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Buying old cab

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Chewy27:
Hi everyone.  I have been a long time lurker here and have been in the planning stages of building myself a MAME cabinet for years.  I actually have a question related to older cabs though...

I have a chance to pick up an older cab from a set of 10 (supposedly) working cabinets.  The guy has them out in a shed and just doesn't want them around anymore.  My plan is to gut the cab and install my own CP and computer for a MAME setup, but use the cab as a frame.  My question is what should I be looking at as I am trying to decide what cabinet to take.  Is there a certain kind of monitor I should be looking for that is easiest to convert?  Are there joysticks/button that are amazing and I should keep my eyes open for?  Is there one amazing old game that I should watch for and just resell?

As I have been doing almost all my reading with the idea of building my own cabinet from the ground up I haven't really put much thought into already existing cabinets.  I just wanted to pick the brains of you folks and see if anyone had any good pointers.

Thank you very much for your time.
Chewy

DeLuSioNal29:
I'm not sure if time permits or not, but maybe you can head over there, take some picures and then post a picture of the units for us to see to give you some advice?

TelcoLou:
Well, I myself picked up an old Centipede cab that was at one time, converted to a Neo-Geo setup. Got if for $50 sans monitor and PCB.

Here's a link to my project, so far:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=76724.0

I also got a 19" CRT monitor off Ebay for $20, so my advice on that aspect is get whatever monitor will fit nicely inside the cab :)

Daniel B.:
Keep in mind what kind of cp you are going to want to use and how you would mount it to the old cab. I was sweating that on my dynamo.

brock.sampson:
I have bought a couple old midway blitz cabinets and have had great success with them.  This is a pretty generic cabinet and was used for a some other midway games like mortal kombat, etc.  The thing I like the most is the control panel box is totally removable.  So it's easy to make a larger control panel just by making a new box.  Those were made for a 25" monitor.  I was able to cram a 27" tv in mine after I cut down the sides of the tv case.  The factory bezel fits the tv great.  I'm using a 24" tv for the one I'm currently building for a friend since he didn't want to decase or modify the tv.  I was pretty inpatient on my first build so I bought a lot of new stuff so it cost me a little more than I would have liked.  Scour you local craigslist often for parts you may need monitors, tvs, computers, speakers, etc.

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