Well kind of a shameless necro bump for this thread... but I thought I'd share my latest alteration to this project.
Since I completed my Neo-Geo mame-in-a-box I decided that I don't need this bartop to play as many games as it does. So I bought a repro Nintendo 4-way from Mike's Arcade to give this little machine the real 4-way feel of a proper DK cabinet. I had to redo the entire CP with new artwork as it meant dropping the second action button too, as I was going with the traditional single "Jump" button.
I also ripped out the Intel Atom Mini ITX board I had in there some while back, and put in a board with an XP2400+ with Gefore 400 graphics card. Reason for this was because the games were not running at 100% in Mame with the Intel Atom. DK for example was at 96%. Not good enough.
It's not a fault of the motherboard either. It simply must have something to do with the monitor I'm using in this bartop because when I test Mame on my other monitors it runs at 100% no problems. It's just a problem with this particular monitor. But the new beefier processor and card sorted out those probs anyway.
With this new board in there I needed a fan on the back door to help dissipate heat. The Mini ITX produces hardly any heat at all and will be used in my Defender/Stargate bartop I'm working on right now. It's already been tested and works perfectly fine. So here are some updated pics....
This stick is gonna take me a bit of getting used to . It plays fine and the real 4-way gate is nicer than the round restrictor I was using in the U360. But it does have a larger throw than I would have liked. Then again I wanted authenticity, and that's what I've got. So I better get practicing!
With the new CP I also included the dust washer under the panel together with the clear dust washer on top of the panel which came with new DK cabinets. Though they all tended to be removed or junked over time. I'm not happy with the centre hole on this one as it's not very clean. I also went to the trouble of putting in the CP bolts... or in my case round head rivets for that extra touch of authenticity.
Only thing I have to do now is set the software to be a DK dedicated. I might include DK Jr. and DK3 as well. But other games probably won't play too well with this stick, and as I say I can play them all on my other project anyway.