Buying a cabinet. What to look out for????

[nigel1210]

I'm about to buy an arcade cab and was wondering if there are any features or things i should watch out for.

The supplier has quite a few cabs to choose from so he is sending me pics. This is the kind of spec i'm going for:

20" Rotatable Monitor(have no more room for a larger unit)
2 Player
6 Buttons per player

Any tips or suggestions?

Cheers

[Apollo]

I would suggest getting a 25" monitor. I know you said you dont have enough room but you will avoid rotating ( a major pain in the @ss ) and it will only add a few inches of width.

[mahuti]

Really, most of the stuff is cheap and easily replaceable.. especially if you aren't trying to find a working unit.

That being said,

Parts removed from components you think are working (some of my coin doors have been missing parts)

Insects.

Water damage in odd places.

Cabinets that aren't structurally sound, or have visible screws in the outside of the cab.

Missing back panels
 
If you want to use the controls that come with, make sure the joys are the type you are looking for, 8 vs 4 way, leav vs. microswitch. Same with the buttons. I have cabinets with mixed microswitch vs leaf buttons.

The way the control panel attaches. Is it metal or wood. If you want to mod the existing control panel, most people find the metal ones more difficult to modify. (I say, just build a new one anyway)

I try to make sure the monitor is installed in the machine, so I can swap the mounting brackets on a TV. I like using TVs, and finding mounting brackets is tough.

When I buy a cabinet, I try to get a cool looking cabinet, and I don't worry about the components AT ALL. I just make sure the cabinet isn't going to fall apart when I put it in my van. I bought a machine that did almost fall apart when I put it in my  van, once. I would do it again, though. It turned out to be a really fantastic cab when I restored it.  

[nigel1210]

I would suggest getting a 25" monitor. I know you said you dont have enough room but you will avoid rotating ( a major pain in the @ss ) and it will only add a few inches of width.

So do 25" monitors not need rotating, to play horizontal and vertical?

Also would a 25" cab fit through a standard door.

[mahuti]

None of them NEED rotating. They can all play horizontal and vertical games. If you want to play vertical games (originally made for a 19" vert monitor) at FULL size, though, you would need a horizontal monitor that is also about the same height as the original vert monitor.

I don't think it's a big deal, though.

[nigel1210]

I thought you had to put the monitor on it's side to play vertical games. otherwise the game will look like it's on it side?

[paigeoliver]

I thought you had to put the monitor on it's side to play vertical games. otherwise the game will look like it's on it side?

You can make game turn it and run it with black bars on the side (this is actually the default).

Cabinets with 25" displays often are not any physically larger than ones with 19" displays, as a 25" monitor just barely fits inbetween the sides of the "standard" sized cabinet.

20" is not a standard arcade monitor size in the US, but is common in Au (although Sega used to use 20" models on US cabs in the early 80s).

Factory cabinets with straight up rotating monitors are almost unheard of (except for generic "candy/metal/plastic" modern imported cabinets from Asia.

Cabinets with some provision for rotating the monitor are a bit more common. About one in 3 of my games have some factory provision for swapping the monitor to the other orientation. But it does take tools.

I would personally look for the nicest looking, most complete cabinet you can find that has a WOODEN control panel. With a wooden panel you can rebuild it however you want easily. Modifying metal panels is much tougher, as is rebuilding them.

[kevin]

By default, MAME will scale down vertical games so they fit with the correct aspect ratio on a horizontal monitor.. Imagine a widescreen movie turned on its side, I guess. MAME also has options to display on a vertically oriented monitor at the proper size if your cab is built that way. If you're planning on using actual game boards, I don't know of any that are compatible with both horizontal and vertical monitors.

As paigeoliver said, most cabinets do not have the ability to rotate the monitor easily enough that you would do it regularly. I have a Dynamo cab, and it's built so that the monitor can be rotated by unscrewing 2 wingnuts, pulling the monitor forward out of the cab, rotating it, and sliding it back into place. I'd say it's a 2 person job, and after doing it once I plan on leaving it in vertical orientation for the rest of its life.

-Kevin

[paigeoliver]

Something else that is semi-common in early 80s IMPORT cabinets (read "Made in Japan" or "Made in China") are ones that allow you to rotate the tube without taking the actual monitor out of the machine.

On these the monitor either doesn't actually use a frame, or it has a weird frame, on either kind you can undo the bolts that hold the tube, and rotate it 90 degrees and bolt it back in place without pulling the entire monitor. I have seen this on Artic/ATW cabinets (Made in China) and on SNK cabinets (Made in Japan). Of course all that assumes the cabinet actually has the original monitor, which is often not the case anymore.

I personally think rotating monitors are overrated. I don't like going through a lot of trouble to switch games, I would rather just have more than one cabinet.