Museumsteve's cocktail table

So I thought I'd share a project of mine from some years ago. I don't really have the tech knowledge of most of you here but I like to think of myself as a 'practical hobbyist'. I'll look at something and just make stuff up as I go along, sometimes it works

Anyway I bought a cocktail arcade table in kit form with a view to adding a PC and Mame but once as I was building it I kept thinking of other stuff to do.


I bought a 22"touchscreen for it as I fancied playing with touchscreen stuff and having a touchscreen jukebox in my racing room at the time.

I hadn't really thought the table through and ended up with 2 players on the same side, I felt this may be annoying if we were playing 2 player side by side hunched over the screen so the obvious solution was to motorise the screen so it could be upright when playing.

I found a motorised TV bracket and adapted it to fit inside the cabinet and after a week of swearing and a bit of blood it fitted. It took some head scratching to attached the screen to the bracket and keeping the screen looking complete from all sides.

Once this was working I thought I was done, but at around the same time I came across something that was new to me, digital pinball. So after a bit more head scratching I decided to install the software and add a couple of buttons to either side of the table, that was all good but I needed a plunger. My solution was to chop up a sealant gun for the plunger mechanism and hook it up to a leaf switch. Rudimentary but the spring of the plunger felt great and it all just worked. I added a CD slot to the front just to give me options for every occassion.

The video I took at the time wasn't great but gives you an idea.

Steve I cannot believe there are not more comments on your transformation. I have a soft spot for these old arcade game units (Space Invader, Astroids etc). I don't know how you came up with the idea to use a chalk/sealant gun for the plunger but you have inspired me looking around the house now at different things to use in unexpected ways.

Looks like a very nice table. I also built an arcade cabinet during Covid lockdown and had a ton of fun making it and now playing on it. I'd really like to build a virtual pinball to go next to it later on this year.

i made a bartop a few years back.
was an awsome project to build

it was running software like https://www.maximus-arcade.com/
and had around 2 tb of games on it from at least 30 systems