Old mame cab to JAMMA. Come poke fun at chopper's work from 10 years ago.

[chopperthedog]

Ah yes the first cab that started it all. Got this cab in 2003 in exchange for a pool filter motor bearing swap. The homeowner was an OP and he let me pick from a pile of like 30 cabs. This was the only cab that had all the main cab parts (panel, bezel, backdoor, marquee retainers and so on) but no other internal parts were included.





Once I discovered what the game started its life as my OP friend gave me a taito 10 yard fight marquee (yeah it's wrong but he didn't have the original).



I love the design on the glass, cool to think that it remained with the cab after all the years in service. The original steel control panel was completely f'd up. It had obviously been through at least 4 conversions throughout its life. When I got the cab it had a "Hit the ice" generic marquee (pictured below with letters removed) that had black letters applied. I ended up slicing the control panel at the bend and mating it with a chunk of a capcom panel.



Heh, my steering wheel mount. Was good for Daytona USA, Dirt Track racing and EA nascar 2003.



Full shot. I tried to remove some of the OP black. Didn't work well.







Thinking things through was not high on my list 10 years ago. The cab started with keyboard hacks after about 6 months I went to a couple game pad hacks. The one game I really miss that translated really well to an arcade cab is EA sports MVP baseball 2003, the 2004 version and beyond didn't play well on a cab. Yeah, I dabbled with pinmame and drilled holes got it all set up played it for a week or so and NEVER launched it again after that (got 3 button plugs for those  ).



LOL, you can see my relay just dangerously chillin there.



I do remember hurting my back trying to get that 20" crt in and set by myself.

So for 5 years the cab got hammered at my recording studio almost on a daily basis. Somewhere in 2009 it stopped booting, tried a bunch of things and could never get it to boot again. I'm too lazy to set up a computer again. I really do like this cab the high marquee puts the speakers above your head. The intimate nature of the control panel and fighting games sometimes leads to throwing some friendly elbows to your opponent.

-----------------------
http://www.paradisearcadeshop.com/en/

24.00   qty2 Blue IL Eurostick Joystick
18.00   qty20 Ultra Light Touch Microswitch
12.00   shipping
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http://www.jammaboards.com/store/

19.95   12A Arcade Switching Power Supply
134.95   *cou4gh*cou8gh*cou5gh*in*cou1gh*
10.95   JAMMA Full Cabinet Wiring Harness Loom
2.95   shipping
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222.80   total




Gonna gut all my stupidness and jamma this cab. Monitor and sound system test out fine and somewhere along the way I acquired a ninja gaiden marquee that will fit nicely. Got all items listed above on order. It'll be nice to have this cab going again at a minimal cost and effort.


good day.

[chopperthedog]

Got cab gutted of all except monitor and sound. Put in the Ninja Gaiden marquee and plugged the light in for a sexy shot of the lineup. Can't wait to get the packages.



good day.

[404]

seen much worse. Not CrapMame material IMO

[keilmillerjr]

It looks like a nice cab. I like the overall shape of it. You should definitely revisit it. Fill those pinball holes with material/glue/bondo and redo the control panel. Then deal with the electronics.

Edit: I read more carefully and now realize that you are revisiting it. 

[chopperthedog]

Received the board, ps and harness today. And the cab has been brought back to life. Still waiting on new buttons, but I really do like these IL joysticks.




Completely forgot I had that strip of red leds up there till I stumbled upon the wire while changing out the marquee light.



This ended up working well for separating and organizing the jamma harness mess. 


I'll report more in a couple days. On to some http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/741/40416 and poking through the game list.



good day.

[chopperthedog]

seen much worse. Not CrapMame material IMO

Yeah, it's not exactly full on crapmame but I find humor in some of my old methods.

It looks like a nice cab. I like the overall shape of it. You should definitely revisit it. Fill those pinball holes with material/glue/bondo and redo the control panel. Then deal with the electronics.

Edit: I read more carefully and now realize that you are revisiting it. 

It would have been a complete waste of time to even attempt to do anything cosmetically to this cab. I love it for the beat up battle scared solid piece of crap that it is.




Well, its been about 52 hours since the last update .... The 485in1 was a complete joke. If I was stranded on an island and it was my only option it would be ok. But in the end the thing sucked. Put a call to my micro center connection and snagged an i3 power spec thingy for a good price and decided to just start from scratch with a full .149 rom and chd collection.



For a change of pace from the same ole button shape I went with the competitions and I actually like them. I also ordered up a Turbo Twist 2 from GGG to occupy the space where the 4 way joystick used to live since my 4 way needs are covered on two of my other cabs.



Computer placement and new wiring.



Since the jamma wiring was already in place I ended up building a jamma A-pac of sorts with 6 pcb mounts and a chunk of plywood.



With a couple button brackets I was able to rework the method adding credits with a much more shorter travel.



I didn't care to re-think my wheel mounting system since it has worked well for years and mounts and dismounts in about 8 seconds. I did pick up a new Thrustmaster RGT force feedback wheel and needed to cut a new board to accommodate for the bigger body of the RGT. My old wheel was a cheap p.o.s., you could tell the centering of the wheel was handled by a bungee cord. It served its purpose on a budget though.



I also took the opportunity to used my failed pinmame holes with using the button plugs for a usb and power jack for the steering wheel. Shortened both of the wires to the wheel to keep it tidy.



I went with the RGT for the force feedback and the fact it's one of the last wheels to have the gas and brake on the wheel. With the i3 it been a treat to have a much more spiffy model 2 set set up and the addition of model 3 (which was a crack pipe dream on the old system) is awesome.



Soooo nice to have EA mvp Baseball 2003 back up. The fun part was spending 2 hours in my garage trying to find all of my original pc game discs and serials throughout the mass of boxes from when I moved out of my studio. I removed the red strip of leds and ordered a small length of RBG mixing strip and a new controller with a wireless remote from http://www.superbrightleds.com/. The remote has a nice capacitive touch ring for easy color mixing and it remembers the last color setting after power down.



I'm using this mala layout http://malafe.net/index.php?page=layouts&subpage=typer since I completely suck at graphic design (I'm only good at image editing) but I edited the right box to not have any separation lines within the artwork which allowed for a different artwork layout. I also ended springing for the emumovies subscription and getting all the artwork and HD game previews. It's good to have the old girl back better than ever. Thanks for looking.


good day.

[DaOld Man]

Nice work. No crap here at all.

[404]

I don't think its crapmame material at all although if it were mine, I'd fix up the original control panel

[CraftyMech]

Nice first build! Not installing a massive oversized slab of a control panel earns you lots of extra points.

PS - Nice collection of guitars!

[pbj]

My first cabinet was a Tempest that had been converted to Dig Dug, then converted to Black Tiger, and then finally converted to DJ Boy.  It was painted battleship gray and had a generic VIDEO marquee.  Biggest piece of crap ever.  So bad someone specifically mentioned it as "pretty damn sad" on RGVAC circa 2001.



No wait, I take that back, my first cabinet was a Jungle Hunt that had been converted to Final Fight.  I cut the cabinet in half in the parking lot and tried to cram it into a Mercury Sable.  It didn't fit.  I got the top half on the back seat, gutted the rest, and hauled ass out of there.  CRT neck broke on the first left turn.  The saw was returned to Wal-Mart.

[yotsuya]

No wait, I take that back, my first cabinet was a Jungle Hunt that had been converted to Final Fight.  I cut the cabinet in half in the parking lot and tried to cram it into a Mercury Sable.  It didn't fit.  I got the top half on the back seat, gutted the rest, and hauled ass out of there.  CRT neck broke on the first left turn.  The saw was returned to Wal-Mart.

 

[lcmgadgets]

  +1. My god that's funny!

That's no crapmame cab. The only thing wrong with it is the control panel 'artwork'. Great 1st build.