I have made my own MAME cabinet. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. I had been checking out auctions on eBay, which were by people selling out of New Jersey, and Florida. I, being in Atlanta, Georgia, didn't want to pay the expensive shipping costs of having an arcade game delivered to my house. Luckily, I found an old (but working) Street Fighter 2 cabinet in reasonably good shape less than 10 minutes from my house. The owner, eager to get rid of it, sold it to me for $175, which I found to be a STEAL! My friend, who had a flatbed pickup truck, helped me move it to my house, and I began to clean it up, get new plexi-glass for the monitor, and make it look nice. I replaced all the buttons, and had a new plexi-glass button panel made for it CHEAP ($20). Wiring it was a challenge for me because I had never made such an attempt before.
*TIP FOR PEOPLE WHO MAKE A MAME CABINET!!!*
After hacking an SVGA cable, and soldering it to a JAMMA harness, I still had some nasty hashlines on the arcade monitor. Yes, I kept the ORIGINAL arcade monitor for a more authentic feel. To get rid of the hashlines, I found out the following from a guy who works at an arcade-game distribution company:
1) Take a voltmeter, and make SURE everything in your cabinet is properly grounded.
2) Run a ground-wire from the chassis of your computer to the chassis of the arcade monitor.
This will eliminate any and all ground-loops you might get caused by an impedance mismatch.
The cabinet turned out GREAT! Have a look:
http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/atl/d ... arcade.htmPlease feel free to ask me any questions about it. THANKS!