First Project: Neo Geo MVS-2 MAME

[thaddeussmith]

I've been scouring craigslist the past few months for the right candidate and found just that last night. It's a MVS-2 cabinet that was converted to Tekken 3 at some point. Has plenty of nicks and bruises, but the cabinet itself is complete and solid, and the 25" monitor is in fantastic shape. great colors and no image burn-in.

My plan is to restore it back to as much Neo Geo correctness as i can, albeit with 7 or 8 buttons and a computer with MAME/multi-console emulators. Computer is overkill, but will hopefully be future proofed. Core i5 2500k, 8GB of RAM, 1TB+ in storage, and an ArcadeVGA.

The Tekken 3 pcb is functional and for sale or trade btw. Shoot me a PM if you're interested. Otherwise, pics and progress to follow.

[thaddeussmith]

I'm horrible about taking progress photos while i work on projects. This weekend i managed to strip out all of the unnecessary electronics and wiring, stripped down the control panel to bare metal and have put on the first few layers of paint, repainted all of the black panels, repaired a section of the front left panel (near the control panel) that was broken off and held together by the vinyl, and removed all of the coin-op and security bars.

I still need to:

-Bondo all of the unnecessary holes and gouges
-Figure out how I want to paint the red panels
-Paint the coin-op with hammered metal spray paint
-Drill some extra holes in my CP for the MAME conversion. The previous Tekken conversion left me with 2 holes directly under buttons B and C, so I'm going to add -additional buttons under D.
-Order and install the computer parts.
-Order and install a little 20w stereo amp to drive my new speakers.
-Order new marquee and CP overlay
-Order and install new controls

Im hoping to have everything near done, but at least playable within the next month or two - it'll just depend on funds.

[thaddeussmith]

i put my focus into making it playable and will finish cosmetics overtime.

Custom MaLa layout from MikeBoss


Stripped down the control panel to bare metal and repainted, bought a new overlay from QuarterArcade.com and subsequently ---fouled up beyond all recognition--- it up. I used the overlay as a guide for drilling my extra holes into the metal, forgetting what hot metal shards might do to the acrylic overlay  . so the bottom right button holes are jacked up and will have to do until i can fork over $50 for another overlay, if i ever do. Stuff like that keeps me from being paranoid about kids and friends messing up the perfection of my work, and a little bit of character never hurts.


original coin door repainted with some hammered metal spray paint. new coin slot push buttons.


3 momentary pushbuttons, red for powering on computer and yellow/white for coin1/coin2


the pc internals. picked this up in a trade off of craigslist. nice svelt power supply with a micro atx mb, 6gb ram, amd phenom II 555 black edition (3.0ghz) and a 500GB drive. Then there's the ArcadeVGA 3000 connected to a VGA breakout/amplifier board. i picked up some nifty sticky backed pcb standoffs from mouser and used them on everything i could so that it's all nice and supported and able to flow some air.


The updated controls. all new gold leaf buttons from Ultimarc, oval top j-sticks, minipac with wiring harnesses, and a section of cat 5 for wiring the buttons attached to the coin door. can anyone tell me what the 4-23-1992 WSI in marker means? Hoping it's a born on date of some sort since it would make it exactly 10 years after my birth date of 4-23-82.



not shown is the LP-2020A+ Lepai amp i have just inside the coin door, which drives the drivers/crossovers pulled from a set of JBL Northridge E20 bookshelf speakers.

[thaddeussmith]

I recently came across an empty MVS 4-25 ver. 3 cabinet that needed some TLC. I'm not going to track down a CRT and 4-slot MB, but it will be aesthetically restored to look as it should, with MAME internals, a 23" LCD and a few tasteful button additions for PC power and Coin. I'm swapping over all of the internals from my MVS 2-25, but limiting it to the original  4 buttons. My main game list will be NEO GEO roms only, with a secondary list of <4 button games. I needed to order an unmolested CPO and some internal cabinet parts to make it playable .. will post pics once I have that stuff installed. All that remains after that is prepping and painting the side and front panels.

The MVS 2-25 will eventually be built back up to have the full 7 button layout and MAME games. I think I also want to track down an old Nintendo cab and set it up to run as a dedicated NES emulator.

[thaddeussmith]

here's a few pics of the 4 slot. It's playable! Locks, new speakers, and finishing the front/side panels, new T-molding is all that remains. New marquee header some day, but the cracked one will suffice for now.

MAME (MaLa front end) running on a dual core AMD 3.2ghz, 6gb of RAM, a 23" dell monitor, etc. I'm limiting this cab to just Neo Geo games - the 2-slot on the left will be MAME with support for all the various 2-6 button games.




Closeup of the control panel. Happ competition buttons and ultimarc J-sticks (Sanwa JLW-UM-8 type)



The coin door and returns are cosmetic, so i have coin buttons underneath the control panel on each side


power button for the computer on top of the cabinet. the monitor goes to sleep pretty quickly and wakes when the computer starts up.


underside of the control panel. using an ultimarc miniPAC for the controls.



computer. hard drive and power are super velcro'd in and the motherboard using pcb feet. a nice big fan over the hard drive to keep things cool


here's the monitor mount. standard vesa bracket on the monitor side.


a shot of the monitor without glass. you can see it is centered and 23" *just fits* horizontally. can't tell, but i'm running a basic scanline overlay and when combined with the smoked glass it's not too shabby. no need to point out the benefits of 4:3 vs widescreen.