Project H.N.N.X has started!!

[nondo]

First off a little background of my lifelong desire.

 About 8 years ago i decided i wanted/needed an arcade cabinet in my life to take me back to my pre-console gaming era, but the only stumbling block was my wife's desire not to have a big chunk of wood sat in the dining room distracting me from my `real` life at home with new a house,baby and work  . every 6 months or so i`d mention it and again the same old stern look and solid NO!! 

 in 2006 I finally found a mini project she had no chance in saying no too which i posted on here which was basically a 8 button arcade stick to use on my xbox toplay the emu`s i had on it. It was a success and many happy hours were had.
 After that i  had not given the arcade cab another thought till last year  and spent many nights reading up on current trends on the subject and built up in my head plans, visuals, layouts and how to run it all.

  Fast forward to 3 weeks ago, Saturday night camping sat round with friends talking when all of a sudden i blurted out my arcade plans. One of my friends who is the vice-chairman of my local football(soccer!) club said he`d love to have a retro arcade cab of his own. So over a few more beers we (ME!!!) hatched a plan. I`ll design/make/finance the cab and to keep my wife happy keep it in our club house for all to use ( the club is in the middle of a big fundraising push for extensive modernisation and building works!!!) and putting a working coin mech on it to raise some more funds!

 2 weeks ago i spotted a working jamma cab with 2 game boards on eBay. 4 days ago i picked it up !!!!!!!  it is now stored at another friends house where he is `looking` after it and letting me do the work on it there.

So after a 8 year wait i now have my cab and a starting point for my project, HAPPY DAYS AHEAD!

here are the details so far of what i know about the cab:

Used in arcade till 2 years ago and  well serviced. since then rarely used and sat in dry clean garage!
`VIDEO MASTER` 3 button JAMMA
 some exterior damaged and alot of ex-owner overindulgence with hand tools on the front(he admitted he didn't know what he was doing!!
it has as far as i can tell a HANTAREX MTC PE07 monitor
mms/msm coin door and mech with a quattro 1-4 PCB.
the games that came with it are MEGABLAST and WWF SUPERSTARS (has no sound )

[nondo]

balls just wrote a follow up to my above post, went to post it and bam login timed out lost the lot!!!! must remeber not to select the 60 min login!!! lol.

[nondo]

in the last week i have gathered most if not all my parts to start my cab conversion.
The original aracde monitor will be sent of to my pet electronics man to be serviced and maybe the caps replaced leaving that up to him to decide!).

i was going to post some pics thru out my build but all the ones i have since 4 days ago have gone along with the corruptcamera card i used!!!!!

last week i half heartedly bidded on a job lot of pc`s(37) monitors(17), keyboards(30) and mice on ebay and won them for a £1 YEP ONE POUND!!! collected them on sunday night with around trip of 350miles in 7 hours. Now spent the last 4 days checking the towers out and have actually landed a bit of a gold mine, so far from the 15 i have checked i have 8 working pc`s with pretty decent spec for what i need and have just set up my choice tower and here is the spec so far;
MOBO= asus p5s800-vm
CPU= intel celeron d 2.53GHz
RAM= 2 gig
MAIN HDD= 40gig maxtor
2nd HDD(for mame)= TBA
PSU= atx450w
AGP= nvidia riva tnt2 m64 32mb 3d power

not bad for near enough free!!!!
Going to install tiny xp rev9.
 
Also now got both my joysticks all my buttons the ipac new t-moluding new coin door and mech.

Just need some serioous time and space to get it all together.

[severdhed]

awesome...sounds like you are off to a good start.  dont give up on getting a cab in your house though.  keep trying and maybe someday she will agree.  i was fortunate that i bought my first cab before i was married. i brought it home one day while my girlfriend wasn't home, then "surprised" her with it.  she wasnt too thrilled, but she couldn't really tell me no at that point. 

now that we are married, she tries to tell me know.  i was told that i coudlnt have any more cabinets..but i kept trying and told her if i ever found a donkey kong cabinet i would bring it up...she kept insisting that  i wasn't allowed to have any more, but over a few month period, i wore her down and when i finally found a DK cab locally, she agreed to let me get it.



good luck with your build, make sure you take lots of pics

[romshark]

Sounds great, and the skills you gain working on this cab can be put to good use if you do get to have your own cab at home! But...

...and putting a working coin mech on it to raise some more funds!

If you're using MAME / other emulation, beware of putting coin mechs in and charging others to play. That's frowned upon by the MAME devs (and pretty much everyone else!) I'm not even sure labeling it as "club fundraising" would help any. I think you're better off leaving in on freeplay (coin-up buttons).
Not sure about if you use actual arcade boards instead. Probably need some operator's liscense from your city or something.