to check out some more pictures and a wee mention about painting:

As you can tell from the above picture and the title my little Retro PC is getting a big make over. There isn't too much to say about it at the moment but I will be covering each phase briefly with a full summary at the end of the project (which shouldn't hopefully be to far away). I will be posting up a larger planning article soon with references to other arcade cabinets and how I went about my scale drawing along with what I needed from my design, so until then sit tight with the above tease...

Welcome to part from of my not so long lived Retro PC... You will learn more about that soon. Well I've got it all running and setup with MAME and the Model 2 emulator (you can see running). I've fully updated the PC along with drivers for the mouse and Xbox Gaming Wireless Receiver, I've not setup much else on it at the moment and you will understand why in another article coming soon! Overall its working pretty well with a few problems on hanging at bootup for 1min sometimes, I think this is something to do with a dodgy ram chip I'm using. I've still got another hard drive which needs putting in and a new sound card as you can see I need to use an Air Freshener to enable sound (the front port is dodgy and the rear is dead). But once these are sorted thats about it.

So that ends the chapter of the Retro PC, it was short, it was loved and now it's turning into something bigger! I've currently got it setup for quick pick-up and play but all this is going to change soon...