Nice! I started in the arcade hobby when I was about 13 or 14 - and I started with MAME, building my own MAME machine. It took me months to track down a cabinet. By chance I called a pinball machine collector because I happened to have his card from who-knows-where, and fortunately, yes, he did have an old arcade cabinet - that he was planning on chopping up for firewood. I could have it.
So, I talked my dad into borrowing a truck from one of his friends and we drove out to pick it up. It was a Donkey Kong cabinet, gutted. No sideart, no bezel, but still had the marquee. Got it home and spent the next month rebuilding it.
I still have it. I built a new control panel, pieced together a PC from spare parts, some of which I had to spend a fair amount for, like the motherboard. A Pentium II 233 system was worth real money back then.
The monitor was a challenge, since used 17" CRT monitors went for $150 or so. Found one real cheap that was blurry. Took it apart, found the "FOCUS" control on the flyback and got it looking pretty good.
There was no i-pac at the time, so I hacked up a keyboard.
Even back then, I didn't want to "hack" a classic. Since I'd gotten the cabinet empty in the first place, and had rescued it from being firewood, it wasn't a problem. I also was careful not to make any changes to the cabinet itself - the idea being that if I wanted to track down all the parts (expensive, especially then), I could fix it as Donkey Kong.
The machine worked well for many years, but last year or so, the six gig hard drive died. Still haven't had the time to fix it - this time it's getting a faster computer, and probably a bigger monitor.
Fast forward ten years, and I still had the arcade bug... only with the ability to drive, a job that paid actual money, and someone to borrow a van from. Now I've got a whole bunch of games. Never thought back then that I would actually be able to own dedicated machines.
-Ian