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How much do people typically spend building a cab?

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CoryBee:
I built some cheap little Bartops for quite the decent price. They were my first so a little rough around the edges but my friends were very pleased.

Price for 2 Bartops

$40 - (2x) IBM\Dell Laptop from ebay
$14 - Particle Board
$6   - Contact Paper
$7   - Acrylic
$42 - Joystick n' Buttons
$7   - (2x) Gamepads
$3   - Marquee Retainer (some panel holder thing I found at HD)
$10 - (2x) chinese mini amps (used for mp3 players)
$5   - Set of 6 Bayonet base bulbs

Total was about $134, not counting the fact I had several of these parts laying around. So more like $85 out of my pocket.

alfonzotan:
This is just a rough guess, it's been a while and I didn't keep a running tally:

Wood/building supplies $150 (including laminate)
Monitor: $100
Computer: $100 (built up from new/used parts)
Controls: $250 (the real Tron joystick was pricey... iPac4 and spinner also jacked up the costs here)
Glass/marquee/cosmetics: $100

Tack on another $100 just to be safe, and call it $700 or so, spread over a couple of years.  Control panel was built in '10, cabinet in '11.  Cabinet construction took about six weekends.

MTPPC:
For arcade cabs, I have spent as little as $225 putting a 60 in 1 into Mr. Do! and I profitted a 19" arcade monitor and Mr. Do! board/harness/powersupply. I've also spent much as $550 by mameing a used machine from TILT arcade. My mini-pinball cost $415 in materials and the computer was given to me. Digital pinballs are a lot more expensive and time consuming in my experience. I used a mostly things I had and if I were to buy everything, I'd expect about $750 into a cheap build. By far, the cheapest way to build a mame cabinet is to find an empty cabinet and throw a pentium 4,  an old 25" TV and a hacked keyboard into it. But like most things, the cheapest won't be quite as nice as spending a little more.

Having said all this, I have an empty Solar Ride Gottlieb pinball cabinet in my shed waiting to be built. I plan on buying the stuff for it over the next year or two before I begin building it. If you take your time, you can really find some cheap TVs and monitors.

compute:
I wouldn't consider building a full cabinet if I didn't want the experience.  Originally I had intended to build a panel in the area of $200.  Then I stumbled onto this cabinet.

Cabinet - $20 (gas)
Wood to fix water damage - $20
Coin door - $25
Monitor - $5
Paint - $20
Trackball - $25 (will need new bearings/rollers, harness, interface board, and possibly opto's.  In the end, not a bargain at all!)

Notice how I haven't even bought controls yet!  I'm learning a lot, but if I weren't so damn cheap I'd be closer to finished.

The PC was collecting dust, and I have spent a few dollars on tools (orbital sander, replace a circular saw, clamps, etc).  In addition there have been a few false-starts where I tried to be cheap.  Initially I was going to mouse-hack the trackball, but I couldn't get it to work. I'm just going pick up an Opti-pac and know that I've soldered the right connections.  It was fun to try, but I just want the damn thing to work now.

paigeoliver:
Just finished another machine, time to get pricing.

This project is a Jaleco City Connection in a Sega Eliminator cabinet.

$50. Cabinet, purchased as a working Video trivia.
$2.   Bits of wood used in cabinet repair.
$11 Jamma harness.
$30 Original Jaleco City Connection board (bought this about 10 years ago after a 2 year search)
$3 Fingerboard and wire to make City Connection to Jamma adapter.
$12 NOS Wico joystick.
$8 Six buttons
$3 Custom marquee cost.
$1 Shop supplies (a bit of solder a few blasts from the spray can, etc).
$120 Subtotal

$45 Original Eliminator power supply that was still bolted down in the cabinet sold for this.

$75 Total.

From this project I am still sitting on an unhacked Video Trivia harness, a Video Trivia main board with a fairly late rom revision (much newer than my other one), a video trivia ROM board with 5 different installed categories, a set of 5 working video trivia light up buttons and a nice video trivia marquee.

I have a bunch of spare monitors, so I may just install the Video Trivia PCB and controls in my bar and hang the monitor up behind the bar. I could actually do a pair of that, since I have two sets of Video Trivia stuff.


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