Resurrected Old School Style Full-Sized Arcade Cabinet

[solecize]

This is a (relatively new, not vintage or antique) cabinet that my friend and I built out around 2001. It used to have a huge CRT, but it went bad and those are getting hard to find and expensive. I replaced it with a 30-inch 16:10 monitor which just barely fits the width of the cabinet but is tall enough to meet the top and bottom edge of the bezel without seeing black bars.

I created vector art for all the characters to print on a wide format plotter and had them printed on vinyl. The cabinet has been in the garage for several years. (Shout out to Ms. vintage Pac-Man cocktail covered in junk, and my old-school real-wood vintage wall panels.)

The old computer had had long ago failed and I replaced it with my old rpi3b+ and I'm working on replacing that with a rpi4.

I'm using the iPac controller from Ultimarc so I can use custom macros, buttons, and keyboard keys all at the same time, allowing me to have hardwired buttons for emu commands without a shift/special key.
https://www.ultimarc.com/control-interfaces/i-pacs/i-pac2/

my todo list is:

-permenantly mount everything
-replace the happ sticks with with 4-way/8-way switchable restrictor for old games like packman
-update the LED lighting and fix the lighting on the trackball
-add a spinner
-add a few buttons
-add an LED marquis. I have the panels and controller, but I need to actually wire and configure it.

[jamrom2]

@solecize Go for it bro!

I love MAMEing or Retropieing the old cabinets. I say if you can't get them back to original, this at least saves them from the trash heap! Nice work!

If you need any help, just ask. I've done 6 total conversions in 20 years. And still looking to do more. LOL.

Here's my latest... my original Frenzy converted to BerZerk 20 years ago and again recently update. And my pride and joy Gorf that was resurrected from the dead.

I posted them on AtariAge, not really a good spot, but you get the idea.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/318680-my-mame-cabinet-collection-20-years-of-mameing/

[solecize]

@jamrom2
oh wow- that GORF was in bad shape, but now it looks SHINY. Good job.

The cabinet above was built in 2002 I think. I originally started with a trashed/non-functioning gauntlet cabinet. It was about 48% Bondo and all the graphics had been scraped off or painted. I hand drew the artwork on it in 1998! This was back in the keyboard matrix hacking days, and it used a pretty neat card that would display VESA graphics on old monitors. When you had the old CRTs you didn't need any fancy scanline software to recreate the effects. ha!

[jamrom2]

@solecize oh yeah I remember those days. The original restoration/conversation of my BerZerk cabinet was done in late 2000, just when Ultimarc and all the I-Pacs were coming out. I remember I was going to do the keyboard hack, but bought one of the first versions of the I-Pac. My first spinner was a trackball and HD bearing hack that worked pretty good. That cabinet saw a few refreshes, one being the upgrading of the control panel, then the computer which was done multiple times. Lol.

I basically love the hobby and I really enjoy seeing guys restore the old cabinets. With all the great graphics available out there we don't have to make our own stencils any more. Lol. It was fun and challenging, but I'm happy to just buy the stuff now and save on the time.

Good luck with the restoration, I'm still finishing Gorf and BerZerk will once again be refreshed. I'm trying to source the original metal control panel, or if I have to, I'll make one myself.

If you need any help, let me know. Having just done it, it's all still fresh on my mind.