I first saw MAME back in 1997, not too long after it was first released. I felt like a kid again seeing all of my old favorites, but playing on the keyboard just was not much fun to me. I played a few games infrequently, but I was most interested in the project’s main goal of documentation. Watching the progress of MAME still fascinates me; MAMEdev are doing an incredible job of keeping these games alive.
In 2003, I found BYOAC, and actually playing games on MAME became a possibility. I bought a cabinet and converted it to run MAME. Again, I was disappointed with the controls, which led me to build a modular control panel. This panel is the main focus of this website, and I really hope everyone enjoys reading about this project. It has been a lot of fun to build and play. I am thrilled with how it turned out, and I hope some of you will take on a similar project; it is definitely worth the effort.
I recently added dedicated cabinets to my never ending list of projects. I will try to write up my experiences with this side of the hobby as I try to learn how to fix and/ or restore the games.