The Story of the Super Mystical Magic Conversion of Ye Olde 80’s Arcade Cabinet or Basically: The Arcade Restoration & Conversion Project

Once upon a time, there was a lonely arcade machine that was an old Atari Centipede cabinet and for a short while life was good. As time slowly ticked away, the little sad machine was lonely and the evil mean arcade owner ripped off his control panel and retrofitted a four-player panel and made him into a Sunset Riders and for a short while, life was good again. As with all good things, this little cabinet’s life came to a slow long drawn out death. Eventually he was sold off in an auction where he was purchased then resold to Decepticreep for $200.

Decepticreep was a good person at heart but just lack the patience and know how to bring the little arcade machine to his former glory. After having the sad little machine in the corner of the house for almost 3 years, Decepticreep decided to take the big step and finally move away from the safety of his parent’s nest. Sadly, the new decision made Decepticreep realized that he will have no room for his project so in a very nice jester, Decepticreep gave the depressed arcade machine to his more handsome and more patient brother, Jangofatt, who had the skills to rebuild a machine (and space) but never actually done a complete refurb. So after many years Jango stepped up to the plate and started on the arcade restoration project and learned many things about the new restoration project.

Okay, now that I got the back story out of the way, I started to work on the cabinet because I was very bored and had no more home projects at that exact moment, or course I’m over run with project now so whatever. I’ve always wanted a four player cabinet and after receiving this machine a year or so ago I realized that my garage was slowly being over ran with machine carcasses so I needed to start working one of them. My primary goal was to get the machine up and operational but the cab looked so damn ratty and I didn’t want that in my house so that meant project time.

I’m getting tired with the generic flat black machine and I wanting a little color in my life. I decided to use a striking color that would look very well with the wall behind my personal arcade. The wall will eventually be painted bright yellow so I choose this color blue. After seeing this headless cabinet at last year’s Evo competition I knew I need to have a machine is that color.

The first step towards restoring my 4-player machine of delight was to strip off all of the old and fugly black paint. Since I didn’t own a sander, I had to go to Lowes and purchase a new one. Now that I was $70.00 poorer, I proceeded to scuff the exterior and repair any obvious damage. I used bondo to fix most of the cuts and dents throughout the body and repaired any broken corners. Rebuilding the corners took a lot of my time but it was so worth it. I’m very proud of the upper left corner since that was about to completely crumble and I had to free float the bondo to get the desired effect. Now you can’t tell that the corner was all crushed. After about 6 hours on & off prepping, I was ready to paint.

The next morning I set up the garage as a makeshift paint booth and proceeded to wipe down the machine with a sticky tack cloth that removed all of the particulates and other annoying things that would have ruined my finish. I prefer to paint the old fashion way with a roller because I have more control and I don’t have to tape off the inside of the machine for over spray. I painted the sides and the back and decided to not paint the top, (a bad decision that I’m currently regretting. Oh well) I painted the sides and back with one coat of paint and let it dry for about an hour per coat. I eventually did four coats of paint and I still had a little left over. That’s when I determined to paint the front of the machine to make it look more uniform. I’m glad I did because my bezel and control panel would have been too much black for the machine. The control panel was just a box that mounts to the machine and I made sure that it got liberal coats of paint. By the next day, the machine was finally ready to be assembled.

Now that the machine was painted I needed to wire up the control panel. My house is old and the doorways aren’t was wide as conventional homes are these today so I needed to make sure the machine was narrow enough to install in my kitchen so I made sure the control panel was wired up with quick disconnects. The cab was more or less wired with them but unfortunately for me both ends were wired up with male pins and wrong size connectors. The only way for me to fix this minor indiscretion was to rewire it; one wire at the time. This was the most time consuming part of the restoration. To save time on clean up, be sure to strip all of your wires over a trash bin.

The wire harness for the control panel did not match the JAMMA harness. For example, the up direction from the main JAMMA harness was Yellow but the color for UP on the controller panel was green with an orange strip. Since the colors didn’t match, I had to move one wire at a time and constantly double check my self and made sure I was installing the pins in the right locations. What made the project much easier was the $30 pin extractor that I picked up from Fry’s. I didn’t have to hack the harness to make my new pin connections. I strongly recommend getting one it you ever want to get into arcade cab restoration.

After about an hour and a half, I was ready to move the cabinet into my arcade located inside the house. Moving the cabinet was a breeze since I had the monitor removed which made the machine weight much less. Once I had the machine in place I installed the new color monitor and wired everything up with new connectors. I’ve been holding onto a big thick sheet of plexi for a few years now and I finally had a reason to use it. I cheated and brought the original monitor and bezel glass to my work as my template. I wanted to replace the glass with stronger plexi because the idea of someone punching the glass and possibly cutting themselves just freaks me out.

I prefer to use a table saw to cut my plexi pieces. Remember to use the proper safety precautions like gloves and eye protection. Once I got everything cut to the proper size, I’ve brought them home and installed the plexi over the monitor. This is where I came across my first snag.

I powered up the machine and made sure the new monitor was operational. I then installed a game board and brought up the test screen to verify my connections. While in the middle of daisy chaining my ground to each switch when I noticed the monitor didn’t look right. After rebooting the machine, I figured out what was wrong. The RED gun trigger on the monitor went bad. I couldn’t believe it. My brand fucking new monitor just broke and can no longer display red any more. After getting over my temper tantrum, I just quite for the day and went to bed.

To make a long story short, I got my monitor replace for free (Thanks Sean) but I had to wait over a week because HappControls forgot about my order. So I was a little annoyed because I wanted to be done with my restoration and I was now over 10 days behind schedule. I later learn to expect delays and not let the distraction prevent you from doing the best work you can do. You see, the control panel was all installed and there is no possible way to remove the monitor with out removing the plexi screen cover, but to remove the plexi screen cover, you needed to remove the control panel. So basically, I wasted a good hour deinstalling the panel so I can replace the monitor.

My second annoying hiccup was that I didn’t read the fine print and when I ordered the 3rd & 4th player control harness from Jammaboard. Since I only ordered one harness, they only deliver one harness for just player 3. That’s what I get for assuming that Konami 3rd and 4th player harness are like the Capcom single kick harness. So I waited another weekend for my other harness so I can complete the wiring for player 4.

What I realize is that sometimes it is better to pay a little extra and prevent another headache. I was more than capable to make my own JAMMA+ harness for the Konami player 3 & 4 but I would rather spend my time doing the finishing touches like installing the new T-molding on the machine or just order new joysticks and buttons for the control panel instead of rebuilding them. My only difficult choice for the control panel was to make the joystick & buttons colors uniform or different for each player. I think I made the right choice.

It took me about a month to restore this 4 players cabinet. After the new coat of paint, replacing the T-molding and installing new hardware and monitor, I’m very pleased with my new machine. It was nice just to see the machine all lit up with the X-Men marquee glowing brightly. The machine is already for any mid to late 90’s Konami games so all I need to do if I wanted to player my TMNT: Turtles in Time board is to just swap out the boards. I’m considering installing a CPS II motherboard and wiring up the 3rd player harness so we can play some 3 players Aliens vs. Predator. That would be fun.

I’m trying to decide if I want to take one of my working cabs and refurb it with new overlays and a paint job or just rebuild the last two machines that are sitting in my garage for this years EVO competitions. Any suggestions?

–Jangofatt

Here’s the completed machine and as a lame bonus, I made a little video tour of my home arcade. Hope you enjoy!

Posted by Jangofatt