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Other Family Members |
During the summer of '03, Mike (and a friend of his from work...we'll call him Clayton) got the idea of building an arcade machine. Not just any arcade machine, but a MAME machine. Using an old PC from Shari's father (maybe too old for some newer games) he built a machine that can play close to 4000 games! The journey started with a cabinet. He and Clayton went to the arcade auction in Columbus, OH. There they both bought arcade machines to gut and rebuild. This is Mike's story He bought an old R-Type machine. It was working, but the color/tint was off, the monitor was dim, the joystick was clearly used, and there was a big bolt by the coin door. Mike proceeded to gut it (after first fixing the dim monitor and the bad tint in the monitor).
Close up of the coin door and bolt!
First Mike took out the monitor and joystick. Note to others: Leave the machine unplugged for a very long time before playing with/removing the monitor. Mike let it sit for 2 hours (unplugged) and when he removed it he could feel the electricity going through his hands. Not enough to hurt, but enough to notice!
Then I stripped out all of the boards and wires.
Rather than build a joystick from scratch, we bought the X-Arcade joystick (nice two player model!)
Long story short, Mike replaced the light behind the marquee, stripped the stickers off the side (pain in the a$$), added stereo speakers, patched and painted the cabinet, mounted (strapped down) the monitor (15"), mounted the joystick and connected all the pieces. All in all, it took about 3-4 weekend of occasional work to get it completed. Here are the remaining pictures. Enjoy.
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