All Scrab Arcade Machine With EeePC 901a

Cheap, small, portable, functional, all (almost) from scrabs to sweet our weekend.

Step 1: Make a Skatch-up of Basic Funcionalities

I wish to build a functional Arcade, not a semi-commercial one or a very decorated "serious player" stuff. Jut for a little fun with my kids some times distract my self a little. so it should be as small and BUDGET as low as it can be, for one day I probably just give it away to someone else, I already did this several times.

I want 3 or even 4 players options, but with only one set of arcade joystick, to save space.

I want CRT screen, to leave open the option of a light gun later.

I want an external PC and Speakers, to adapt to any situation, and easy access and exchange anything.

Step 2: Print a Board Cut According to Those Available in Home

I don't want to buy any new fiberboard, just measured what I currently have available, mostly pieces from previous projects, and scraped from other stuff.

I copied and colored each piece of my design on top of the measurement from scraps. then those are what i want to cut.

Step 3: From Scraps to Cabinet

You can see the above photos, every piece of wood are different, I don't care, it just fits. you will find video at end of this instructbale the process. nothing special, just for fun.

Step 4: Holes Are Little Biger Than My Drill Bit....

The only thing out of the plan is that the buttons are a little bit bigger than those I have, so a Dremel was on the play.

I cut a hole from backside to let monitor butts out, for ventilation.

The 4 stands are plastic bottle caps of 7UP.

Step 5: Very Old Stuff Re-using

An eeePC 901a has only 1GB ram, built in old 4GB SSD, Atom 1.6GHz, its too poor to run even office. I installed a windows 7 (retail version, also obsolete) 32bit and configured into "performance" mode.

An old CRT 15" monitor is jut fun to run, still not too heavy and quite small.

An old USB cabled Xbox 360 controller, since everything today is wireless, this one was unused for a while too.

A set of USB arcade joystick kit, pretty easy to install and good quality.

Step 6: Final Result (Hardware)

As you can see, the netbook gives USB power to speakers (backside of the screen).

The player 2 is using the XBOX controller, which has a tiny joystick too, obviously one is the transient of the other.

In the front there is a door open from above, for future upgrade, I am going to put Gun, and pinball buttons.

time of Covid-19 quarantine will give me time for all these kinds of projects.

Step 7: SOFTWARE TIPS

Since the EEEPC has none free space for emulator, I had to store everything into a SD card, fortunately the eeepc has such slot.

The only software I use here is the MAME plus 0.83 (Foros Indicedonkey), very practical and small size (200M), you can search the zip files in GOOGLE.

I tried many other versions of MAME they all have some kind of problem in 1G RAM system.

that's all folk! let's play!