Here are a few shots and a brief description of my MAME console.
Internals

The console base is constructed of some extra birch plywood that I had laying around, and a chunk of aluminum sheet that I had the sheetmetal guy at work bend up for me.
The finish on the panel was made before bending, by using a small sanding disc in a Bridgeport. That took a while, let me tell you! :)

The sticks are from Wico, and are a microswitch type manufactured by Suzo. They have an excellent feel, and were inexpensive. Only around 10 bucks apiece with shipping.

The main buttons are leaf switch type, which I prefer over the microswitch for authentic arcade feel when playing certain older games.

I made the spinner using parts from an old serial mouse, and an old printer. The knob is a piece of clear plastic rod that I cut off and drilled partway through to fit the shaft. The shaft and bushings that it rides in are from a small stepper motor that was in the printer. I machined a block of aluminum to make the housing for the bushings, and the other parts for the spinny part are all from junk I had laying around. The encoder wheel was from the printer also. I used it because the smaller wheels from the mouse had a shaft instead of a hole. So it was easier for me to mount it to the spinny thing. The bracket is a chunk of something, probably from the printer, that I cut off. I was originally going to glue the PWB out of the mouse to the bracket, but changed my mind after I used the zip ties and it worked. Its not like the console is riding in a car, it sits on a desk.

The internals of the console are old-style PSX controllers that I bought at the local used video game store for 6 bucks each. I disassembled them, scraped contact area and soldered my wires directly to the board. From what I hear at the Build Your Own Arcade Controls website, cheapie aftermarket PSX controllers have more area for soldering and so would be easier.

The PSX controllers interface to the PC using the MegaTap adapter from Simon Nield's' page. It is simply a 4-way PSX adapter that is reassembled to contain a small power supply, and to connect to the parallel port on the PC. The interface is completed by using the DPad Pro drivers available at BYOAC. A side benefit of this setup is that I can use PSX controllers to play PC games as well. In a few of the PC games, the Dual-Shock even works with a little tuning of the settings in the WindowZ control panel.

To go back to my other cool stuff click here.