Diary of a Madman: In the beginning...

So... here's where I'll describe the construction details of the transformation from an empty gutted old Taito cabinet into the UberArcade multi-gaming platform of doom.

When I discovered emulation way back in the spirit of '96 I was awestruck firing up Frogger in David Spicer's Sparcade emulator on my 486 DX/2 - 66Mhz and it was exactly as I remembered it. You even had to insert coins (virtually) to play!

Now I'm not the first person to decide to put a PC into a real arcade cabinet load it with emulators and have a "1000+ games in 1" cabinet. Far from it... About 500 people have braved the strange looks from their family, the blank stares from Home Depot employees, and have Built Their Own Arcade Controls.

I had noted, while scoping this project out months prior to its actual start, that Kevin from K & S Family Amusements had gutted arcade cabinets for like $20 or $30 bucks. By the time I upgrade my main PC, which would free up the older PC to be a dedicated arcade cabinet PC, he had updated his page stating that the cabinets were now FREE. Just come down and pick one up! My fate was sealed, and I knew the project was going to come to fruition.

After emailing Kevin to make arrangements, I went to his warehouse to look at the gutted cabinets he had available. There was an all white laminate one that was pretty dirty, another cabinet that mighta been a defender 30 conversions ago, and a cabinet that had some sort of golf control panel on it. I ended picking the one that used to be a Big Event Golf game. It was a "mid sized" cabinet which I thought would be least offensive to my wife, and it had both its back door AND a coin door. I admit it, I picked the cabinet because the coin door was still attached.

Kevin helped me get it on a dolly and guided me out the warehouse and gave me a hand leveraging it into my pickup. Which I thought was exceptionally nice considering he's not making any bread on the deal. I unloaded the beast into my garage for the next stage in the restoration / conversion process.