Cab Resto on a Shoestring Budget

[theburge]

Among these forums I'm walking in the land of the giants, but I still wanted to show my project.  I've been wanting a cab for years and I finally have the room but not the budget.  After several months of tracking down deals my patience paid off...

Forgive the following blurry pictures... I cannot take a clear shot with our digital camera to save my life.

Here's the cab after I got it home.  I stumbled upon an entire warehouse of goodies and scored this cab among lots of other odd and end pieces.



Here's the old control panel... I had planned on just cleaning it up and replacing the parts, but upon closer inspection none of the buttons were quite lined up.

[theburge]

Here's the inside of the cab.  It's stripped pretty bare, which is fine with me... easier to clean up that way.




Here's the front of the cab.  The mechanism is in good shape and cosmetically, the cab exterior is decent.

[theburge]

A week and a half later...

As mentioned I really didn't have much budget to work with and my time was limited because of my school load (being that this was my first project, those factors probably weren't bad things) but the cab came out just great for my needs.

Here is the cab moved into my manroom.

I kept the SFII marquee in for now, but I may order custom artwork, marquee, cpo, etc at some point.

I trashed the old control panel and built a new one out of some scrap wood I had in my garage.  I was able to use the control panel "box" that came with the cab.  It is a rounded metal box that's hinged and attached to the cab with some heavy duty clamps that snap it in place.  It's really easy to undo and open if I need to do some wiring work.

The image just jumps right out.  I picked up a piece of tinted plexiglass from the warehouse (it was still in the shrink wrap!) and mounted it right above the monitor.  Even being a new piece, I can see why a lot of people prefer glass... I'll have to take very special care of it because if the light hits it right even the smallest hairline scratches show up.

I also replaced all the t-molding with some better looking molding I scored from the warehouse and touched up/refinished the cab as I could with stuff I already had.




Here's a shot of the new internals... I upgraded my main computer last year and hung on to my old one in hopes of getting a cab.  It's running an AMD64 3000 with 1GB dual channel RAM, a Radeon 9800XT and a SB Live!.  The speakers are Cyber Acoustics CA-3550 (which sound just wonderful!).  The monitor is a Dell 19" LCD.  The OS is WinXP Pro with GameEx frontend.



Anyway, it was a great first project and it's been a total blast so far.  My wife has even been getting in on the action.  I'm glad I have an outlet of enthusiasts here because most of my friends, even though they love to play, just don't truly "appreciate" what it is and what it means.

[TOK]

I love to see a beater get spruced up and get some love. Thats what its all about. Nice job. 

[TelcoLou]

Great job! I like the clean internals .. how did you wire up the PC power button? I'm in mid-build on an old gutted cab myself, and any tips would be appreciated

[jWin]

Nice job!

I wired an arcade button to my motherboard as well, since they both use just 2 wires, splice and connect a former power on motherboard header.

I use to have my motherboard bolted to the side of my arcade as well but the cards kept coming loose over time without being screwed down to anything.

[arcadefever]

Low budget maybe but nice result  very nice cab, clean job in the inside 

[theburge]

Thanks for the kind words.

TelcoLou:  As for the power button... I honestly haven't messed with it very much.  I know the one picture shows the power cord running to the front of the cab, but that was just for testing and it is now just hanging out until I figure out what I'm going to do.  Currently I have everything plugged into a powerstrip that I can easily reach to flip the switch and my BIOS is then set to power up the computer on a button press.  It works well enough so I may keep it like that.

jWin:  I also really like the mobo bolted on the side because it looks nice and frees up a lot of room.  To get around the cards coming loose I made a little "T" bracket out of scrap wood and put screws through the wood right into the U slot on the tabs of the cards.  It works just like the pc case is holding it together.

[CheffoJeffo]

I love to see a beater get spruced up and get some love. Thats what its all about. Nice job. 

Agree 150%.