This is my MAME cabinet. My goal was to keep the exterior as original as possible. Before I get hate mail for destroying this classic... It was already history. It sort of worked back in 94 when my Dad got it from an arcade operator friend of his. The machine worked intermittently then. I discovered it was a bad power supply and fixed it. It worked again for a few years and remained original until about 1997. That was when I want through a divorce. When I retook possesion of it a year later from my X, I discovered that nearly every wire in it had been butchered. It was a few more years before I started to rewire it. I was actually close to having it work when the monitor lost a gun then went completely dead. It might have been the spark from a dead short I missed. That was when I made the choice to convert it to a MAME cabinet. Now in 2004, it is done.

It is hard to tell from this shot what the difference is if you do not know what to look for. The original two way joystick was replaced with a 4 way (switchable to 8 way) stick. The monitor sits a little high because the original 19in was replaced with a 21in.

I did my best to preserve the original artwork. The bottom portion of the cabinet was repainted to cover the rough apearance. The artwork was touched up with Red Yellow and Black sharpies.

I mounted the PC motherboard and hard drive on the back door. This allows for plenty of air flow as well as keeping the inside of the cabinet free from clutter. I still have not decided what OS to install. I am leaning to linux with advancemame, but It is nice to have another windows gaming machine around for LAN parties.

Here is a closer view of the inside. The placement of the motherboard and power supply are carefully located so the door will close without crimping cables.

This view gives you a better idea of how the pieces fit together when the door closes. This shot was taken thru the coin door. Yes, there is a purple neon light in there. Why? Because I had one.

The original monitor had lost a color gun and was beyond repair. I had this one in storage that nobody wanted to use because it was fuzzy at high resolutions. Notice how tight of a fit it is.

A peek inside the box from the coin door preserves the original feel of arcade machines with all the hardware mounted on the sides and doors. Looks much better than a mini tower case sitting in the bottom of the cabinet.

The original motherboard was relocated from tbe back door to the inside wall for safe keeping. It will never see any more use but I could not see myself tossing it in a landfill.