Scored a free Atari Road Blasters Cab...what to do what to do

[predator314]

Sometimes it's sad when your friends get married...sometimes it's great...especially when they don't have room for all their toys.  One of my friends got married and I inherited his Atari Roadblasters cabinet... and the thing works! (somewhat).

Everything powers up and after the monitor finally decides to warm up, I get Atari Roadblasters on the screen.  The picture is not very clear though.  There are a bunch of lines going thru the screen (not burn in).  The model of the monitor seems to be a G07-CBO (19" I think...I measured 18" from corner to corner).  I'm assuming a cap kit could maybe fix my monitor problems? Any thoughts here?

The control panel doesn't work because whomever my friend bought the game from, had cut the wires from the CP to the game.  So basically I have this kick ass wheel with a few short wires coming out the back.  Not sure if the wheel works or not, but it looks like all the pieces are there if I can figure out how to wire it up.

Now I wouldn't mind just having the original Road Blasters sitting beside my Mame cab (WIP), but I'd hate to waste that 270* wheel on just one game.  Any chance Mame would support the Road Blasters wheel?  If that would work and I decide to go the MAME route, will I have trouble interfacing the G07-CBO  to a PC?

Another option I'm contemplating would just to do a 2nd MAME machine that I could sell.  In this case, I would probably scrap the monitor, control panel, and the boards and sell them separately.  I'm just not sure how much to ask for any of them.  Any thoughts here?  I would probably also sell the entire machine after it is finished (unless I fall in love with it).

Anyway, I'm excited to do something with this cab as soon as I finish my current cab.  I'm spending the night at my parents tonight, but I'll take some pics and post them  up when I go back home tomorrow.

[TOK]

Its a cool game, try fixing or trading it, don't ruin it by MAME'ing. Someone on the klov.com forums would probably trade you something that'd make a better MAME cab.

[Harakiri]

I would definitely trade it for a Candy cabinet to a collector.

[BadMouth]

Eh, if you're using the original controls & monitor and not adding buttons or altering anything, you aren't really doing any harm.
Keep in mind you'll only have a gas pedal and two buttons to work with.
See if there are even enough games you could play to make it worthwhile.

Road blasters actually used an optical wheel like 360* games, but limited it's travel to 270*. 
Assuming it works, you'd use an Opti-pac or Opti-whiz as an interface to a pc (it's basically a spinner).

I have no experience with it, but Ultimarc sells a video card that works with arcade monitors.
http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html
There are other ways to do this, but they aren't as easy.  Search and you'll find info.

I'd try to get it working first.  You'd definitely be able to trade it for something more flexible or sell it for enough to add stuff to your mame cab.

[predator314]

Yeah, I think I've decided to just try to fix it and leave it as a Roadblasters cab.  No real sense in having 2 full sized mame cabs anyway.  It's going to be my next project once I get this Mame cab built.  I think the first thing I want to do is try to get the controls working.  Any idea where to start there? I am a complete newb in this area.  All I have is a couple of cut wires and I have no clue where they go.  I'll do some research in that area very soon.