My Neo Geo Cab Conversion

[dax]

I finally uploaded some pictures of my cabinet.  I know it's lame compared to most everybody elses, but it might be useful to show an example of a Neo cab hack that minimizes destroying the integrity of the original cab.

I purchased this cabinet for $250.  I have had it operating as a Neo cab for a few years and I finally decided to MAME it. 

P3-500 (shows you how long ago I was last into Mame), with an ArcadeVGA and a J-PAC, and I have the PC connected:




A look at the original control panel:



cab insides, pretty much stock:






Plug the Jamma harness into the J-PAC, mount the board inside:



Test the cabinet speakers/wiring:



Chuck the PC in the cabinet and wire-tie it down.  The black box on top is a GE powered subwoofer that I rewired to the internal speakers.

[dax]

So far so good:



Now, let's add some additional controls, first a 2.5" trackball.  In retrospect, I don't know if I would have used this circular cutter.  It took a long time to cut out.  I didn't bother to remove the overlay when I cut this because it had some cigarette burns and damage to it.  I have brand new replacement original Neo-Geo parts that will be stored inside the cabinet and will put a new overlay on later.




Cut a hole for an Oscar Vortex too, and mount both:




Hook up the i-PAC and realize that I was a total dumbshit:




Ok, with a little grinding, that's fixed... I know I can't be the first person who mounted a trackball off-axis.

My girlfriend was like, "Well this works perfectly if you stand off to the side!"

So there it is:



I'm hoping to add some extra small buttons to handle stuff like mouse-click and other functions.  Although there's probably a way to program one of the PACs to do key combos.  I'm waiting a control panel overlay and then I just have to sort out the nightmare of FE and Mame configuration, which still plagues me here and there, but it is workable and playable.... 

[dax]

I guess some of you might think the playfield is cramped?  I think it works out nicely.  Tempest works very well.  I was never a big fan of trackball games but missile command, marble madness and centipede work well.  Robotron and Joust work smoothly too.   It's not necessarily great for Defender/Stargate, but I don't know if I've seen anybody's cabinet set up to optimally play those?

[Hiub1]

Man, that looks great! Don't be shy about it man, that looks like a great and faithful conversion. I wish mine looked like yours!

[Scott84]

Is it a good idea to put a subwoofer directly on a computer tower?

[The 80s Man]

Not a  lot of  choices for the track ball placement but looks good to me, Nice work.

[dax]

Is it a good idea to put a subwoofer directly on a computer tower?

Are you concerned about vibration or the magnet on the speaker?  In either case, I didn't think it was much of a problem.  It's not terribly loud anyway.

Does anyone else think there may be some concerns with the subwoofer on top of the cpu case?

[Hiub1]

You'll be fine with that. The only thing that I could think of would be that a moderate magnet is used for subs, and that is kind of close to your hard drive. As we all know, hard drives and big magnets don't go well together. From what I recall, it takes a pretty big magnet to screw things up, but you never know. Maybe try and build a shelf for it or something?