advice needed on what to do with my cabinets

[severdhed]

Hey guys, i need some advice here.  I currently have two mame cabinets. i have my first cabinet that i put alot of work into and i am fairly attached to it. It is a 2 player cabinet with two u360s and a 3" trackball, with a 19" LCD monitor.    my second cabinet is a Donkey Kong cabinet, running mame set up for vertical 4way classics.  the cabinet is in decent shape, but needs some bondo and paint work, as well as some new artwork.  I was just about to gut this cabinet and try to restore it, but keep it running the 30 or so games in mame.

well, here is my dilemma... first of all, the PC i have in the DK cabinet died....bad electrical smell, dead power supply and motherboard.  COming up with a new PC shouldnt be that difficult, i can probably piece one together pretty cheaply.  however the real issue is that we are currently trying to eliminate clutter from our house.  the cabinets are in our family room on the main floor of the house.  we have two small children (18months, and 3) and are talking about trying for a third here before too long.  we currently have a 3 bedroom house, and we are running out of space.  We have been getting rid of stuff we dont really need, and although she would never make me get rid of my cabinets, my wife has made it very clear from the day i brought the DK cabinet home that she really doesnt want it in the house. 

the whole reason i wanted the DK cabinet is to have a cabinet where i could set up a dedicated 4way to properly enjoy the classics.(u360s are great, but it just isnt the same).  the control panel on my 2 player cabinet is 12x30", which doesnt leave alot of space for a 4way stick.  i dont think i could make the panel much larger without it looking awkward. 

so...here are my thoughts...

i used to have an empty  25" cut corner dynamo cabinet that i gave to a friend when we moved to this house.  to the best of my knowledge, this cabinet has been sitting in storage ever since i gave it to him, which was over 2 years ago.  I also recently acquired a 27" sony flat tube CRT television with component inputs...i initially had planned to eventually use this for a playstation 2 based light gun cabinet, but i just doubt i will have the room for that.

so, here is my new idea...

im pretty sure i can get the dynamo cabinet back from my friend, i would have to do some measuring, but i am hoping that if i decase the TV, i may be able to get it to fit inside the dynamo cabinet.   i could then try to track down an video card that does component output(i have seen a few cards that have a dongle that allows for component video, i'm just not sure if i could find an AGP version at this point in time or not) and set this up as my main mame cabinet.  i could build a larger control panel for it, ideally a 4 player panel with a trackball and 4way stick, and that way i could end up with a single 4 player cabinet with a decent sized screen that could do everything, and then get rid of the other two cabinets.

it would be difficult to part with my first cabinet, since i have put so much work into it, and i named it after my oldest son. but i have felt bad about not having one named after my other son, and if we have another child, it would only be worse.   is this a stupid idea?  do you think i could get that 27" TV in a cabinet designed for a 25".  do any of you know the inside width of a 25" dynamo cabinet?  and do you think i could put a 4 player panel on a cabinet like that and not have it look stupid?  i know i could always just stick with a 2 player panel with the trackball and 4 way, but i'd love to just make it a 4 player panel if i could.

my wife is very on board with this idea...she absolutely hates the DK Cabinet for some reason.  she even said that if i could find a way to get the other cabinet upstairs to the kids toy room, i could keep it as well...as long as there is only 1 cabinet on the main floor of the house.  i hate to get rid of the DK cabinet, but it seems to be more practical to only have 1 cabinet. 

i guess if the tv wouldnt fit, i could try to build a cabinet from scratch...i'm just not sure if i am capable of that.  i dont have a garage or any good place to build it other than my driveway, and my woodworking skills are just not that awesome...so i'd rather modify an existing cabinet if at all possible.  i'm hoping the dynamo will work since i can probably get it pretty cheap(hopefully for free).  then comes the other problem of what to do with the DK Cabinet.  if i do decide to get rid of it, i'll post it on here before i would advertise it anywhere else. i paid $50 for it, i'd like to at least break even...i think that is a pretty decent price on a DK cabinet in relatively good shape.


so, what do you guys think?

[erictrumpet]

Well, here are some thoughts.

1. I have a 31" wide control panel on my cab that incorporates a true 4-way, dead center, in front of the trackball. Works well. Try it and see!

2. I had a 27" TV that fit inside a narrow (25" width) NBA Jam Extreme cab that is the donor for my cab. I eventually ditched the tv because it looked like crap, but it did fit, decased, in a cabinet that originally had a 25" arcade monitor in it from the factory.

3. The narrow (25" width) NBA Jam Extreme cab was originally a 4-player machine, with a wide CP. When I mamed it, I changed to the narrower 31" width cp, but the original was wide and did not look goofy.

4. Do not get rid of the cab that you are sentimental about. You'll regret it.

Good luck with your decisions and growing family

Eric.

[severdhed]

i guess i should talk to my friend and see if he still has the cabinet and would be willing to part with it first...if so, then i would need to get some measurements to see how much room i have to work with, and i would have to decase the TV and see how much room i will actually need to mount it.

here is the TV i got from my friend...

http://www.mediacollege.com/equipment/sony/tv/kv/kv27fv300.html

i will have to remove the case to get it to fit since there are speakers on either side of the screen


i figured that if i use component video the picture quality should be fine for mame (i hope).  i could also install a playstation 2 in this cabinet to be used for light gun games (also, since it is a standard TV, i may be able to get the guncon 2 guns workign on the PC for mame gun games)

i think no matter what i will try to keep the original cabinet and move it upstairs (should be fun).  it is a pretty narrow cabinet designed for a 19" monitor, so it should fit... then i need to decide if i should keep it a 2 player general mame cabinet, or change it somehow.    i could just get 4 cheap happ sticks to put in my new cabinet, or i could use my u360s for players 1 and 2, and get two JLWs for players 3 and 4...that way i could play qbert.

i'm still not sure how to go about getting rid of my DK cabinet though...i doubt there are many forum members close by here that may be interested...

i am just so torn.... i like my DK cabinet, but i'm not sure i have the skills to restore it properly, and even if i did, the control panel is a little too low to be comfortable for extended playing.   i guess i could make a slightly larger 2 player panel on my existing cabinet and try to add the 4way stick...but i can't help but think it would be better to have a 4 player panel and a larger monitor.    both of my boys love to sit on the bar stools and mash buttons on my cabinets..i can't help but think that in a few years, we could all be playing some 4player TMNT together.

[drventure]

Hmm, You might consider revamping one cab (maybe the smaller one) as a kids cab, themed appropriately and move it to the kids room.

Then, put your 4p cab downstairs, but consider redoing the skin to tone it down from a full out arcade cab to something that might blend in more with the decor.

I totally agree with your 4p comments. For the whole 15 mins (it seems  ) that my cab was playable, me, the wife and my 6yo had a blast playing tmnt and trog, among others.

I'd definitely say go for a 4p!

[I/O]

Moving the DK upstairs should be easy with a dolly and a friend. I might lean toward that.

[severdhed]

i am leaning strongly towards moving my main cab upstairs into the kids toy room and doing a 4player cab in the first floor family room.  moving the DK cab upstairs really isnt a good option.  the DK cab is only for 4way classics, which doesnt seem to attract the kids as much as the adults that come over, so setting it up in the toy room isnt going to work..plus then i would have just my main 2 player cab that is really too small for a much larger control panel.  i can't get rid of that cabinet due to sentimental reasons.

i think i will email my friend to see what the situation with that cabinet is, plus i also found a virtua tennis cabinet on craigslist for $25 that is listed as "needs put back together"...no pics or anything, but i contacted the guy for more info. 

i just hope i can find someone who wants the DK cabinet.

as for making something that looks more like furniture..i don't think i can do that.  my wife doesnt mind having an arcade cabinet in the house as long as it is sitting in the corner out of the way.  i could only fit one cabinet in the corner, so the DK Cabinet has a more prominent location in the room.  she is the one that suggested keeping my zakman cabinet and moving it up to the kids toyroom and said she doesnt mind if i build a larger cabinet to put in it's place, as long as the DK cabinet goes away.

[severdhed]

well, i am making some progress now.  I talked to my friend with the dynamo cabinet, he hasnt touched it since i gave it to him two years ago.  I even made it easy on him, all he needed was a monitor and controls, i already had a pc set up in the cabinet ready to go and he just hasnt been motivated...so he said if i want it,i can have it. i will hopefully be able to go over an evening this week to get some measurements.  i did not get a reply from the guy on craigslist.

i took the pc from my DK cabinet to work with me to see what was wrong with it.  the motherboard and power supply were dead.  fortunately I fix computers for a living..my boss had tons of spare parts at the shop that really arent much good for normal use, but for a mame cabinet, they are perfect.  he had an old socket 478 motherboard (abit is7)sitting there, as well as a Pentium 4 3.0ghz processor. i . he had a big stack of 256mb dimms (ddr400), fortunately the board has 4 ram slots, so i got 1gb of ram in it.   so along with an old case and an 80gb sata drive i had lying around, i got a fairly decent mame pc setup.  he also hooked me up with a 256mb agp radeon x1650 card that has component video output.  most of these parts are not really viable for use in a real pc for anyone..so he said if i didnt use them, they would just sit there and rot.

so i havent had a change to connect the pc to the TV, and the TV is currently sitting my my kid's bedroom...so that will have to wait until tomorrow. i did however connect the pc via component video to my DLP projector and it came up at 480i and was fine...so feel pretty positive that it will work on the TV. 

i started planning out a 4 player panel, but i'm not sure how big to make it...i dont want it to be too big.  we have a 4 player panel at work that is 48" wide,  but it is showcase style with a 36"  monitor...i dont think a panel that size would work too well with a 27" monitor in a standard type cabinet.  players 3 and 4 probably wont be used that much, so if they are a little uncomfortable, who cares.  i think i can fit everything into a 40" x 18" panel, but i need to make a cardboard version and test it.

so, in order to keep the wife happy, i'm going to get rid of my donkey kong cabinet.  i'm going to make a thread in the BST forum, if anyone is interested, let me know.