Great story Dave, too bad there's no full background on who built them. The art looks really well done on them. Too bad the electronics don't match the rest of it. I had thought about building minis but they really are quite a bit of work compared to what you get out of it.
Exactly, it's often easier and no more expensive to build a full size cabinet for a 60 in 1 or MAME setup. While I don't think MAME is a silver bullet for arcade gaming, it does make a nice addition to dedicated cabs and as many have said, it's a gateway drug to buying lesser known machines. I've always really liked cabaret sized machines and when I had the chance for this one to fall into my lap, so to speak, I couldn't pass it up. If anything it's made me fully realize that a row of Konami Classic games (Gyruss, Loco-Motion, Road Fighter, Circus Charlie, Roc'n Rope) will probably be my eventual goal after I get more space.
Semi off topic but does anyone know of someone in NorCal that can build one of those mini cabs?? I've been wanting one for my daughter for quite sometime now.
It would be all custom work so that's the pricy part of it.
This is probably why the original builder went with cheap TVs and the Jakks Pacific guts to power the TVs. Going w/ JAMMA would have brought in expensive monitors and boards.
Also the way my cab is built is kinda crazy. The monitor shelf sits on a pair of 2"x4" runners that go from the back of the cab down to the front at the monitor angle. Above this there are a pair of 1"x2" runners that follow the same contour as the monitor runners, going from back to front and eventually becoming the left / right supports for the control panel. The bezel glass rests on these upper runners, sandwiched between a lip on the edge of the control panel and the inner back of the cabinet. Those upper runners are secured by four screws, two on each side. If you remove the upper screws it allows the runners to pivot down, giving clearance for the bezel glass to be slid out from the back.
You can see the upper runners for the bezel glass (covered in black tape to make it disappear behind the smoked glass) and the lower runners for the monitor shelf here...
The bezel runners have been tilted back to remove the glass in that picture, which raises the control panel up a little as it pivots on the front screws, that's why the contours don't match in the picture. If you wanted to remove the entire assembly you'd just remove the front screws as well and the upper runners / control panel would slide right out. When I eventually redo the artwork on the CP due to a big gouge, that's how I'll get it out to reskin the CP. With the glass and monitor shelf removed it's pretty easy to work on the CP from through the front of the cab.
Two screws secure the monitor shelf to the back of the monitor shelf runners. After removing these two screws the entire monitor shelf simply slides back and out. Really cool modular design. I'm going to clone this when I make a new one to accommodate a vertically oriented CRT. Currently I don't have to remove the glass to get the monitor shelf out since the LCD panel has a much lower profile than the little TV, but when I go back to a CRT I'll have to go back to removing the glass first as the screen won't clear the very back edge of the bezel otherwise. I learned that the hard way when I was first figuring out how to disassemble the cabinets, sheered off about 1/4 inch of the bezel glass with the CRT trying to squeeze it out, thankfully it's a part of it you can't see from the other side. When working on the cabinet it's really nice to be able to remove the entire monitor assembly with two screws and be able to just set it aside.
As a game suggestion for the Moppet Video cab, the Namco Classic Collection boards are always a good time.