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My first cabinet - Smash TV to MAME Conversion

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PixelPeZ:
I scored a cheap cabinet on an auction site few weeks ago, and as it has been my dream for years, I'm converting it to a MAME cabinet.
Some pics:






It's in quite good shape, but some wear and tear here and there, some rust on the coin door and the speaker frame, some scraped paint and so on, but surprisingly the monitor is in really good condition, so I'm planning to keep it. The tricky part will come from the fact that I have a) no experience with woodwork or the like since grade school b) I don't have any other space to do this than my flats bedroom. It's going to be messy and I'm going to have to learn a lot in the process, but I'm really exited and believe it's going to be a lot of fun to do, but expect some frustration.

The plan is that I will stick a pc there, keep the monitor, new sideart and a marquee and an X-Arcade joystick.

This is where this forum undoubtedly will come in handy - my first question would be that is it possible to get electrocuted without discharging the monitor and starting to strip the thing apart? I'm scared to death of electricity, and getting shocked this way would really suck.
Also on the monitor matter, does it matter what type of VGA cable I use to do the 15khz hack? I found two types at the store, one looking like this
 
and the other without those .... things ... before the connector. I'm not really sure why they are there or what they do, so is it really better to use one or the other?

The other big issue will be the power and wiring. Luckily I have a few friends who are trained in this but still, does anyone have a good idea how to achieve the feat of having only one power switch for the monitor, PC, speakers and the marquee light, in the most easiest way possible... and so that it doesn't just cut off the PC's power, but will send it to shutdown mode.

So, any help welcome, if anyone wants any more pics or specific shots for restoration or whatnot, I'll be glad to help as well. Oh and I'm doing a custom MaLa layout, which I'm planning to freely release after it's done.

Austin.Wolff:
The ones without the d-sub (the blue thing) are probably breakout cables.  I'd recommend those, because if you're going to go from VGA to arcade you're going to need to cut the d-sub off anyways.

shardian:
Where are you located? There might be someone on here who would trade you cabinets so that Smash TV wouldn't have to be MAMEd. If you were local to me I would totally trade you a Dynamo ready to pop in a pc plus some cash.

Paladin:
I think the 'things' he's talking about are the built in RF interference rings.
At least that's what I've always thought those cylinders are. ???

PixelPeZ:

--- Quote from: shardian on December 11, 2007, 10:45:07 am ---Where are you located? There might be someone on here who would trade you cabinets so that Smash TV wouldn't have to be MAMEd. If you were local to me I would totally trade you a Dynamo ready to pop in a pc plus some cash.

--- End quote ---

Sorry dude, I think there's a few miles between us, with me being located in Estonia and all ...
I think the shipping costs would be astronomical :D
But I do think I might be selling off the board and marquee....

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