I built this MAME cabinet in 2010 using plywood, an old CRT, and a bunch of electronics. I got the plans from a website that no longer exists.
I bought all of the wood from the hardware store and started cutting it according to the plans.
After getting the main pieces cut, I started putting them together.
For the control panel, I cut the wood according to the specs and started outlining the holes to cut out.
I painted the control panel, overlayed it with plexiglass, and started adding the buttons and joysticks. You can get everything you need from websites like https://shop.xgaming.com/
Added a trackball.
I installed the joysticks but I made a mistake. The square base was supposed to go under the wood instead of on top. I had already cut the hole so it was too late to correct. I started adding all of the wiring to the main controller board here.
I painted the rest of the cabinet and installed the CRT.
To be able to power on the CRT, I had to be able to use the remote as the CRT IR receiver would be completely covered by the bezel. To do this, I removed the IR transmitter from the remote and soldered wires to extend the transmitter all the way to the front of the CRT.
I then soldered connections from the power button on the remote to a button on the side of the cabinet to act as a power button to turn on the CRT since I wouldn't have access to the back of the cabinet.
Next was installing the light for the upper MAME graphic.
Adding speakers for sound.
After that, it was just making some finishing touches and routing the wiring.
And after putting everything together and hooking up all of the electronics and wiring, we have a full-fledged operational MAME cabinet!
I used a laptop to connect to the CRT and stream the video. I also downloaded a MAME emulator and over 3000 ROMs to play. It was so fun to play all of my old favorite games that I grew up with.
If I were to do this again, I would probably change the type of material the cabinet was built with. The cabinet was SUPER heavy to move around so I'd probably go with MDF instead of plywood. I would also get a MAME specific monitor instead of using a heavy CRT. That would take out the need for doing all the extra work for the remote IR and power issues.