Many times I asked myself this question. Should I buy an old cabinet and rebuild it to a MAME Cabinet, or should I build a new cabinet from scratch?
I first decided to build one from scratch for various reasons:
- I live in The Netherlands, and getting an old cabinet overhere is either impossible or way too exspensive. Importing an old cabinet from the USA costs around $300, and as I'm stripping it down, I don't like the thought of spending around $500-$1000 for just some wood.
- This way I'm sure everything will be as I want it to be.
- When I do something wrong, I won't demolish an original cabinet, leaving me with nothing. Now I just can blame myself, and start over again :)
Update 17-07-1999 I just got an offer for a cabinet here in the Netherlands (cheap). It looks like I'm going to convert this one to a Mame-machine first, and build another cabinet later.
Update 31-07-1999 Picked up a 'Royal Video Special'-cabinet
today, stereo sound, very little burn-in, with SF II-pcb. I can
get started...
All after this line is obsolete, but I leave it here for further
projects.
After I decided to build one myself, I went to the arcades to get some dimensions of an arcade-cabinet. I couldn't find any classic arcadegame in the arcades, nowadays it's all 4 player driving etc., so I started searching the net.
I found Brien King's page, on which the dimension of a Defender cabinet were given. He also has a link to Kevin Umbach's page, on which I could find all the information I needed. In a way, my cabinet will become very much the same as Kevin's.
I decided my cabinet to have the following dimensions (all in cm.):
Furthermore, I'll make it around 60 cm wide.
