After trolling on the boards and in the IRC channel for a few weeks, I finally had to break down and start my MAME Cabinet. So, here what I was looking at as "constraints"

• I live in an apartment with little/no work space, so it had to be a pre-made cab
• I live in an apartment which costs too much money, so it had to be as cheap as possible
• Keeping with the cheap part, I wanted a cab with a nice two player, six buttons each, cp

So, I started doing some research and found out about the US Amusements auction in Indianapolis on the 15th of September. That was my starting point...

Until I got impatient and started to call every place I could think of that might have arcade machines. I discovered something very sad about myself one night... My girlfriend and I were drinking rather heavily at a local pool hall that happens to serve $1 beers (of all varieties) and we had been there for several hours. I found myself gravitating towards the three arcade machines near our pool table and then, finally, my girlfriend called me out on it and said "You've been paying more attention to the buttons and the joysticks on that THING than you have been on the game or ME!"......... yes, it was true.... I was obsessed.

Fast forward to the next day, while I was ignoring my girlfriend the night before, I found the sticker which told where that game came from, I called them up and left a voicemail (it was, afterall, Sunday morning)... googled them and left an email... and filled out their feedback form... gosh-darnit, they better call me back I thought. And they did. The guy on the phone said "I've got a whole warehouse full of them, come get em.". Jackpot I thought.

I went down to Bedford, a good 30 minutes south of Bloomington, in my Buick (no taking home what I find...) and pull up next to a Porsche Cheyenne in their parking lot... "hmm.. lucrative business" I think to  myself. I walk in, and get taken down to a dark dismal basement with about 40 games of all shapes and sizes and get told that "these are the ones we want to get rid of".  I find a cab that is about the right size, looks to be in good shape, and has a cp like I want. Go up to the owner, talk about paying for it and end up paying $50 for the cab with coindoors and nothing else. AND! the guy who was showing me around says that the next time he is in town he will bring it up.

Sooooo.... a long story even longer, it shows up about a week and a half later... he hand-trucks it into my apartment complex, up the elevator and into my apartment where I'm extremely dismayed that I have to return to work. When I get home that night, I start my examination. I find an old SF2 Jamma Board! Bonus!  Anyway, here are pics. I promise subsequent posts will be shorter.

My Flickr Pictures: http://flickr.com/photos/bendalton/sets/1028173/

Pretty cool story.  Seems like a really good deal you got there... and with complete delivery too!  Amazing.  The cabinet looks like it is in pretty good condition, but oh my lordy lordy what a hideous marquee.   

Oh, and I think you might have to invest in at least a few proper tools.  Heh.  That makes all the difference.   

Pretty cool story.  Seems like a really good deal you got there... and with complete delivery too!  Amazing.  The cabinet looks like it is in pretty good condition, but oh my lordy lordy what a hideous marquee.   

Yep that and the CP overlay is nasty. The cp is aluminum and it has definitely been redrilled, I'll post a close up of the overlay now that I have the plexi off tonight. Ill order a different overlay soon, but my first priority is to get the thing up and functional!

Oh, and I think you might have to invest in at least a few proper tools.  Heh.  That makes all the difference.   

I think you are definitely right on that front. I'll probably end up buying a drill this weekend so I can install my monitor, pc motherboard, and potentially some casters on the bottom.

Yea i gotta get me the tools also.  but so far it seems liek a good deal.  you basically spent only what like 80 bucks so far? and tha's for a cabinet and a monitor.  bsically the hard part is done.  i'm gonan try to find an outlet for cabs.  but yea good so far.

I've spent a little more than that, I ordered my Ipac-2 last week, and I have that ready to install.

Anyone know where I can get some 'break out' boards so I can wire my Ipac to that and then use the quick-disconnects from the controls to the board?

More pictures will come tonight.

Since I live a block away from where I work, I thought I would take some more photos for you all.

I finally added the full frontal view of the cabinet.

Here is the ugly-ass cp overlay w/o the plexi.
  (note the tear by the buttons??)

I've added a shot of the underside of the cp, see where they recut it for the conversion. I wonder what it was before???

So.. what happened to all those controls??? well.. I took them out and CLEANED them!

I also salvaged the wires from the old hookup for later use. I've got a set of wires for all the controls already worked out and the daisy-chained ground wire too...

Hey that's a Dynamo cab!!

Does your cab have a removable back or did you pried open it? Mine doesn

Dynamo Cabs are generic they where very popular with SF games

Quote from: brained on September 29, 2005, 02:50:29 pm

BTW, those dynamo metal cp's give you a though job to recondition!!

He should send it to Bomber to have it sand-blasted!

Delivery to and from NZ may not make that such a great idea 

why sandblast something when I can just cover it up with an overlay and plexi.

I asked the same question after about an hour of sandblasting!!

Looks like you got a great deal on the cab - looking forward to seeing your progress.

Better start by getting some bondo and metal plates and you'll have a new panel

So, I haven't forgotten about it or stopped working on it, I just haven't had the time to update the thread.

So, let me post some pictures and talk about what i've done and how close I am to version 1.0.

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so, about a week ago, I drove two hours south to get the monitor I won off of ebay. Truly out in BFE!

After 4 hours in the car, I got home and was determined to finish it all.  My first and very TRAGIC realization was that the existing monitor bezel was too large to allow me to mount directly to it. It had to go!

Easy task right? Just remove the supports from the front, back, and bottom and then decide what to do next. Well, here was the problem... the supports were not only, screwed in, they were glued down and nailed in in no fewer than 19 places each! So, I tried and I tried and I tried to pry these supports free. And I finally gave up! (see picture below of god-awfully ugly monitor mounting-board/bezel) (note: you can also see some examples of my next attempt to mount the arcade monitor)

At this point, it was late in the evening and I was extremely frustrated in my schedule setback. Andrea, my amazingly wonderful, sweet, and supporting girlfriend (yes the same one I had ignored earlier), decided that I needed a) some cheering up and b) a new toy. We drove to lowes and she gave me an early christmas present: a new drill! 

Before my roommate gets home, I suddenly realized an awful truth. My monitor is WAY too long to be mounted like this; it would stick out of the back of the cabinet by over 4 inches.

First step: REMOVE the supports I had in place. So, I broke out my drill, started to unscrew the 8 screws holding these in place. Evidently, the screws I got were total CRAP. 2 of the heads rounded out to the point I could no longer remove them with the drill. This complicated matters even further. I eventually had to break out my pliers and manuall unscrew these things. Pain in ---my bottom---.

A new strategy was needed. Feeling defeated, I got my roommate to come take a look and give his oppinion. We settled on removing the supports for the mounting-board that were on the front of the cabinet. These proved to be MUCH easier to remove and we shortly had the big and ugly thing taken out. I settled on mounting my new supports to the FRONT of the ones I had used earlier. Since they were 1x3's, the total added depth would be 4 inches.... this might just work. After a long agzonizing time measuring, re-mesuring, mesuring and marking again, I finally held the hefty monitor in place while Mike, my roommate, drilled pilot holes and then screwed in the 6 mounting screws I got.  *insert super mario brothers 1 end of level theme music here*

Well I have everything screwed in that is going to be screwed in (well, I think so). So, I decide to try to get the thing functional!

I take an old broken monitor from work, chop the cable off, toss the monitor and take the cable home. I take the old jamma monitor cable and chop off the bottom connector, wire up the new ones and tape it all up. Then I fire up the machine with a spare monitor, install win 98 and install powerstrip.

*UH OH*.. powerstrip won't let me assign arcade mode to this video card. *DOH!*

I go online and read up on the matter. Since I don't have agp on here, I have to find a compatible pci card. I settle on the Trident Blade T64 and order it from ecost overnight!

The card arrives the next day. I rush home at lunch to get this thing up and running. I decide just to use the EasyCab install CD. I just do the normal install off of my standard svga monitor and make sure it is all set up correctly.

moment of truth... no video! I'm dismayed... what in the world can be the problem. I hop on IRC and start talking to everyone in #byoac and resign myself to the fact I'm going to have to dismantle the monitor and break out my multimeter to find the problem........   

I am looking at the monitor one last time before I give up for the day and notice a wire hanging out in a random way... I take a couple photos and post a thread in the forums and finally figure out that this IS the problem.

I have video... eureeka!

But... a) I can't get any games to run... b) the video is very wavy and c) I have no sound.

For good measure, I install the isolation transformer and that helps with the video stability. I start doing research on the web.

I eventually get the thing working with sound after tweaking setup files and messing with dos audio drivers for HOURS.

Then my old hard drive dies!

Within an hour a friend has offered a spare 45gb hd that I drive across town to get. I get back, install windows, and spend about an hour configuring everything from scratch and can now play some games!!!

I will take some additional shots of the version 1.0 machine tonight. (action shots)

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So, what's next?
Here are my next steps:

• Order some new joysticks (or fix the ones I have)
• Replace the Control Panel (either by cutting down the side and building one from scratch, or acquiring a new dynamo cp)
• Replace the Marquee and get a nice looking CP overlay.
• Replace the computer. The p3 800mhz is a little slow for my tastes, so I'll keep my eyes out for a good combo deal. (Fry's here I come!)

Here is a before and after of the CP off the Dynamo cab I recently completed.

Well, I traded my SF2 Jamma board for a couple of Happ's Super Joysticks and both player 1 and 2 start buttons.

After seeing Kev's control panel, I'm now pretty inspired/anxious to get a decent control panel in place. I've decided to stick with a standard sized dynamo cp. I've decided that I'd like to go with a 7 button per player layout like i've seen around (with the 4 bottom buttons like the NEOGEO button set).

So, does anyone know where I can find:

• A 2 player cp w/ 6 buttons per player and space for a 7th button (or just a 7 button/player cp)
• A blank dynamo cp (not that I've ever heard of anyone finding one)
• Good set of dimensions I can take to a metal shop to have one made

Here's a pic pf the CP and coin door on the cab.



Kev~