cabient modifications

[paigeoliver]

Someone was SUPPOSED   to show up saturday to buy my Artic Mini mame. So I took it outside to repair the drag damage it had in the back, and to pull out the stuff that was not supposed to go with the deal.

Well I fixed the damage (it stands up straight now all on it's own, YAY! I also removed the huge coin enclosure which freed up a ton of interior space in the thing.

After the person never showed up (or contacted me to say they were not coming), I decided just to keep it, as mini cabinets in that nice of condition just don't come along on a daily basis.

I do want to swap out the joystick and monitor though.

The original joystick (see picture) is a rather defective design that hits the microswitches with a hard plastic actuator. Two of them were shattered when I got the cabinet. I replaced them, but I know if I keep that stick I will just be replacing more of them down the road. Plus, it is just funny looking, looks like an Atari 2600 stick, except that it is hard and pointy rather than soft, you could stab someone with it even.

So I am going to go with a reunion stick. The control panel overlay is just paper with plexi over it. So I should be able to take it off and put a mounting plate underneath (hopefully, haven't checked to see if it is glued yet).

It currently has a 19" s-video display tube bolted in where the original tube went. It works, but I am not really happy with it (it has burn in, and the image quality is acceptable, but not nearly as good as a VGA monitor, or a real arcade monitor).

I want to use one of the KDS 21" Kiosk monitors that I bought a few weeks ago. The cabinet is wide enough to take it, but it won't fit because the back of the cabinet is in the way.

Most cabinets have back doors, which would have just allowed me to pull the back door and keep on trucking. But this cabinet has no back door (the front opens instead).

So I have a few options to make this monitor fit. I would actually have to make modifications to use almost anything other than a bare frameless tube with the boards mounted to the side, that is what it originally had and that is what I did with the s-video tube (not to mention the VGA arcade monitor I screwed up trying to do that with).

Just cutting the back panel off is not acceptable, as it would certainly make the thing structurally unsound.

I could re angle the monitor glass to be at less of an angle. That might work, but it would look funny.

I could also just cut a hole in the back big enough for the monitor to poke out, I have seen this done plenty of times.

I could cut that same hole and then build a wood box around the part of the monitor that sticks out. This would be nice, and would keep all the structural strength, but would make transporting it a pain in the butt (would have to be transported on it's side). I could in theory make an identical box down low, so the thing could still be layed down.

I could cut a nice perfect rectangle out and make it into a little door that opens downward. With the door open the monitor would fit. This would allow me to take out the monitor and close up the door if I ever wanted to do that.

Any other ideas?