My first cabinet project is finally getting brought to life after a weekend of inspiration at blackpool last month. Wandering around the arcades I suddenly got the bug to get this cabinet project moving (seeing as I have had it for at least 3 years, lot's of nagging from my girl to get rid of it!) So, first a bit of history on the cab.
I picked it up from the basement at my work, it was in a room marked for destruction along with fridges and other bulky items and me being me just could not see it getting destroyed, however I never knew how badly it was damaged inside. No one knew what happened to it but it looks like an electrical fault of some sort had caused it to catch light as the inside was black with ash and the pcb's that were on the shelf along with the PSU were melted. Since it was lying in wait for disposal something had been dropped on it causing two of the back panels to break off and smashing the rear of the monitor (sob!)
So original intention was to repair, but I never knew it would be so difficult to get part's in the UK (even tougher was finding a system16 for part's) so the project was shelved until I got round to doing it. I know people do not like seeing old cabinet's ripped apart but I thought the "mame" cabinet would be a good alternative and that would mean I could also use it for other driving games thus prolonging the life of the cabinet.
I plan to add more pic's to this as it moves along but I do have a few here for you to look at. This first one is so crap looking, but I had to use something to set up the hardware and windows:
Not the most flattering of looks im sure you will agree.
After trying to source a monitor which was second hand I stumbled upon The Pentranic Group, which unbeknown to me at the time was only twenty minutes away from home, so after calling them and speaking to a very nice engineer called Harry (cheer's mate) I opted for a tri-sync 19"
Much nicer, starting to look the part at least. I believe the original was bigger than 19" but this fitted perfectly, the only difference being the mounting points on the frame being at the top/bottom instead of the sides. I have since hooked up the coin mech and marquee, added the bezel but still need to take pic's and im waiting on an order to hookup the control panel but other than that it's not far away from completion. I need to also look at software to run the games, undecided as to what frontend to use also. Incidently the only surviving bit's are the Rev-A PCB (not sure what to do with that yet as I do not even know if it works)
Regards.