My mane project. Mercs -> Mame

[kurtw]

Here is a few pictures of my work in progress:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigkurt/sets/72157594157032349/

I'm finally wrapping up my mame project after 2 years. I'm sick of moving my uncompleted cabinet around, which probably has more miles then me at this point .

The machine was a dedicated Capcom Mercs cabinet which was manufactured in southern california. It was sold to a company in Montreal and it was in service in Montreal and the Toronto area for several years until it ended up at a auction in Toronto where I picked it up with a non functioning monitor for $50 CDN.

I have since moved to Los Angeles, bringing the cabinet with me  After a few months of working overtime, I figured I'll just write a check and finish the project as quickly as possible. I was going to make a custom control panel but I don't have the space, I  got slik stik to make a custom one for me instead. I washed out the inside, and removed the old transformer  and lights and replaced it with a new GE light from home depot. I got a Kortek/Betson 27"  sitting in the back of my truck right now which will go in sometime this weekend.

The plywood mounting brackets were designd for a 25" monitor, so I'll have to either cut out new brackets or cut the exiting brackets  make everything fit.

I want to install a speaker system, I'm thinking of getting the  logitech Z  2.1 speaker system since is has a nice black puck volume control which I can mount on the cabenet . I am worried about the speaker mounting since it may have to be bolted on externally (Under the existing speaker holes facing down) unless I cut up the speaker panel. I could get car audio speakers and wire those up instead and keep as much of the original cabinet as possible.

All is left after that is to  install the bezel and get new plexiglass for the front. Custom artwork will come last, I'll do up custom artowork going with a cool pallete to patch the artwork on the control panel.

As for the cabinet, all of it is still original, I can still bolt on the original mercs 3 player control panel, which I may modify to be swapable with alternate controls. [eg. wheel or flight yoke or twisty joysticks]. The only hassle with control panel swapping is that the slikstik has to  be opened from the bottom. I wished the slikstik could open from the top like most arcade control panels, it would make it easier to mount and dismount.

I have a second project underway at work, a 25" Sega model 2 dynamite cop [which was a WWF Wrestlefest conversion, which meant we have room for 4 players]. The bad news with that project was the display was a medium resolution monitor, something we never realised until we hooked up the arcade vga to it and did some testing. Doh,  for the time being its just running dynamite cop, at least that machine has all new controls .

[kurtw]

Updated the album with pictures of the monitor installation.

I decided to go with the betson imperial, it seems like a more reliable monitor then the wg, plus I could pick it up in the LA area.

I drove over to Betson West during my lunch break and picked up a 44-4070-RT for 469$. I've heard that people got them as cheap as 399$, but I didn't haggle, perhaps I should have asked for a better price. But It was within my budget either way. I was concerned with the lack of documentation on the betson/kortek in terms of a mounting measurements diagram, in fact there was no documentation at all, but the Betson West sales guys emailed me pages of technical detail. I just downloaded the pdf off of Retroblast so I'l pour over it later.

At first I thought the monitor may have been too deep to fit properly in the cabinet, but once I measured things at the Betson office, it seemed to patch the D9200 with its universal mount. Today I'll hook up my pc to it and run some video tests.