re: CADs new obsession - buying & modding 1up cabinets to support full MAME library

Here's a bar top cabinet I put together a year or so ago.

IL eurosticks and IL psl buttons
Utrak trackball
Ipac-2 interface
Rpi3b running the show

Ignore the temporary paper marquee...

After wheeling and dealing I got 2 sealed asteroid cabs for 90 bucks a piece. These have horizontal monitors which is what I needed for now. I’m still on the lookout for a vertical and the cheapest has been 150. I can turn the monitor that way but just want another cab.

My first project will be to turn one into a straight nes/snes can with nes artwork . Will post all the mods as I go. I’m ordering the parts tonight and will link the purchases. Yes I will put more money than it’s worth but you can’t put a price on nostalgia.

Dont do it! haha

I have an old Mortal Kombat cab that Im pulling some of those parts for the 1up.

If you are trying to find a cab for about 100-125 bucks and live close, I will look for you one. I dont know what area you are in.

quote:

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I'm almost afraid to ask where you guys are finding the old cabinets..... Thinking my cocktail table needs an upright companion...

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Chattanooga has a place called Chattanooga Pinball, they have warehouses full of busted up cabs in all kinds of conditions. Pretty decent prices.

Hit up Craigslist. I'll bet there's tons of cabinets on there and ads for warehouses with old cabinets.

Galaga?

Would love to be able to get a copy of this if at all possible...

Start with a 1up cabinet then hit the 1up /sub. It's really much easier than you think.

Basically you need a board that connects to the 1up monitor and adds HDMI, new joysticks and buttons that are controlled through USB, a USB encoder board to plug all the new buttons into, a retropie (like $30) for cpu, an amp and 2 speakers (if you want stereo) and about an hour with a drill.

You can download the mame arcade game images in flavors from 16gb to 256gb (just need an sd card) and the retropie is designed to take care of everything.

It's really less daunting than it sounds. The trick is understanding what each of those things above is for then just connecting them like Legos.

There are lots of YouTube videos that walk you through it and we can help you in this thread once a couple of us have done through it.

The 2 big compromises here is a 1:75 scale 1up cabinet instead of full size and a cheap pi for the CPU instead of a fast PC but that's also why this is so awesome.. You can build up several mini cabinets for the price of one full size.

I've done some WAF testing studies and it appears 3 is the max for me.

Where are these in Nashville? I want one with all the games

Check this guy's video. I'm going to be buying almost all the same parts with the exception of getting the LED buttons for $8 more

LINK

I won't post all the links below; you can click them below his video in description.

Asteroids 1up cabinet $75 (Walmart)


LCD controller $26 (Amazon - adds HDMI to 1up monitor for Pi)
Joystick & button kit (includes 2 USB controllers): $40 (Amazon)
Cheap amp to control audio AND POWER SUPPLY $17 (Amazon will recommend adding the power supply when you go to purchase this)
Raspberry pi 4 (2GB is plenty, don't need 4GB) $47.49 (Amazon)
128GB SD card $15 (Amazon)
Wolfinoz/128GB MAME/CONSOLE ROM IMAGE FREE (ArcadePunks website)* *you may want to download this right away before it potentially goes away. you never know when the ROM police will strike

i have asteroids so I'm going to swap out the crappy spinner too:

premium spinner $49 (Amazon)

I'm still unsure how to hook the new spinner up to the retropie so I still have some research to do there.

TOTAL OUT OF POCKET:

$75 (cabinet)
$145 (upgrades)
$50 (spinner)
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$270

Light up marquee is available for roughly $50 so throw that in and we're up to $320

There are 2 choices for light-up marquee so far I've found:

Arcade Game Factory Gen1 1Up Light Up Marquee with Remote $49

Acrademodup Light Up Marquee $59

I like the first one better (and cheaper)!