Hi Davetron,
Sure I can share some details. I have some digital pics I took of it somewhere. If you like I can upload 'em somewhere or put them onto my web page (Which is far too much work related at the moment!)
It's really a basic black laminated cabinet. It was a JAMMA cab that I bought off Ebay for £50 and I had to hire a van and collect it from about 250 miles away, so it cost me £170 in the end!
I stripped everything out from inside and cleaned it up. I stripped the metal paint from the control panel and resprayed it. Dumped the old Hantarex monitor that was inside and bought a new Hantarex 20inch VGA gaming monitor directly from them to mount inside. I didn't have to do any wood work at all it was a direct replacement.
I had two PCs at the time - a work PC and my gaming PC. Naturally I stripped out the components from the work PC (work soo interferes with my leisure time!) - a P3 650MHz (Overclocked to 933MHz), 384MB RAM, 8GB hard-disk, Hercules Geforce 2 GTS Pro graphics, Gigabyte motherboard. I actually took the back panel of the motherboard out of the ATX case and mounted it inside the cabinet with wood screws; that way I can just upgrade the motherboard in the cabinet like I would a PC. I took the cradle for the harddrive from the ATX case and mounted that so I could also swap the hard-disk out too. I didn't include a CDROM because I have a 802.11b wireless network and so used my Netgear USB Wireless adaptor to connect to my game PC so I can upgrade the Mame software and download ROMS remotely.
I got an Ultimarc I-Pac 28-input game-button to PS2 adapter and wired it up for two-players - two 8-way joysticks and 6 buttons for each player. There's no room on the panel for a spinner so playing Disks of Tron is a little tricky, but its still fun!
I bought a £10 pair of PC speakers and canibalised them for the audio amplifier - there was a mono speaker in the cabinet already.
I needed seperate power supplies for the Marquee flourescent, the PC and the gaming monitor. There was an IEC (electrical Kettle type) socket on the cabinet so I needed to split the mains coming in. I got a four-way mains adapter and vut off the plug, connecting the free end to the pins of the mains socket on the cabinet. I then mounted the four-way mains adapter inside the cabinet and fitted everything mains powered inside with a standard UK 3-pin plug. Just keeps everything neat and safe. So now all I have to do is plug in a single mains cable and switch on. I have an arcade button connected to the soft power connector pints of the motherboard, so I can switch on the mains and press the button to boot up and shutdown.
The PC operating system I use is Windows XP - Professional and I boot up into MameWah (a third party frontend to Mame 084b) and use MameWah Frontend to configure it (otherwise it's a bit of a bugger to configure). It boots into MameWah at the moment and I can select the game I want with the joystick and run the game by pressing the fire button. I still have to click the mouse button to select the Mamewah application when it boots so its not as slick as I'd like at the mo! Ideally I would want to hide Windows completely during boot. I found a way to get rid of the Windows XP boot flashscreen so it's not as bad as it was!
What else?... Cost breakdown is fun:
Cabinet = £170
PC = £200 (Say with depreciation from when I bought it!)
Monitor = £300
New controls and I-Pac = £100
Sundry tools, paint and fittings: £20
Electrics = £20
Audio amplifier: £10
Total = £820 (what's that $1500 US?)
Ability to play "Disks of Tron" priceless!
It still isn't quite finished I need a Marquee. I have a new flourescent tube in there at the mo (actually a UV tube), but no artwork and I need to clean up the metal brackets that hold it in place. I also still have a PC keyboard and trackball attached and I would like to get rid of them. Alternatively get a wireless keyboard and mouse combo, so at lewhere to buy abortion pill ordering abortion pills to be shipped to house buy abortion pill online