well, my first idea was to build a multicade cabinet, but i had no idea what jamma was or anything, no experience in working on arcade machines, so i did lots of research to figure out what i was getting myself into. i went to byoac but that seemed equally foreign, and most projects i saw seemed to expensive. i have a friend in the computer biz, and he hooks me up with old computers for free whenever i need one. eventually i realized the cheapest route would be to get a nonworking generic game cab, but i could not find one locally. at the same time a friend hooked me up with a semi working centipede cocktail. i came here as a result of google, looking for someone to help me with fixing it. well, i didnt have the money to get the board repaired and in the meantime i discovered mame and built a control panel and had a computer configured for it.
thats when i lost my job. i was confronted with a pile of parts and no working cabinet. i decided to trade the centipede for an empty cab so i could put the mame junk into it and play some games. i tried to find a buyer who would restore it, made it a point to show pics of the inside and the game partially working, but eventually the only guy who came through with a cabinet to trade admitted he was gonna gut and multi it. i wish i could have hung onto it until i had the cash to fix it, but at the time it was taking up alot of room, i didnt have any money, and i figured a mame cab that worked was a better option than a broken cocktail and pile of parts.