FINISHED !! UnholyKnight's Megalo 410 Restoration !!

[Unholyknight]

Running total of parts and costs:
Initial condition Megalo 410 - $400 ( Forum member: DNPhamus )
2 Player overlay + shipping - $65 ( Forum member: Kage 8 )
Spray paint - $4
Painting Tape - $4
PS2 -> JAMMA adapter parts - $140
Control Panel work from MameMarquees.com - $35
Controls from Rollie Electronics - $84
CPS-III 3rd Strike System - $375

Total Price:  $1,107

After looking online forever to "maybe" locate a Megalo 410 for sale in my area, I come across a very old post on a forum from 2004.  The post advertised the cabinet at $500.  Looking for his username on Google I came across a second forum he was apart of and in his profile on this forum he had a link to his website.  So I venture to his website to find a section labeled "for sale" and what do I find?  The same Megalo 410 from the forum post, but he has gone down on the price to $400!

I live in Dallas, and the guy selling it lives in San Antonio, so off I go to pick it up!  And consequently pull over several times on IH-35 to tie down the tarp that keeps flying off of the machine.


We get it back to my house in one piece.  Everything is still functional, but the work has only begun.  The cabinet's initial condition wasn't too bad.  It had some cuts, bumps, chips in the paint, missing controls, and no game.



So the first step of the project is finding and ordering some sort of 2 player control bezel for the cabinet since only a single player control bezel was included.

[Unholyknight]

First Addition:  2 player control overlay.

Thanks to Kage8! I bought this off of Kage8 from the Buy/Sell/Trade section of the forums, and that is how I found this website in the first place.



After this addition, this leaves us needing:

New Paint
2 Sanwa joysticks
12 HAPP competition buttons
New 1P start button
24 Female Molex Pins
2 12 Female Molexs
Quick Disconnects
Wiring
A game / PS2 -> JAMMA adapter

[Unholyknight]

Step 2:  Painting the cabinet.

Went to Lowe's and picked up a spray paint in the closest color I could find, as well as some tape to tape off the Megalo 410 stickers.  The color we used was "heirloom white".

Before painting the cabinet looked like this:








And then we applied the paint in 4 coats over the course of about 36 hours, the ending result:











The paint job makes the cabinet look a lot better cosmetically.  There is a VERY slight color differentiation between the color of the cabinet and the spray paint.  You can only see this break around the Megalo 410 stickers where we taped off.  Other than that, the paint looks great.

All pictures (plus more not relevant enough to post yet) in larger and full size can be seen on my Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/61238203@N00/

[cdbrown]

That new paint job makes it look very nice and clean.  Good work 

[johnperkins21]

Wow, that is a cool cabinet. I have never seen one of those before. Was it a basic JAMMA cab that you could put just about any game into with the different control panels kind of like the candy cabs?

Good luck with your restore. It's looking very good so far.

Oh yeah, how's the monitor? Looks like a difficult one to replace if it's not in good shape.

[arcadefever]

  that is cool !!!!

very nice cab 

[Unholyknight]

Wow, that is a cool cabinet. I have never seen one of those before. Was it a basic JAMMA cab that you could put just about any game into with the different control panels kind of like the candy cabs?

Good luck with your restore. It's looking very good so far.

Oh yeah, how's the monitor? Looks like a difficult one to replace if it's not in good shape.

It is a basic JAMMA cabinet, however the guy who owned it before me was an electrical genius and did some custom work to the inside.  On the left side of the machine he added a VGA in, RCA in, and game port.  This was so you could plug in a PS2, XBOX, PC, etc.  from the side of the machine.

This is just a large scale candy cab.  Sega makes several candy cabs still, Aero city, Astro city, Versus city.  As far as I know the Megalo 410s are out of production, but it is just a candy with a 41 inch screen.

The monitor isn't perfect, but it isn't nearly as bad as any other megalo I have seen.  There are adjustments on the inside of the machine for brightness, contrast, etc.  so we should be able to improve the picture quality to almost perfect.

The screen on the machine is a projection screen and there is a projector inside the cabinet.   If the screen starts looking too bad later on down the road I can always replace the front screen and make it look like new.

[Unholyknight]

These are the connections that were added on the left side of the cab.  Everything under the fan is custom and this is probably the only machine in existence with these add-ons.



If anyone has any information or picture requests post them and I'll do my best to get them up as fast as possible.  Like if there is any specific part you would like to see or like more information about.

[Unholyknight]

Received the PS2 -> JAMMA adapter and got it working.  We can now play games on the cabinet, but we have to play them with PS2 joysticks since we don't yet have the controls for the cabinet itself.

Ordered a control panel print from MameMarquees.com and it should be in soon.






Of course the flash completely washed out the screen for the picture, I'll take a better one tonight.

I also spent a LOT of time adjusting the monitor.  When I got the cabinet from DNPhamus it was tinted yellow and had an odd glow about it.  I found the color adjustments as well as focus adjustments and spent about 3 hours fine tuning them.  The colors look great now as far as the Megalo series goes, I'd say the screen is in better condition than about 90% of the other existing machines I have seen.

If anyone is interested I can create a how-to on where and how to adjust the colors, I spent hours searching online and didn't find any answers.

[Unholyknight]

Received the control panel work from Mamemarquees.com and it fit perfectly!  I just stuck it on and used a hobby knife to cut out all the button holes.  Seriously, they do TOP quality work and printouts.









So now all that is left is the controls! Which I'm waiting on Rollie for.  Hes waiting on a shipment of Sanwas before he can give me my order total and ship.

[IG-88]

Looks too me that they could've moved the "1 play" & "2 play" words down a bit. You'll hardly be able to see them when you put your buttons on.   

[Unholyknight]

Looks too me that they could've moved the "1 play" & "2 play" words down a bit. You'll hardly be able to see them when you put your buttons on.   

I used the original template, and that 3 button layout is a NeoGeo layout, not a SEGA layout.  The Sega cabs only have 2 start buttons as opposed to the 2 start buttons and game select button that a NeoGeo cabinet has.  The 1 and 2 player buttons are also on the far left and right sides of the control panel, so it's not a huge deal.

[Unholyknight]

Received my button shipment from Rollie Electronics, tomorrow I will fit them all to the machine and then all I will need is wiring!  I can't wait!







Anyone happen to know the cheapest place to get wiring?  I know of places to get wiring, but if anyone has anyone they would like to recommend, go ahead!

[mountain]

Check out your local car audio shop. They will have a large variety of colors and sizes and should sell it right off the roll. This is where I always get my wire. Radio Shack, Home Depot , and other places charge WAY too much for the pre-packaged stuff.

What kind of josticks are those?

Cool project, keep the pictures coming!

[Kronos]

where in dallas are you from? I am in Rockwall.

[Unholyknight]

Check out your local car audio shop. They will have a large variety of colors and sizes and should sell it right off the roll. This is where I always get my wire. Radio Shack, Home Depot , and other places charge WAY too much for the pre-packaged stuff.

What kind of josticks are those?

Cool project, keep the pictures coming!

Sanwa Sticks, Happ competition buttons.  I'll check out home depot and radio shack tomorrow! Thanks for the tip, that didn't even occur to me.

[Unholyknight]

where in dallas are you from? I am in Rockwall.

I live and go to school in Denton, the arcade machine is at my parents house.  In the Keller / North East Mall area.

Aside from the responses, I am probably investing in a Jamma to TV encoder and replacing the screen with a new regular 41" projection TV.  Of course I'll make new graphics and fittings somehow to make it match the cabinet.  The screen in its current state isn't THAT bad, but I would love for it to look pristine.  The whole adding a 41" TV to it will come once I have actually got the cabinet playing games.

[Unholyknight]

The controls are now all secured onto the cabinet! Pictures, of course.

[Unholyknight]

Pictures of the 3s cart and CPS-III board.  I'll take a picture of our ghetto kick harness  and cleaned up final pictures later today:









These pictures don't do the screen quality justice, the screen looks superb with the machine running an actual PCB and not a PS2 to JAMMA converter.  It seems to be nearly impossible to take a picture of the projection monitors display without making the image on the monitor turn to crap. 

EDIT:: Apparently I should take a picture of the monitor with the lights off.  I'll try that tonight and post the results.

[arcadefever]

  so cool !!!!!

[Aurich]

Nicely done. Why didn't you put proper Sanwa buttons on it though?

[Unholyknight]

Nicely done. Why didn't you put proper Sanwa buttons on it though?

So if/when switches die I can easily replace them with the tons of cherry switches I have laying around instead of having to change out the whole button, since sanwa's have built in switches.  That and I like the feeling of the HAPP buttons better, I need my clicks.

[nyprimus4]

Any more pics of you playing it?