Was my centipede cabinet previously altered?

[Coindork]

Kangaroo and Dig Dug have over under style coin door, so it's not that.

I'm betting the front of the cabinet has been shaved down.
If you checked to front of the cab where the CP mounts and if its not routed out to mount T-molding, then its been trimmed down. Those holes on the side are probably have to do with how they mounted the new CP.
I'm guessing it actual is a Centipede cap.

 

[andrewb]

If the cab has been shaved, I'd think it would be pretty easy to tell, from inspection. It would be hard to rework a cab and still have it look factory, I'd think.

Plus, why would anyone want to? Especially making it shorter, as if for some reason you put a smaller CP on there, it would just be a little shorter, and you'd have a little more wood showing around the front. But that doesn't seem like a big deal, so much that you'd want to go through the work to actually cut the cab down.

I'd be curious to see close up pics of the front, so see if there's any evidence of cutting. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it doesn't seem like something someone would voluntarily want to go through the effort to do.

 

[Coindork]

After looking at this further, I'm fairly certain the front of the cab has been altered.
There are two pretty uneven cuts on the inside of the cab that don't look factory.
When the top cut was applied it left a marring on the inside of the cabinet where the blade dragged against the inside of the cab. These pieces of wood would have been cut prior to being installed as part of the cabinet.

 

[Coindork]

To expand a little further on the front of the cabinet.
All Atari cabs of this era, the previous era and the post era were designed to align perfectly at the control panel when you lined the games up in a row.

Did Dug, Centipede, Arabian and Kangaroo would all stack next to each other and the cabinets would align, as would the control panels. Even Food fight is this way, however the pie hangs out at the top of the cabinet. The CP and everything else share the same footprint as the other cabinets. Other style cabinets of this era like Crystal Castles align the same way if you put them in a row where the control panels would be even and level with the surrounding game, however the cabinets shape differs.

Earlier vector games like Quantum, Space Duel, Gravitar, and Black Widow were designed to do the same. The cabinets would line up perfectly as would the control panels, however the control panels were thinner with these earlier games.

System 1 and 2 games also align with earlier Atari cabinets however the shape of the cabinet is different as well. When you line them up however the control panels are the same hight and shape as earlier cabinets and align in a row.
Road Runner, Road Blaster, Indiana Jones, Marble Madness etc are all like this with the system 1 cabinets.
Same goes for Champion Sprint and even Paper Boy. They will all line up in a row with earlier cabinets and all the control panels will line up perfectly.

If its a genuine Atari Cabinet and the wood is too short where the control panel mounts, its been cut down. Either that, or it's not an Atari Cabinet.

This sort of the cabinet is notorious for cracking and breaking near the control panel when the game takes a hit moving it.
You see lots of games where this is either damaged or repaired.
Especially so on the earlier vector games where the wood was thinner.
This was somewhat corrected with the raster games, but you still see plenty of games with damage on this part of the cabinet as well.

 

[processedmeat]

So I brushed off a lot of the dirt and dust on the power supply and this was the only readable label. Not sure if this means anything.

Thanks again for all of the CSI forensic level sleuthing that you've all put in here.

Nevertheless, it will probably be easier to "fix" the cabinet by adding wooden pieces to it then to find a metal control panel that fits this cabinet. I guess it'll be glue and bondo and lots of sanding in my future.

 

[VectorCollector]

Wood, dowels, glue, bondo, sanding ... more bondo, sanding ... then need router + tmolding bit ... then paint ...

Given the undusting of the old power brick, I agree this is a "cut" original Centi.