elekTRONarcade
Active member
A bit of backstory....
I picked up this Frogger cocktail for free recently, and its in amazing shape considering. Only issue was, no monitor. I had a lead on one, but it didn't have a flyback and needed recapping. I decided to postpone my search when my work upgraded their monitors, and I came home with some minty 19" flat panels. Coupled with the quad core I've had in the closet for a few months, it was time to finally make a MAME cab, a goal I've had for the past ten years.
Starting off, I gutted both the PC and the best looking monitor for the necessary goodies. The stats: 19" Sanyo flat panel, quad Core2 board with 8 gigs of RAM, 1tb HDD, Blu-Ray drive, ATI 1gb video card and Wireless N card. Now that I had the components, it was time to get to work.
I started by removing the glass from the table, and gave everything a thorough cleaning inside and out. I kept the original instruction sheets in place after installing the monitor under the glass..it fit perfectly with minimal mounting required. On the underside, I mounted the monitor's hardware cage and the adjustment control panel. I had to extend the wires running from the monitor to the cage and zip tied/bracketed all the wires in place.
Next, I mounted the PC hardware to the inside of the table. If you notice from the pics below, I did absolutely zero gutting of the original hardware, that way if I ever decide to unMAME it, it'll require little effort to restore it back to original. Mounted the wireless antenna to the top of the coin box cover, the power supply to the bottom grate and the board/drives to the backside of the table.
After wiring everything up, I gave it a test run. I'm working off a merged MAME 0.142 romset. I've been collecting MAME ROMs/CHDs for about nine years now, glad I can finally put them to good use. Using MAME 0.146B and Maximus Arcade under Windows 7, everything came up beautifully.
Left to do:
Pics below:
I picked up this Frogger cocktail for free recently, and its in amazing shape considering. Only issue was, no monitor. I had a lead on one, but it didn't have a flyback and needed recapping. I decided to postpone my search when my work upgraded their monitors, and I came home with some minty 19" flat panels. Coupled with the quad core I've had in the closet for a few months, it was time to finally make a MAME cab, a goal I've had for the past ten years.
Starting off, I gutted both the PC and the best looking monitor for the necessary goodies. The stats: 19" Sanyo flat panel, quad Core2 board with 8 gigs of RAM, 1tb HDD, Blu-Ray drive, ATI 1gb video card and Wireless N card. Now that I had the components, it was time to get to work.
I started by removing the glass from the table, and gave everything a thorough cleaning inside and out. I kept the original instruction sheets in place after installing the monitor under the glass..it fit perfectly with minimal mounting required. On the underside, I mounted the monitor's hardware cage and the adjustment control panel. I had to extend the wires running from the monitor to the cage and zip tied/bracketed all the wires in place.
Next, I mounted the PC hardware to the inside of the table. If you notice from the pics below, I did absolutely zero gutting of the original hardware, that way if I ever decide to unMAME it, it'll require little effort to restore it back to original. Mounted the wireless antenna to the top of the coin box cover, the power supply to the bottom grate and the board/drives to the backside of the table.
After wiring everything up, I gave it a test run. I'm working off a merged MAME 0.142 romset. I've been collecting MAME ROMs/CHDs for about nine years now, glad I can finally put them to good use. Using MAME 0.146B and Maximus Arcade under Windows 7, everything came up beautifully.
Left to do:
- Final wiring of the power supply/monitor power to the original cab's power cord
- Install the 1gb video card and a few chassis fans for cooling
- Replace the control panel with sheets of plexi and artwork sandwiched between, and install the joysticks/buttons
- Wire up the i-Pac once it arrives
- Have a beer and enjoy a few games
Pics below:


