Poll: More time spent: Building cab/Playing cab

[DirtyDachshunds]

It's a curiousity question.  For a lot of people on this site, the fun is building the cabs more than playing them.

For me I've spent more time building.  But that is rapidly changing since it's done

How about you?!

[Paul Olson]

I am going to be building a new cabinet for mine this summer, which will be the first time in many years that I have worked on anything other than wiring. My modular CP was designed for a Konami 4- player cab, so I may rebuild that as well so it doesn't look like an add on with the new cab. So, I am guessing that I will be building more than playing for the summer. I honestly don't play on the MAME cab all that often. I have very little time to play, and I have 13 dedicated cabs and 3 pins in the garage. Most of the time, I will play one of those for a few minutes instead of firing up the MAME cab.

I am looking forward to building again. The last time, I just built the CP, so this will be my first time building the cab. I think I am going to do something similar to a Silver Strike Bowling cabinet since I am now using a 32" LCD. I just need to make the monitor rotatable without making it too ugly. I think I will try to make it height adjustable as well. Kinda like an upright/ candy hybrid.

[Jack Burton]

Playing. 

I got pretty lucky in my setups.  I converted a Mortal Kombat to a MAME cab. The cab was not working, so I removed the electronics and added a new control panel, mounted a PC monitor, and installed a PC plus I-pac.  Later on I connected the cabs speakers to the amp of a set of PC speakers. 

Overall I'd say I had about 10-15 hours of work into the cab, and I played it for a good 300-400 hours before taking it apart again once I got my next setup. 

[Dartful Dodger]

I voted playing.

I’m not counting:
The first two control panels I drilled/wired
The time I spent setting up the original computer
The time I spent building a cabinet from scratch before I decided to just buy a cheap cab
The time I spent programming/downloading the versions of MAME I didn’t use
The time I’m going to spend to update to newer versions of MAME

[gaffner]

I voted playing.

I’m not counting:
The first two control panels I drilled/wired
The time I spent setting up the original computer
The time I spent building a cabinet from scratch before I decided to just buy a cheap cab
The time I spent programming/downloading the versions of MAME I didn’t use
The time I’m going to spend to update to newer versions of MAME

To me, all of that is time spent building a cab.  Part of building a cab is making mistakes.

I voted building.  It took me about 20 hours to get my cab to a workable status, but about 5 years more to get a cab that I'm proud of.  I'm finally at a point where I'm playing more than I'm building, but I figure it's going to take a LOT of playing to make up for all the time I spent building over the years... 

[DirtyDachshunds]

To me, all of that is time spent building a cab.  Part of building a cab is making mistakes.

I agree, that is all part of the process.  Building is most of the fun...and frustration

but playing is fun too 

[BobA]

I voted for building because I have built 1 supergun 2 jukes, and 5 bartops with more on the way.

I spend more time setting them up and finalizing the software than actually playing games.