Dreading Teardown

I know the time is coming soon thatt I must tear down my cab in preparation for mame computer installation. I'll have to strip down the cab to just the bare wood and start cleaning, filling, sanding, painting, T-molding replacement, and woodworking. I'll need to tear it down just so I can have a good look at the monitor space; to facilitate fitting of the new 21" PC monitor (if I choose to use it over the arcade monitor).

The thing is, although it looks like shit and isn't an original dedicated Carrier Air Wing, it is a living, breathing game that's really fun to play. I'm having trouble bringing myself to gut it. I have too much for the arcade machine and its hardware. It's tough to come to terms with the idea that I must gut this living breathing arcade game of its hardware and replace it with a PC running software emulation. The thought turns my stomach a little. But I can't become a cab collector in my little place, and that machine will be so much more once the conversion is finished.

Adjusted Monitor and Buttons Working

I moved the cab to a nice spot in my garage by my wooden shelf. I played Carrier Air Wing and the 2up stick was working perfectly. I guess it was just the humidity because every switch is working now. Also I adjusted the monitor because the top and bottom were cut off. I adjusted the V-Size down a little (counter-clockwise, it's very sensitive), then had to adjust the V-Position all the way up (counter-clockwise again) and now it's just right.


I was looking through Happcontrols.com for parts I need on the cabinet. Here's the order I came up with so far:

Item # Qty Description Your
Price Extended Order Options
1 91-1319-10 MINI LAMP #555 6.3V T-3.25 3K HR WEDGE BASE.25A.90CP(10/BOX) $0.25 $2.50
2 42-1102-10 CASHBOX BLACK PLASTIC FOR O/U DOOR $7.15 $7.15
3 49-1000-00 RETAINER MARQUEE 10 FT LENGTHS BLACK RIGID PVC 1=10FT $12.95 $12.95
4 49-0995-00 T-MOLDING 3/4" BLUE SOLD PER FOOT 25' MIN. LENGTHS $0.69 $17.25
5 30-2225-A05 LOCK 7/8" DB ASSY KA A05 WITH 1-1/4:" CAM AND 2 KEYS $3.60 $10.80
Total: $50.65

I can see that I already forgot to add new leg levelers. I'll have to add them when I get a chance. Also I have no idea how much t-molding I'll be needing or what color I'll want to use, so I'll prob remove it. It took me awhile to figure out what size locks I'll need. Fortunately Happ has a guide on how to measure them. Apparently the 7/8" refers to the length from the bottom of the face back to cam arm. Basically you measure the part with the threads plus the 1/8" thickness of the cam. I should also measure the size I'll be needing for the back door too because it's counter sunk for some reason.

No pictures today. Nothing to post here. I think I'll get alligator clips so I can discharge my monitors and screw around with them. Still have to decide if I'll try and get the 21" er in my cabinet. It'll require that I figure out how to mount it to a piece of 3/4" plywood and fit it into the cab and pray that it isn't too long. Janky cabs have the monitor on a shelf with the plastic sticking out the back with the door removed. One actually had the plastic sawed off lol!

Got my cabinet today

Woo Hoo!!! I got my Carrier Air Wing Jamma cabinet today. Kevin, the dude who delivered it was really cool. Strong as a mule and was able to offload my cabinet off his truck and a move a 4 player Simpsons all by himself. Dropped it off right at my garage. Plugged it in and the monitor looked good, a nice 19" Wells Gardner with mostly new caps installed. He loaded up a few credits and we started a 2p game. I noticed that the fuel meter at the bottom and the top part above the score wasn't visible. Also the stick would catch a bit when going from up to down. I didn't notice it at the time, but he didn't play long. I found out later that up didn't work on the 2up side. Later in the day I found that down stopped working spontaneously on the 1up side, but it was probably the humidity because it happened around when it started raining. Anyway, we bullshitted for awhile before he took off to deliver his Simpsons cab to someone in San Jose.


I inspected the cab and I have to say it was in way better shape than I could have hoped. All the wood was great. Only one leveler foot is messed up. Just a little wood near the bottom needs to be filled, one bent marquee holder, some odd screws, and some dirt here and there. T-molding isn't perfect. There's no locks, but it has a nice security bar that keeps the coin doors closed. The back lock was missing, so it was closed with a couple drywall screws. Looks like it was in a location and somebody loved it and kept it up for a long time.

Don't get me wrong, I was not expecting a flawless Jamma cab for $200 bucks. All in all with a minor bit of work, the thing was ready to deploy in a retail location. Good to go. The coolest thing about it was that the top half of the left side was covered with dead bugs from the ride over. Awesome, the bug carnage made me giggle. Cab had bugs in its teeth lol.



For my purposes, I'll get started evaluating what I have and figuring out how to proceed. I'll try to retain the existing monitor. I know that Soft 15KHz will work on my video card; I just have to figure out how to build a VGA to Jamma cable. Also, I'll have to figure out how to discharge a monitor. I don't feel like taking 20,000 volts in my arm, through my heart and out my ass. :P. If I can't get it working well, I have the 21" VGA monitor to install in there, but I'd have to work on building a shelf for it, or remove the plastic case and jerry rig my own brackets to hold it in place. Most likely, it won't fit, damn thing is around 18" deep and i estimate I only have about 14" to 16" of room in the cab. If I'm lucky, it's actually 17" of room and the monitor without its case is 16" (yeah right). But first thing's first, I have to discharge these monitors before I start messing around with them.

Building a MAME Cabinet 2

So we're living in a place with a nice garage and once again, I'm obsessed with Mame again. The last few weeks I've been watching Ebay and Craigslist for a good deal on an arcade cab. The best deals are always from a seller in Oakdale called totally_arcade. Dude's selling working cabs for around $100 - $200 dollars. Good quality shit too.

First one I saw was Die Hard in an ugly but functional Jamma cabinet. I thought about getting that one, but it was rough and not the shape I was looking for. I thought that since it had a small 19" monitor, my 21" would fit in there quite nicely. But, I held off and didn't get it, I don't like 2 piece cabs I guess.






Next one was a game called Cycle Warriors. I thought about this one because it had a great big monitor and a big control panel. However I realized that my garage is small and Cycle Warriors was just too friggin' big.







Things came and went on Craigslist and Ebay. The most shocking of them was someone giving away a free Pac Man. Just bring a truck to Pacifica nd pick it up. I'm sure that one went quickly. If I had a pickup, I would've had that sucker. Anyway, earlier this week, the perfect thing popped up. totally_arcade was selling Carrier Airwing in a beautiful standard Jamma cabinet. Nice monitor, clean cab, coin door and a game I actually knew and liked, Carrier Air Wing (UN Squadron on SNES). I bought that sucker on Thursday, October 25th and arranged delivery for $25 bucks gas money. This cabinet is exactly the same shape as a thousand other Street Fighter machines I've seen over the years. It's exactly the thing I had in mind and what I would've made if I built one from scratch.

I can't wait until it gets delivered either tomorrow (Sunday October 28th), or Monday. I've never worked with actual arcade machines. I imagine I'll run into problems working with the machine's power and monitor and I'll have to figure things out to get it working as I go. I want a really clean setup and don't want two power cords running into the thing and two power supplies. I imagine I'll have to engineer some kind of relay to run mains power to the computer power supply and the marquee lighting/coin door and have it all run on one switch.

But I'll figure all that stuff out later after I play Carrier Air Wing and do some research. :D

Building a MAME Cabinet

I discovered MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator we'll refer to as Mame), back in '99. I was working at 3Com and kind of stumbled upon it perhaps from a coworker, I fogot how. You could install this program and as long as you found the digital copies of an arcade game's ROMs (Read-Only Memory chips, we'll call roms from now on), you could load and emulate that game in Mame. I loaded a few classics like Pac Man and Mario Bros and I was hooked. Thanks to a great site called mame.dk, I was able to build a complete collection of Mame roms and play all the classics to my heart's content.

However, the controls always left something to be desired. Playing on a keyboard kinda sucks especially games like Street Fighter. While struggling to find a better way to play, one quickly finds websites dedicated to making arcade controls, websites like BYOAC (Build Your Own Arcade Controls). Then soon the idea springs up of putting your Mame computer in an actual arcade cabinet and playing it there. Thanks to the hundreds of links on the examples page no doubt.

So there I am at the dawn of the 21st century with an obsession with Mame and a desire to get/build/assemble an arcade cabinet running Mame. I dabbled with keyboard hacking and building a control panel. An easy entry point for most of us. I built the box out of a 48" shelf and some brackets and got the controls from Happ Controls. However I used Happ Ultimates for the stick and button because I thought they'd be more authentic. Unfortunately I found the buttons and stick to be less responsive than I would've liked. Competition sticks are the way to go apparently. The best buttons of the whole set that I got are the 1up and 2up buttons. They're Happ horizontal pushbuttons. On the next control panel I get, they'll all be competition or horizontal buttons. I let the stick gather dust for a long time before busting it back out again recently. It was always a pain in the ass plugging it in because it was a running a hacked PS2 keyboard. Recently I installed a iPAC and the thing works great... but the stick and buttons still kinda suck.