So... like I said, I am determined that this will be a complete machine!
More progress.
I had a 27" LCD monitor that is just slightly wider than the internal space of this cab. I figure it'll be good fit with some minor adjustments. I cut a square piece out of some sheet metal I had laying around, mounted that to the back of the monitor and laid it into place. With a little help from my son holding the unit, I mounted a 2x4 inside right up against where the plate was and marked the spacing to mount the square mount to the 2x4 (sorry.. I forgot to grab pics of this process. The blurry hard to see image is the monitor mounted from behind.
Once I got that all setup and tested, it was an easy process to set the pc to use 2 monitors & set Big Box to use the smaller monitor as a digital marquee. It works well & looks decent... but I think I'll poke around in the files and create some better fitting/looking images for the units I'll set up on this machine. (Thanks to Lathe for pointing me in the right direction on that one!)
So on to the new CP. The artwork & template came in. I cut my plywood and plexi to size and matched them up with the template in between so I knew where to drill. No bad. Slipped once on the 3" hole for the trackball :/... ended up with a few very minor scratches... <sigh> oh well... I don't think I ever played a pristine machine in the past anyway... I'll chalk it up to adding to the nostalgia I guess.
I also noticed that by the player 1 buttons, the top layer of the plywood cracked & split off <oops> :/... nothing a little wood glue & filler can't fix though.
Disassembled the "mockup" CP & re-installed all of the hardware onto the new & permanent cp..... I'm starting to think this is starting to look pretty decent.
I've ordered some light up LED buttons just to give this a little more pop.
Next steps:
1) Wire up LEDs
2) Think of a way to replace that incandescent bulb with an LED one. The incandescent just isn't bright enough IMO
3) Wire up the LED butons
4) Mount the computer inside the unit
5) Mount Smoke plexi to the control screen
6) Wire clean up
7) Remove creditcard info panel from the original Golden Tee machine & add new artwork there
create, print & mount permanent Top Marquee