My arcade cabinet

I am the midst of rebuilding this, with a new core i7 system and 16tb of hard drive space to accommodate Chris' amazing drive. I have refurbished the cabinet and re-capped the monitor. All that's left now is to finish the control panel rebuild. This is a 35 year old Midway Universal Cabinet that originally housed a Defender game, that was later converted to Golden Tee then NBA Jam. I got it 12 years ago, built a new control panel from scratch, and have been puttering away on an old GameEx build. Even after all of those years of tinkering it was never as good as the setup I have now. Currently have the 8tb drive, looking forward to upgrading to the 16tb drive once I finish the rebuild.

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The current state of things...just waiting on a new CPO to arrive so I can rewire the controls and reprogram the Ipac4 and finally get to play for realsies. I have been using a 360 controller but it's not the same. I am going to add some more trim pieces to make the panel look less janky, and will be adding a couple of spinners with steering wheel attachments and a trackball and a pair of guns at some point here soon. Finally, I am having my robot logo redone by some lady in Ukraine so I can get new sideart and marquee made. That was my DJ logo from the 90s (in fact my old site tenjuna.com is miraculously still up even though I haven't touched it since 2004   ), it will be nice to see it updated.

Anyway I know it's nothing spectacular, but I wanted to stay with the old school vibe with the CRT and solid ones that still work great are getting hard to find.

I think it looks pretty great and like a lot of fun. There is always room for improvement but you have a solid setup there!

Here is an update after the control panel rebuild...still need to rewire, then update ipac programming for changes to the 8tb drive, then update to the latest 8tb drive build once CoPilot is finished and working again:

Looks great! How do more modern systems look on the CRT like Wii?

Not great unfortunately *shrug*

Wow man, great work, looks professional!

If the top part is hollow, you can get cheap LED lights from SuperBrightLEDs and have it power by USB, light up your marquee to make it pop.

I have this one and love it, works awesome:
https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/led-light-tubes/led-tube-lights-super-flexible-led-rope-lights/2959/

How did you connect the PC up to the monitor, I assume it's a 15 hz monitor? I tried the ati card and crt emudriver, but it was a pain. I'd much rather try a vga to cga converter like a gbs 8100 to try out.

Marcux wrote:How did you connect the PC up to the monitor, I assume it's a 15 hz monitor? I tried the ati card and crt emudriver, but it was a pain. I'd much rather try a vga to cga converter like a gbs 8100 to try out.  

I am using the Ultimarc Arcade VGA:

https://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html

I used to have the old AGP version and never had a problem with it. Since I upgraded the computer I added the latest version of the card and it's a beast for the Hantarex Polo CRT I have in the cab. Modern games don't look as great because of the screendoor effect but it's good enough for what it is.

At some point I am going to buy a boutique cabinet with a 55" LCD and all the crazy toys to replace this, but until then I am pretty happy with this.

James M wrote:Wow man, great work, looks professional!

If the top  part is hollow, you can get cheap LED lights from SuperBrightLEDs and have it power by USB, light up your marquee to make it pop.

I have this one and love it, works awesome:
https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/led-light-tubes/led-tube-lights-super-flexible-led-rope-lights/2959/

Thank you! It's coming along at least.

The marquee actually has a tube light in it, and I recently added new speakers in there and blackout cloth to isolate them from the light source. The volume control is just above the CRT in the speaker grill, but you wouldn't notice it. The speakers used to sit on the control panel itself so I am pretty happy with the update.

Have finally finished the computer update, and am now installing the new drive as I post this.

All I have left to do is rewire the controls and program the IPAC4 and I am back to "normal". Since I have yet to actually use this 8TB drive build, I have no idea what normal is yet lol.

I have added a pair of Xbox 360 controllers, and will be adding a trackball, spinners/steering, and 2 guns pretty soon. Overall I am happy with the rebuild, but am looking forward to buying something new to replace this in 2019.

Let me know where you land with spinners, that is one component I haven't picked up yet but its "on my list" wonder if anyone has a boxing day sale coming up....

I am buying the Ultimarc spinners with the large flywheel and steering wheel attachment. About $120 shipped all said and done. You will find them a little cheaper on eBay but not much. They don’t really go on sale.

GroovyGameGear has an awesome spinner that you can remove the top and put a steering wheel on it for driving game. It’s also a bit cheaper and a lot closer than UK ultimark. Don’t get me wrong, I love ultimark and got the ipac and a rotary analog stick, and Andy is awesome for support; but for spinners GGG is tough to beat.

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I will check that out thanks

I've looked at both online but no way to examine in person, so nice to get some feedback! Thanks.

I finally had the time to re-wire everything and got my first taste of Chris' drive tonight. I still need to program the IPAC and wrap my head around everything he has done with this, but below is a video if you want to see it in action:

Arcade Video

Great update, pretty cool being able to play oldschool style on that screen of yours. I'm going to make sure I leave a lot of room inside my cabinet for holding controllers also.