CABINET

MONITOR

CONTROL PANEL

COMPUTER

FINISHING

Plans were derived after looking at both LuSiD's and Brian's (link down) machines because in my opinion, they are very well constructed.   We used 5/8 inch particle board purchased from Home Depot to build most of the cabinet.

A jigsaw was used to make all of the cuts.  Wavy cuts were then corrected with a belt sander.  If you don't have a table saw and plan on cutting by hand, I highly recommend a belt sander.  You can easily take off large amounts of wood to fix errors or simply smooth the edges of hand cut pieces.  I recommend cutting the side pieces first and going from there.  Make sure you trace the first side piece once it is cut to ensure that the second is relatively close in size.  Avoid cutting angled pieces (such as the upper back piece) until you have something you can physically measure.  The calculations I did on paper for the angled pieces never seemed to work out and I always found myself re-cutting them again and again.

Large pieces were held together using 2x2 braces that were placed along the corners where the pieces butted up against each other.   If you're using a power drill to drive your screws (if you aren't, you're probably going to be really tired), a little extra pressure at the end can usually force the screw in below the surface of the wood.  This hole can then be filled with plastic wood and sanded off later.  This makes screws invisible when the machine is completed and painted.

That being said, I want to stress the importance of plastic wood (seriously.  don't laugh).  We ended up buying a huge tub of it, and it works wonderfully.  You can use it to fill in cracks, holes left from improperly placed screws, countersunk holes from screws, and rather large gaps.  Once it hardens, it's just like regular wood (but it's plastic. Get it?).  There's a really good case for plastic wood in the disasters section of this website :)

The boards for the front and rear of the cabinet were set in 1/2" to allow for a small lip around the edges of the machine.   A router with a slot cutter bit was used to cut a slot for t-molding along the edges of the sides.  The bit was purchased from http://www.routerbits.com.  Make sure you purchase a small bit.  If you get too big of a bit, the t-molding won't hold itself in the slot.  If this happens, you can use hot glue to hold the molding, but it's a mess and doesn't end up looking as good.  An inexpensive router was purchased from Home Depot ($50 bucks for a Skil Router).  We planned on using the router for some other parts of the machine too, so it was a fairly good investment.

We used the router to cut a few horizontal slots in the slanted piece on the back of the machine to allow for air ventilation.  These were later covered with screen material from the inside.

A shelf was placed in the front of the machine, just below the hole for the coin door.  This would be used to hold the Dreamcast as well as some internal configuration buttons. 

2x2's were placed along the sides  and across the top to hold the TV when it was mounted later.

After assembling most of the cabinet, it seemed somewhat wobbly, so we placed a 2x4 brace diagonally from the bottom of the machine to just below the TV brace.  This fixed concerns that we had about the machine's stability.

Here you can see that we used some small metal L brackets in addition to wood glue to hold the angled back piece.  The 2x2 braces that were used at the top of the machine are noticeable here.

Here you can see the 2x2 braces used at the base of the machine as well as on the front.