First and last

[doctorhifi]

Just about done with my first (and probably last) mame cabinet.  Its based on RobotronNut's control panel layout and John P's Arcade Paradise 3 cabinet.  Kudos to both of those guys for answering my dumb noobie questions with patience.  And hats off to Scott at mamemarquees.com- just take a look at my side art and stuff.  Best money I spent without a doubt. 
I've posted a picture of the finished project. 

-I'm using a Sony 27" TV behind dark tinted plexiglass clear glass and it works great.  See note below.
-The power on/off button is the right coin insert/reject button.  Press it once to turn everything on and press it again and it turns everything off.  I also have a key lock switch  to enable or disable the machine's power.  Useful for when the kids have spent too much time on the machine and need a "forced" break 
-The boot time on my PC is amazingly slow (1min 50 seconds until I reach the frontend screen) so I've got the TV displaying a Jpeg background that flashes 'Please wait' while the PC boots, and then just as the FE starts the TV switches inputs to display the game selection screen.  I guess you'd call it an unusual workaround to not see any windows screens   **Update**  Switched to a newer PC so the start up time is down to about 15 seconds.  I kept the jpeg screens anyway
-I've got a volume control on the right front of the control panel and I find this very useful.
-I'm using 3DArcade for my frontend.  I'm surprised I don't see more people using it.
-Thats a pinball machine coin door in the front.  Just my preference to have a coin door thats wider than it is taller. 
-The cabinet is on wheels so I can move it to a different corner of the room depending on the activity level on the nearby ping-pong & pool table
-**Update**  Added 2 Act Lab light guns in July of 08.  The dark tinted plexi didn't allow the guns to work properly so switched to clear glass (which also required making a bezel to hide the TV).  The guns work really well now and I would highly recommend them.  I also made some simple holders for the guns using plastic tubing painted black (see photo). 
-I'm using CPWizard to display control panel layout and other info when MAME is paused.  A really great app you should try if you already aren't using it:  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=74091.0
-You can't see it in the picture but there is a standard windows keyboard on a slide-out drawer below the control panel.  I use the keyboard more often than I expected since I'm always tinkering with settings.

Couldnt have pulled this off without all the good tips and info on this website.  A general thanks to the diehards who hang out here and help educate the masses.  Hope I can contribute something useful sometime.

[BobA]

Nice looking cab.  Good to hear you found useful info here and learned so much just by reading and looking. You obviously found what you needed and put together a great cab for the first try.

[RobotronNut]

gorgeous, congrats!

IIRC, you have 2 U360s, a J-stik, and a 3" happ trackball.
is that TurboTwist 2 spinner there?

[doctorhifi]

Yup, a Turbo Twist 2 with the "big blue" knob.  I don't like the knob so will probably go with their Tokentop Premium spinner knob.
http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=86&products_id=280

[Sasquatch!]

I'm the "John P" in question. 

The cab looks great!  How are you liking the U360s (and how are you interfacing them)?

[Stobe]

Holy F-bomb!

Nothing like hitting a home run your first time at bat!

You weren't kidding about the side art.  It looks great!.

Can we get a better picture of the CP?

-Stobe

[doctorhifi]

Sasquatch:
As far as the U360s, so far so good.  They seem to operate just fine although I confess I don't have alot of playtime on them just yet.
I've got 8 of the buttons on the CP connected to the inputs on the U360 via the optional wiring harness they make for that purpose.  That allowed me to use an IPAC2 instead of an IPAC4 which saved me some $$. 
Each U360 is connected to my PC via USB.  The 4-way and remaining buttons are connected to an IPAC-2 which goes into my PC via PS/2 connection.   Trigger joystick also connects to the IPAC-2.  The trackball is connected to the PC mouse input.  Act Lab light guns are connected to the PC via USB

Stobe:  Thanks for the compliment.  The difference the side art made was astounding.  Before the art the cabinet was painted gloss black.  Looked ok, but sort of "homemade".  Not anymore!

I'll post a closeup of the CP shortly.

[doctorhifi]

closer photo of the cp.  Set up for 3 player, although I only have 3 action buttons available for player 3 which is enough for many games but not all the fighter games.
My only regret is mounting the trigger joystick too close to the monitor glass.  You don't hit the glass with your hand or anything but it blocks the view slightly of the bottom of the screen and makes it a bit more difficult to aim with the light guns.  If I had to do it over again I'd probably move it over and down some or use the shorter top button joystick instead. 

[doctorhifi]

I posted in another section how I mounted my joysticks which you may find interesting (or not!):

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=68073.0

[Jouster]

Looks nice...did you design the artwork yourself or contract it out?

Jouster

[Dervacumen]

A testament to what you can do by studying this site.
Awesome Cabinet!

[doctorhifi]

Jouster,
Scott at mamemarquees did the artwork design.  I wish I had those skills