Revisting my first ever build, and finally beginning its restoration and new life

[aldub516]

Hey guys, and thanks again for looking. As youll see in another post in here, im finally getting around to posting up pictures and progress on things im working on. Here id like to show off my FIRST EVER experience in the world of arcade building. This was about 5 years ago. I found a cabinet on craigslist for 50 dollars. I went and picked it up, and it was a heap of crap. Someone already converted it to a mame machine with a tank stick. This thing was BUTCHERED. There was like what seemed like 2 inches of orange paint over everything. The inside was incredibly crudely built to house whatever he put in there. Also a horrible cut out for a keyboard..the pics do justice. While my first thought was, leave it in the garbage, i thought it would be fun to go ahead and restore it as much as i can. I began by removing the paint... which wasnt terrible. Hours of scraping, but i do remember peeling off large patches of the paint which i NOW realize i was probably peeling of original artwork under it. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT CABINET THIS WAS AND WOULD LOVE INPUT ON IT!!!.. The only thing I can help with is say it came with a centuri coin door. Anyways moving on. Me and my father ended up putting together a decent machine. I dabbled with my first control panel EVER as well as my first large format art print for the cp. Basically EVERYTHING was new, but im damn happy how it came out! Sadly it never made it super close to completion. I had a POS Pc in there that i had laying around. Ripped a crt monitor out and mounted it which eventually looked horrible. Marquee was never full installed nor was the bezel.. Basically, what you see is what got done.. Had mamewah somewhat running with a mess of rom set. So now i am committed to rehabbing this bad boy to a beautiful new machine. I know it looks super rough, but its fixable. I took it all apart. A lot of the wood was crap inside, or replaced by the guy with like, cardboard wood. So my first mission was simply take apart the cabinet, and basically trace all the wood components, copy them and re-build the cabinet. Alot of the edges look real bad, but ive decided im going to saw them off about 1/4 inch, As well as use metal L rails as a finish as its worked nicely on other builds. So yes, im fully confident this machine can be brought back to full life with minimal work. Here are picture of the day i got it, and whatever pictures i have of what i ended up with. This post will be important as i will be looking for a lot of advice on restoration, so people can use this as a reference. Here i give to you, my FIRST EVER attempt at a mame arcade...

The day i got it... Any thoughts on what this couldve been? The fact that the cp was butchered off im sure doesnt help....

hosting images

[aldub516]

This is the earlier progress, basically stripped it down, and painted it.. t molding, basically just quick cheap rehab.

hosting images

BEGINNING OF CP WORK

photo hosting sites

[aldub516]

The cp with art, and basically done. I was SHOCKED at not only how clear and beautiful the print came out using high res images, but using my ridiculous methods of measuring buttons, the artwork layout came out pretty damn close to what I wanted.. Completely winged all of this with minimal experience.

how do i print screen

post img

And thats it kids! My first every attempt at a custom arcade cabinet. This rehab will be a fun process and i have INCREDIBLE ideas for this. For anyone suggesting i ditch the crap cabinet and just start new ( basically on the sides are usable), i also have a little connection to this machine. It was the last project me and my father did before he moved to another country so i love it particularly. thanks for looking!

[tthurman]

Was that a speaker hole in the cp area? If so that may be a clue, but it looks just as likely it may just be someones sawzall handy work too. The guys over at KLOV would probably be able to figure it out.

I'm sure it looks different up close, but the pics don't look bad at all. Like you said, those metal corner braces go a long way to making something rigid again.

[aldub516]

The speaker hole you're inquiring about is not infact a speaker hole.. Just some mind boggling hole karate punched out by whatever crackhead made the original conversion. This cabinets original condition is just like... wtf happened here??