Neo Geo MVS Restoration

[jay_red]

First post on this site, but I have used it in the past for information on wiring arcade sticks and such, but thought I would post this up.

After wanting to pick up an MVS cab for quite some time, one finally came across Craigslist for a good price, listed at 250 OBO with a possible motherboard issue, I set off to to check it out with an offer of $200 in mind. I checked it out, and it was in pretty good condition, and it had Metal Slug 5 included. After he accepted my $200 offer, I was the proud owner of my own MVS cab!

Here it is the night I got it. Not too bad of shape, but still needed some love.





It was 100% complete, straight from an arcade, there were still quarters scattered everywhere in the cab! After checking out the motherboard issue, it ended up with a Backup ram error due to a leaking battery. After a few days of attempting to fix it, I gave up and decided to get a replacement. Even though the cab is a 4 slot, the board was a 2 slot. I ended up getting a mv-1b from ebay for a good price, and got the jamma adapter  to fix the sound.

During the time of trying to fix the board, and waiting for stuff to come in the mail, I decided to strip the cab and fix/repaint everything.

First thing was the control panel. I removed everything, and washed all the buttons and joysticks. I then got the metal panel ready for paint, and used Rustoleum Hammered black, and it came out great!



After trying to sand it down, I realized it was a vinyl wrap, so I went on removing it all. It took hours of time, over like 3 days to get it all off. What a pain!

For paint, I searched around about the color, and found that the Behr Grenadine red was the best match, so I got some of that in eggshell enamel from Home Depot, and proceeded to roll it on.



I was pretty happy with the results, not the smoothest, but it looked pretty good. Around this time I got a little ahead of myself, and decided to try to get the cab inside with no help from anyone, and long story short, these cabs are very top heavy... Disaster struck, and it was back to square one of prepping for paint again.




The damage doesnt look too bad, but it was enough to require me to do everything over. Nothing broke thankfully, the monitor and board were all ok.

This time, I decided to do the paint even more legit than last time, and I finally bought a spray gun for painting. I spent days re-prepping everything for paint, sanding and filling in damage. I sanded the whole thing to redo the entire paint. After playing with the gun, I got some amazing results. Smooth, flat color that is very close to the original.


I did the black with a random can of Rustoleum Semi Gloss Enamel I had left over from something, and it turned out well, I didnt get any pics of that process though. Today I finally felt it ready to move into the house, I played it safe and borrowed a dolly, and a helping hand to move it. It safely made it into the house, and I got it all set up!




All that is left is to order the t molding, get the vinyl side graphics, and oh yeah, get some games! If you have any questions about the process feel free to ask, I kind of really shortened the process, and skipped some minor parts. After seeing this cab next to my first Mame Project, am inspired to make that cab much more legit, I cut many corners, and basically made it "functional" and that was it.

I knew before I even got my own MVS, that I would not keep the standard american parts for long, now that I finally have my cab in my house and all repainted, its time to swap out those parts. Putting in sanwa buttons is no problem, dremel the holes out a couple of MM and you are set. As for the JLF, I had been looking into what other people did, the easiest option, was to either use a JLW, or take the JLW mounting plate and place it on the JLF plate. Well I have already put too much money into this cab, and I wanted to see what I could do on the cheap, and set off to make my own adapter plate.

I started with a baseplate from an unneeded Hori Wii fightstick, it was the perfect thickness to be easy to cut and drill, but plenty sturdy. I used the IL joystick base to trace the shape, and mark the holes for the mounts that are on the control panel. I then used the Sanwa baseplate to mark the holes the stick.


Went pure eyeballing it on this one, just kept placing down things and making marks. I drilled all the holes larger to allow for fine adjustments if needed.


For the hole in the middle, I had no way of cutting out a circle, so I just dremeled a larger square, it will be covered with the dust washer so it didnt need to look pretty. I used tin snips to cut out the shape of the plate, cutting that tiny square in the middle used 2 cut off wheels for each one!


Had to run to homedepot for some hardware, the only thing I had to buy for this.



Both sides mounted in the panel, one is a real JLF, the other is a madcatz knock off for now:


What the finished product looks like next to the sanwa buttons, I still need to figure out wiring it up, I might make a harness to splice into the MVS wiring.

[Paladin]

I know what it's like when you just want to get a cab inside even though you know you should wait for help!  You turned disaster into victory though, the final paint job looks great!  I also like your ingenious joystick adapter plates.  I was thinking of doing the same for my Sega Naomi cabinet that has Happ sticks but bought a new panel instead with 6 buttons per player and new overlay.

Keep up the good work!