A brief backstory.
My basement arcade/man cave/kid cave consists of 4 Nintendo Cabinets and assorted other goodies.
My Donkey Kong cabinet is outfitted with an LCD monitor and a 60-in-1 board + scanline generator.
My Donkey Kong Jr is a vertical based MAME cabinet running MAME w/ Mala as the front end. It also has an LCD monitor and scanline generator. My Popeye cabinet was running WWF Superstars, and I had intended on putting in a 6-in-1 Jamma switcher. However multiple issues with the setup led me to putting in a Pandora's Box 3. I'm honestly quite happy with it, it also has an LCD monitor.
Lastly my Mario Bros cabinet (non wide-body), my crown jewel. It was MAME based w/ Mala as the front end. Like my DK JR it had a custom Mala layout and I was using a 21" CRT monitor. It was loaded with MAME + assorted emulators for console based games. It was a really cool machine. I had soooooooo many big plans and ideas for this machine. Some of which however were above my skill set and know how.
So recently the PC inside my Mario Bros failed. I tried to get it back up and running, but no dice. I had another PC laying around the basement that I bought way back off a buddy. It was used in a 4 player TMNT cabinet, and the PC itself had sufficient power to play Street Fighter IV. I got this PC all set up and my files moved over. However the PC would constantly crash. I was at a loss. I'm not familiar with things like overclocking, adjusting certain settings is just above my know how.
I was ticked off. This cabinet was special to me. And I was not looking forward to doing all this work again. Luckily in all this calamity of errors the original HDD had not failed. I was able to pull off all my data, including artwork, ROM's, the custom MaLa layout, video snaps, etc.
I decided I would do it all again, making it a bigger, better version of the Mario Bros I once had. It was an excuse (after like 7 years) to FINALLY complete and install my 2 Aim Trak guns.
So this isn't a true project in the sense of a complete top to bottom build, or restoration, just detailing the evolution of my cabinet. I'm hoping I can post in this thread about certain issues I'm having and perhaps get help with the problems as the present themselves.