Showcase cabinet -- buy it?

[U2Edge]

Sorry to put a cabinet question here....but BYOAC's forum isn't working -- can't log in -- and I need to make a decision soon.

I found a used showcase cabinet for $600. Great shape with the 33" (?) monitor and everything. He's gonna pull the game card from it since it's rare, supposedly worth about $1K for the card alone.

The cabinet looked to be in great shape and it had the nice stereo mounted speakers. It's got a two-player control panel (not sure how many buttons each had -- it is currently a Virtua Tennis game, so that might help). How hard would this be to convert to a MAME cabinet? Just get an I-PAC (or a J-PAC -- not quite sure on the difference). Cost-wise and time-wise, how long would it take to convert assuming I have the computer I need to power it? What is a must-have on the computer to do the conversion? How hard would it be to upgrade the CP to four-player controllers and what would that cost (that'd be for down the road).

Thanks for all of your thoughts -- I was going to build a custom NBA Jam-spec'ed cabinet custom built around a pair of 2-player x-arcades, but I thought for the size of the monitor and having this stuff already built, it might not be a bad route.

Buy or don't buy? I can do basic wiring, but no soldering....and I'm pretty smart with electronics. What is all involved?

Thanks for all of your help -- you guys are life-savers.

[Will]

I'd buy it. For the parts that price is a steal. My cabinet (no pc, or monitor, or extras) cost around $400. So if you are getting a 33 inch monitor and a working, good looking cabinet for $600, go for it. You'll decent PC, but nothing special. Mine is a Celeron 3.2, gig RAM, onboard video, and plays everything fine (with the obvious exceptions). You will have to do a pretty decent amount of wiring though since you'll probably want to add more buttons.

[U2Edge]

  Will said:

I'd buy it. For the parts that price is a steal. My cabinet (no pc, or monitor, or extras) cost around $400. So if you are getting a 33 inch monitor and a working, good looking cabinet for $600, go for it. You'll decent PC, but nothing special. Mine is a Celeron 3.2, gig RAM, onboard video, and plays everything fine (with the obvious exceptions). You will have to do a pretty decent amount of wiring though since you'll probably want to add more buttons.

I just got some more info on it, since I didn't remember how many buttons it had...it has two per controller.

So to play NBA Jam or most recent games, I'd need to upgrade the CP.

So here's my options...

1) Showcase cab (currently Virtua Tennis), 2-player, 2-buttons, PCB pulled, local - $600

2) NFL Blitz full arcade cabinet including MK and NBA Jam PCB (as well as I-PAC or something like it to connect PC to Jamma -AND- built-in jumper to run arcade monitor at 15KHz), 2-player, 3-buttons (so technically MK doesn't even fully work), local - $400 to $500

3) NBA Jam cab w/4-players, 3-buttons, 2-hour drive each way - $400

4) My woodworking father-in-law builds a cabinet from scratch and brings it from Iowa (lord knows how much time and money)

Which would you buy/do? I've wanted four players, but I rarely have 4 people over. It would be nice to have 4 players to prepare for "worst-case scenario", so option 3 is the best. But that's a 4-hour round trip in a fricking U-Haul (between gas, mileage, time and hoping it doesn't break in the trip back, that sucks). The showcase cab is a steal, but I'd have to do a CP upgrade right off the bat to play pretty much anything (including my favorite game, NBA Jam). The NFL Blitz cab comes with some goodies and I could play 90% of games without a CP upgrade, but...

What would you get? Mind you, I want to try to keep it simple. I've never tore into CP's and am not familiar with re-wiring, etc. So for time, cost and convenience purposes, I want to keep it reasonably simple.

How hard would it be to convert for a guy like me? How much are we looking at? What would you do?

A lot of questions, I know. Just want to make sure I'm making the right decision before I pull the trigger.

Please list, in order, your preferences.

[Crystal Pistol]

Hi There:

I actually have a showcase cab and highly recommend it. Mine was a converted Golden Tee 99 cabinet and it was a piece of cake to convert. Control panel took the most time and pain but was well worth it. See in the monitor pedistool you can rip the motherboard mounting plate out of a case and secure it and the powersuppy and anthing else you need right to the back of the inside of the cab. The control panel I just traced the old piece of wood t make sure I was cutting the same sixze and laid out my keyboard. I have four main controllers with seven buttons each, a spinner, trackball, asteroid button config and a pac man four way controller. The latest install was two Liak sang laser guns. The Pedistool control panel will let you do almost anything as far as controls..this was important to me.

The shooting games alone make the monitor and cab worth it. For true authentic play it is awsome and the Gameex frontend just tops it off. BTW that is a great price for a showcase cab depending on condition.

Only downside is they are a bitch to breakdown and move. I have had to do this once and may have to do it again.

Hope that helps..CP

EDIT: On the control Panel for four players could spend upwards of 300-400. I would work with your father in law to do just the control panel. If you use lexan and a new cut of wood the two of you could probably knock it out in half a day. There are a number of templates that are available as well. I bought two template and the just cut one up for extra buttons. Ipac wiring took me about 4-5 evenings. Well worth it though when we have parties this is the talk..and fun.

[U2Edge]

  Crystal Pistol said:

Hi There:

I actually have a showcase cab and highly recommend it. Mine was a converted Golden Tee 99 cabinet and it was a piece of cake to convert. Control panel took the most time and pain but was well worth it. See in the monitor pedistool you can rip the motherboard mounting plate out of a case and secure it and the powersuppy and anthing else you need right to the back of the inside of the cab. The control panel I just traced the old piece of wood t make sure I was cutting the same sixze and laid out my keyboard. I have four main controllers with seven buttons each, a spinner, trackball, asteroid button config and a pac man four way controller. The latest install was two Liak sang laser guns. The Pedistool control panel will let you do almost anything as far as controls..this was important to me.

The shooting games alone make the monitor and cab worth it. For true authentic play it is awsome and the Gameex frontend just tops it off. BTW that is a great price for a showcase cab depending on condition.

Only downside is they are a bitch to breakdown and move. I have had to do this once and may have to do it again.

Hope that helps..CP

That actually helps a bit. Few questions, though -- do you have pictures of it? I probably don't want to go the lightgun/trackball/spinner route as there are very few games that use them and even fewer that I would ever play. If I just wanted to add a pair of controllers and/or some buttons, is it best to start from scratch or work off the current setup? I want to keep everything looking clean and unfortunately, I'm not greating with "building" stuff. I think a simple four-player with six-buttons each config is what my baseline is (bare minum three buttons each -- I think only MK games are ones that use more than three....)

[Crystal Pistol]

  U2Edge said:

That actually helps a bit. Few questions, though -- do you have pictures of it? I probably don't want to go the lightgun/trackball/spinner route as there are very few games that use them and even fewer that I would ever play. If I just wanted to add a pair of controllers and/or some buttons, is it best to start from scratch or work off the current setup? I want to keep everything looking clean and unfortunately, I'm not greating with "building" stuff. I think a simple four-player with six-buttons each config is what my baseline is (bare minum three buttons each -- I think only MK games are ones that use more than three....)

Here ya go..these are really quick snaps

[Ricci]

Buy and get a soldering pencil..very easy to use...