Well, i have been coming here for a while for assistance with my project, i didnt notice the Project Announcement section till I was well into the build process...so I figured I'd wait until I made some progress to post my announcement. I am not done with it yet, but I am at one of those periods where I am testing my current configuration to see if i need to change anything.
I made a web site with pics of the process, but I'll post some here because i hate when people just post a link and expect people to go look at it.
http://www.severdhed.com/arcade.htmlSo..the story begins.
I have been a gamer for many years, ever since my brother and I got our NES. There were never really any good arcades around here, there was a place called Crocadile Alley in the mall, but the mall burnt down. Then Alladins Castle opened, it was good...but we never had alot of money to go to the arcade. (There was also a showbiz pizza which later became chuck e cheese, and is the only arcade that exists in this town today)
well, anyway, i have wanted my own arcade cabinet for a long time. I remember being about 16, in my bedroom, i had a 20" tv that sat on top of my clothes dresser. I would pull the top drawer out, put a board across it, and set two SNES joysticks on it and stand there and play Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for hours. Around that time i started drawing plans to build a cabinet to put my TV and SNES into and make it like an arcade cabinet....well, since i was 16, had very little money, no power tools, and not really any room to put this in my bedroom, it never happened....time went by.
About 8 years later (2004) i saw a review of the x-arcade 2 player stick on ign.com. and decided I had to have one. So i shelled out the money for the 2player unit, usb adaptor, and all 4 console adaptors. I figured if I have all of the consoles, i should get the adaptors for them. So i go on using this for a while, mainly with Soul Calibur (DC) and Soul Calibur 2 (xbox). It is fun, but too crowded for two adults to use comfortably at the same time. Well, once again Time goes by, I move, and my x-arcade gets packed in its box and put in the attic for a while.
Then one day, I saw a show on G4 about arcades and it got me thinking about wanting a cabinet again. I hunt up the x-arcade unit, throw together a crappy PC from leftover parts (i beleive it was a pentium2 400 at that point) set up a small stand for the controller and put the monitor on the bar in my basement. I got mame running, using easymame as my frontend and it all went downhill from there.

Not being satisfied, i knew it was time to build a real cabinet. I had very few power tools and even less experience, so first I looked in the phone book for amusements to see if anyone local had any for sale. I found a guy a few blocks from my house who rents/sells/services arcades, pinball, pool tables, and vending equipment. I asked if he had any empty cabinets he would be willing to get rid of...he said he just picked one up that he would let me have for $20...so I went over right away. It was a generic Midway cabinet that someone converted to Golden Tee Golf II. the monitor was burnt badly, and the guy stripped out the gameboard before giving it to me. He did however leave the everything else. I called my friend who brought his jeep cherokee over and we hauled it back to my basement.

The coin door/coin mechs were still there, as well as 3 buttons, the marquee and light, speaker, dead monitor. I thought the trackball was missing, but i found it in the bottom of the cabinet. Part of the plastic trackball casing was broken, a piece that held one of the rollers in place had snapped off, causing the roller to sit at a funny angle. I managed to fix this and just kinda tucked the trackball away for a while.
So i wiped the cabinet down, cleaned out the junk from inside it. Used the metal monitor bracket to make a shelf for my 17" CRT PC monitor. I wanted the monitor to be more vertical than it was before. I was still able to use the original glass/bezel. I made a cheap marquee out of posterboard. I drew the mame logo on it, then cut it out with an xacto knife. then i cut up and taped a translucent blue file folder behind it, that way when i turned the light on, the mame logo would glow. I took the pc out of its case, mounted the motherboard to the inside of the cabinet and ran a cable through the trackball hole to the x-arcade, which sat on a bar stool.
