Beginner here, would appreciate some advice

[the_man_slim]

Hi all!

I'm planning on building a MAME machine, and I would appreciate any feedback/advice on what I'm planning on doing. I'm a poor college student attending school somewhere in the great city of Philadelphia majoring in CS, and I've always wanted to do something like this. I realize that I'm not as old as many as you to remember the golden days of the arcade, but I've been a passionate old-school gamer since my early days. I was lucky to have an arcade by my house, and I spent a great deal of time there.

Anyways, I plan on using a pre-existing cabinet for my first machine. I checked on craigslist and ebay for some cabinets, and I was lucky enough to see that TNT Amusements (tntamusements.com) was running an ebay auction to get rid of some old cabinets. I managed to find a minivan and drive it out there to pick up a cabinet. Choosing a cabinet was tough... I could have chosen a generic cab, a Black Widow cab, a Gravitar (same thing, I know), and an old Star Wars upright. I finally decided on the Gravitar cabinet that had been converted to Black Widow because the side art was in good shape and the rest of the cabinet looked pretty solid. Here are some pictures:

Side 1 (part of the artwork has been ripped off)


Side 2


Front


Inside shot


CPO


These 3 show the edges where it needs to be repaired




So overall, I'd say I have a decent cab.

Here's the gameplan:

1. Restore the cabinet cosmetically before even think of touching anything electrical. Otherwise I've never make it look nice and just play games instead. I want to make it look like the original Gravitar, so I need to repair the ripped edges, give it a good scrubbing (how do you get rid of black smudges? I can't describe them), repaint some of the white area, and restore that one missing chunk of artwork by painting, etc.
2. Make a duplicate metal control panel and drill 2 button holes next to each joystick. I only need 2 to play the games I want.
3. Find a suitable monitor (possibly arcade, although I don't have that much money) and install it, along with a bezel
4. Install and wire the controls
5. Throw Linux on a PC and put WahCade on it
6. Hook it up!

I plan on using two old Wico balltop joysticks (the ones from TMNT, etc) for my joysticks, Happ buttons, and then 2 Atari cone buttons for my CPO. Does anyone know how to hook up the Atari buttons? They seem to have more connectors than a standard microswitch. I'll probably be using a IPAC2 to interface it, and some generic sound amp for the speakers (2 8ohm speakers are currently in the cab).

What do you guys think? Any advice? I'd appreciate any and all feedback!