Hey, great thread... if I had seen it earlier I would have given you a heads up on the Phoenix side art, but fortunately you found out about it.
I too have been working on maming a Jedi (that's got to be a quote from the dark side!) for about 15 years now! Back in the day, the pots in the yoke were my main problem - they are not compatible with a PC, so you have to find ones that are. An old hack was to use the pots from a PC analogue joystick called a sidewinder. I still have one upstairs... another incomplete project! A big part of the reason why I didn't swap the pots was that the yoke would no longer work with the Jedi PCB.
Anyway, put that project to bed and roll the clock forward 15 years and I came across RAM controls. I know they have had a lot of bad press and a lot of people apparently got burned, but they manufactured some amazing things - one being the PC interface for the Yoke.... At last I had a way to keep the arcade pots but still be able to attach the yoke to a mame PC.
You can still find sellers with them in stock - but catch them while you can, RAM controls wont be making any more of them. The PC interface is very impressive - very well made. I have tried it with a number of games - obviously Star Wars... I had to tweak the mame settings a lot but I eventually got it working really well. ROTJ is ok but the version on Mame isn't 100%. Empire is great. Some other games that worked really well included Out Run and Space Harrier. I also got good results from Fire Fox. It is quite funny trying it with random games such as Gorf and Pacman... the results are mixed! Some games just don't work - sadly Pole Position was one of them. And the front end... I love the Star Wars front ends linked on this site, but I plan to go down the Hyperspin route - and include as many quality games that work with the Yoke as I can.
Last year a ROTJ came up in the UK at a good price. The cab was missing all of the artwork and was quite beat up. Truth be told I originally bought it for spares but then I figured to breath new life into and go down the Mame route.
So first step was a full yoke rebuild... It amazing how much better it is with a good internal clean, new springs, new bumpers etc. If you rebuild the yoke, I would advise against removing the brass bushes - they were a mega pain to take out and put back.
Next, full powder coat - every bit of metal bar the blue sides were coated. The powder coaters couldn't match the blue on the sides and they would have stripped the texture, so I opted to have these sprayed by a body shop. The result is great and the colour almost identical to the originals.
Next to go was the vinyl. A complete strip - back to bare wood. I took the cab apart.. I couldn't see any other way of doing it properly. Then a lot of filler and sanding. A LOT. I used 5 tins of P45 (bondo). It took forever, but the end result was a smooth cab and all corners restored.
A mate me helped re-route and then time to re-apply new black vinyl. I tried lots of types of black vinyl and by far the best match was black pica from Happ Controls. This is really expensive but it is virtually an identical match to the original Atari finish. I was really concerned with the vinyl and how well it would bond. I tried a few methods and recorded my results here:
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=304789&highlight=black+vinylThe best result was a combination of auto body primer and 3M 94 primer. Best tip for applying vinyl - make temporary plugs for all of the cut outs.
And this is where I am... Side art and a new Yoke overlay have been ordered from Phoenix. The one thing I am still missing are the control panel decals - I don't think Phoenix will be doing these. I actually have some NOS ones but I don't want to use them - I would prefer to keep the in case I need to scan them and print new decals myself.
I have one initial question... why are you keen to replace the monitor with a VGA? I pondered for a long time regarding which way I should go with the monitor. Because the main games I wanted to play are Vectors (SW & Empire), I thought LED/LCD would give the best result. But the trouble is that ROTJ looks cr*p on anything but an arcade monitor. So I have finally decided to stay with the arcade monitor. It's a pain - needing a specialised video card, and isolation transformer etc but I think the results are worth it. I am actually putting in a burn free arcade monitor that I sourced before Christmas.
When it is finally complete, the ROTJ will sadly be sold! Only because I still have my old one from 15 years ago - so I will repeat the process on mine. But my Jedi will be dual purpose - running both the arcade boards and mame. Plenty of room to hide the mame pc in the base of the cab, so you wont even see the mame PC when you open it up. It might take a while to sell the mame Jedi because it wont be cheap... the cost of the black vinyl alone has cost hundreds of dollars...
I hope I am not hijacking the thread but I have two questions for the forum... and they are related to your build...
Apart from those games already mentioned , what games folk think might work well with the yoke?
What spec do you recommend for a Jedi Mame PC? I want something quick starting (so SSD) and it has to cope with the games suggested.
I will def keep tabs on this thread and see how you get on. If I can help with anything just ask.
Good luck!