Cabinet

• Convert an existing cabinet
• Build a new cabinet

Converting an existing cabinet is the easiest of the two options since most of the difficult work is already done and all of the future decisions can be made comfortably within the scope of a cabinet that has already been proven in the real world. The only issue with this option is when one considers converting an older or rare cabinet. Many arcade games are becoming very difficult to find and it would be incredibly reckless to destroy another stock classic. For that reason you should only consider converting a very common and/or previously converted cabinet. One of the best ways is to buy a cabinet that is not made for a specific game. Many cabinets are "standard" and are designed to work with many different games. These are absolutely perfect for converting to emulation.

Building a new cabinet is the best solution for people who take pride in doing it all themselves, or when requirements dictate that the cabinet have a special shape or size. Arcade cabinets are generally unimaginative. Making a cabinet that is unique or different than the tried and true is risky for the manufacturer and could cause maintenance nightmares down the road for the arcade owners. Building a cabinet is usually more expensive than the typical deal you might find on EBAY or at an auction, but the results are sometimes better.

Aught Cade

After seriously considering building the arcade cabinet from scratch, I decided to purchase an existing arcade cabinet. Primarily based on a really nice looking project using a Japanese Sit-At. I bought a Japanese Sit-At Taito Egret 29 from ArcadeStuff on EBAY. I liked the unique look and the idea of being able to sit down while playing. It also uses a standard JAMMA wiring harness which many tutorials and guides on the net assume that you have.

The cabinet arrived taped up in plastic and pretty dirty, either from the trip or possibly just typical of being used in an arcade. The light in the upper panel had gone out and after a futile search for a replacement I decided to replace it with a common bulb. I stripped out the existing 12v wiring and brought a 120v line from the incoming 120v line. I added a switch to turn the light on and off independently of the arcade and used an under the kitchen cupboard style florescent light as a replacement. I glued the base to the top where the old light used to be and flipped the switch. Very bright! Perfect. I spent the next hour scrubbing and vacuuming every surface I could reach.

About the time I bought the cabinet I also bought a Power Instinct 2 from a gentlemen on EBAY. It's a JAMMA game, which means that it should be possible to plug it in and play without any changes to the wiring harness. Power Instinct 2 arrived ahead of the cabinet and when the cabinet finally arrived I immediately plugged it in to test out the monitor. Two of the buttons didn't work, but a little wiring fixed that problem. One of the characters in the game also gets stuck at the top of the screen when performing a certain special move, but it's still fun to play with the other characters. Now that I knew the cabinet worked it was time to start integrating with the computer.

My first concern was the video connection. Arcade monitors are very similar to the monitors in a computer, but typically they have a lower resolution and a much lower refresh rate (~15-30hz vs. ~70-120hz). I bought an ATI Expert 2000 32MB AGP (Hardware DVD) which is compatible with a MAME front end called ArcadeOS. ArcadeOS knows how to tell certain video cards to switch to the unusually low refresh rate. Not all video cards support non-standard refresh rates.