Sega Naomi Driving cab to mame conversion

[Jess--]

I have had a pair of naomi universal cabinets laying around for a while now
they were a crazy taxi high roller and a club cart prize

the crazy taxi cabinet was converted to a pc based driving cabinet a long while ago with the controls being handled by a hacked usb analogue joystick.

the club cart was intended to be converted to another pc based driving machine (for head 2 head play) but with the death of my old mame machine those plans have changed and it is now being converted to a standard naomi universal cabinet (2 player with 6 buttons per player)

here is how the cabinet looked when I started (it had spent 2 years stored in a chicken shed and even though the chickens couldnt get to the machine the dust had made quite a mess of it)


there are quite substantial differences between the naomi driving and naomi joystick based cabs (some I knew about and some I didnt)
the biggest difference is the control panel and all of the support structure.
luckily I found a user on sega-naomi.com that was attempting the opposite conversion to me who had the parts I needed and wanted the parts I didnt need so we agreed to swap parts for the cost of shipping.

while waiting for the parts to arrive I decided it was a good time to check that the monitor and sound system were still in working order
everything appeared to be working ok until I gave the monitor a signal at which point it started flashing and then shut down (removing the signal fired the monitor back up)
after a lot of head scratching I realised I had not reconnected the adjustment board (h size / position etc)
once the board was reconnected it fired up perfectly (a little screen burn but nothing that concerns me)
the sound system sounds pretty good too.


the panel structure arrived and has now been fitted to the cabinet, here is where I found out the other differences between the driving and joystick panel based cabs.
the joystick based panels sit around an inch lower then the driving panels, this means that the subwoofer and coin door has had to be  removed to allow the new panel to be fitted, the sub will have surgery to remove an inch from the height to allow that to fit back in but I am not sure what to do about the other side where the coin door was.


in the mean-time I have also ordered a complete net-city panel insert to replace the confidential mission panel that is now on the cabinet, this will be wired to an Ipac from ultimarc, I have used these before and never had any issues with them so I dont see any problems this time

[mgb]

That should be a pretty cool project.
I look forward to watching the progress.

[NIVO]

that new panel looks choice Jess.