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I want to build my SNES cabinet now.

Well, the CP is now attached, got to put on the wings, monitor mount- just a bunch more woodwork, which doesn't make for good pictures.

Not sure if I mentioned this already, but it now has an Athlon XP 2600+ instead of the P3 rig. The motherboard was smaller, and space is limited. Same videocard, same amount of RAM (just faster), different but same-sized hard drive. It will mount behind the CP. Not underneath, behind, in the main box. It'll also have a big foot thing underneath so it won't tip over. I was originally going to put extra weights in it but my dad was like "no put a foot on it like the tv stand" and i was like "oh cool why not".

I still have to disassemble the monitor and rip out the button board. It will have to be moved because of the bezel. Also, going to wire the controls soon.

Pics on request, because I'm lazy and there's not much to take pictures of.

After removing the stand, I couldn't figure out how to take the monitor apart at first. I thought there were screws under the stickers and the back came off. It's actually held together by clips, two to each side. There's one screw as well, which gave me issues until I figured out it was there. The bottom and side clips were easy to find and release but I couldn't figure out where the top ones were. I think I just brute-forced it, amazingly I didn't break anything.

Anyway, I had to relocate the button board and sand down the face. This monitor (Philips 170S) has a ridge where the buttons are which would interfere with the bezel. I got a little overzealous and sanded off quite a bit, but oh well. Relocating the button board was pretty easy. I had a sort-of mate for the connector coming out of the monitor- mine was 9 pin, the one on the monitor was 7 pin and the keys didn't line up. I just ripped the top (bottom?) part off my connector, and it fits now. In retrospect, I probably should have just filed off the keys. The connection is kind of iffy, but it does work. I used some joystick cable I had laying around from when I built my DAPA cable. Anyway, I have to pull off the hot glue and make the wire go the other way.

The current plan is to put the button board, along with computer power switch and volume control, under the CP box. It will be hidden by the face of the box but easy enough to access.

Progress is slow, but it's coming along. There's still some electronics to do, and stuff has to be mounted eventually. There's a whole flux of woodwork to go, though. It's not as close to finished as it looks; the front CP box is maybe 75% done and a marquee box is going on top. Oh, and it has to be painted after that. I plan to use a roller, to give it a bit of texture. Not only is the texture similar to the plastic on a real cab, but it hides mistakes to some degree too.

It still looks pretty much the same!



At this stage, the CP can be painted and some of the electronics can be done. Maybe I'll cut out the motherboard tray tomorrow.

I actually can't wait to see this finished.

Me too. It's actually really boring for me, since my dad does all the woodwork and we haven't got to the electronics yet.

From my understanding, the monitor mount is half built. I can't be sure, though, because I only sort of get how it works. The bezel I don't get at all, but the two are related somehow.

I don't have any pictures, but I might get some soon. The monitor is a nice size for this cab. There is like an inch on the top between the edge of the viewable area and the top of the cab, a significant portion more on the bottom because of the (now removed) control panel on the bezel, and a few inches on each side. It's big, in a good way (if you look at an actual candy, most of them have disproportionately sized monitors).

I also ripped apart the PC. The motherboard, videocard, hard drive, power supply and some cables went in a box- these will go in the cab. The rest goes in the box with all the other computer parts. The motherboard tray will be hacked out of the case and inserted in the back of the cab, behind the CP. This will also be modified to mount drives as well. The power supply will go underneath. I wish I had a better one, though. This one is garbage and the next upgrade will require a better one. The thing is, the PSU has to be modded- power is tapped from the PSU's switch and mains input to power everything else.

UPDATE (started post, did work, finished post):

Ripped apart the case, turns out that the mobo tray is useless. The motherboard faces the back or the side, so it's near impossible to plug stuff in. If it faces the back, the mobo is in the middle and there is nowhere to put the HDD. So we built a hardboard motherboard tray. I learned that my dad's idea of precise is even worse than mine. Screwing the motherboard in was incredibly sketchy. We hooked it all up and it still works, thankfully. I removed the bracket from the videocard, and it is now very low profile. The hard drive got moved to the monitor mount, and now there's plenty of room to plug things in.

We also had to rethink our power distribution scheme. The box we bought was the wrong kind, or something, and wouldn't work for some reason. We had a cube tap, and both adaptors and the screen can plug in to it. Unfortunately, we wouldn't have any room to grow. So I had a brainstorm and grabbed a 3-way 2 prong extension cord (the cheap white kind). Now we have an extra outlet (two actually, but one is nearly useless) and it saves some space in the bottom. The power bricks go on the opposite side of the monitor mount from the hard drive.

The paint job on the CP is done, at least the white part is. It's not that great, but oh well. A week of use will probably trash the paint anyway. The plan is to have a blue stripe going across and up, with a piece below the monitor painted blue and the blue stripe down the side. Or something like that. It would be nice to have CANDYTOP in white inside the CP stripe, but there's no way I could mask it that good. My dad mentioned tranfer lettering, I should look into that. Maybe even a sticker would work? It's too small for the vinyl sign cutter at school to do reliably, and I'd have to wait until September anyway.

I thought about putting an s-video jack on the back, but why bother? It's not like we're going to hook it to a TV. An input would be a lot more useful IMO. The case had a neat unit with USB and audio connections. I think I'll hack it a bit if necessary, and put it under one of the side pods. The headphone jack will go to the speaker headphone output. Maybe a sticker on the side would be in order? A network jack will be on the back for sure (wireless is nice but we don't have a wireless network adaptor), and maybe a single USB port as well (I have one extension left). Power and the main power switch will be there too, of course. The monitor control board, power switch, and volume control will go under the CP box. I'm not sure where to put the reset switch and power/reset LEDs or even if I want them.

On a semi-related note, I found a 12ft s-video cable. Not the component one I wanted, but now I know that 12 feet is long enough.


Testing using the semi-broken 17" CRT. It's a big piece of flux but the viewable area of the LCD is bigger, I think. The keyboard is an Aopen Spill Resistant Keyboard (just a cheapy) and the mouse is a horrible Zoltrix (WTF?) piece of garbage that amazingly still works. It has a ball, that's how old it is. We do have a mini-keyboard, which is horrible to use but fits nicely inside, and a small but very much usable little mouse.


For some reason I really like shots of open computers like this. You can see the motherboard on the tray, videocard with slot bracket removed, and the switch assembly from the case. The hard drive is hidden behind the cable- it's just sitting there on the monitor mount. The power supply will go where it sits, obviously not at an angle and loose! I should probably find a way to support the monitor cable- it's heavy and the videocard is only held in by the AGP slot.


Monitor mount, which I still don't really understand. It should work. Still need to get some bolts for the VESA mounting holes. The monitor will stay in its (modified) case, but no stand. Neither the monitor nor the videocard support DVI, so it's VGA all the way. Generally it works fine with lower resolution signals, but I'd still feel better with a pure digital signal.

It actually is looking quite good so far.

As for the monitor cable, (this isn't a really good solution, but its there if you cant find something better, which you should be able to)

You could always cut up half a small-ish computer case, which would have the bottom (where the motherboard sits normally and the board where the user-visible peripherals come out of. Simply for support, You don't need the whole case, only 2 of the walls (Or even a third wall also, I guess the third wall would be a part of the top of the case (if its an upright tower case) just to hold the 2 walls together without collapsing), which would be under the most visible parts anyway (you glue, or screw in the case (or both) into the hardwood to hold its place.)

Thus saying that aswell, If you choose to expand it (like another sound card, etc) it will give more strength to the motherboard to keep it up right and in a solid place.

Mind you, If you think of another way of holding the cable up without ripping out the video card, dont use my idea, It sucks, I know.

Anyway, Good work so far, Awaiting to see how this will turn out.

I considered it before. There isn't enough height between the monitor mount and the motherboard to put anything there. I do have some plumber's tape (strapping), so maybe I'll use that somehow.