Foole

I'm interested in taking one of my spare PCs and turning it into a dedicated gaming PC running MAME. I'd like to mount it all in an old wood coin-op arcade game chassis...anyone attempted this? Where can one get the components for such a project?

Tsar Chasm

http://www.russprince.com/cabinet/

D300

The best resource is Build Your Own Arcade Controls

For parts Happ Controls or Bob Roberts

Roto

Good luck! I wanted to do this for a long time, but I'm just too lazy I ended up just getting the X-arcade joystick. I'd still like a spinner for Arkanoid.

D300 gave you some good links to start with. You can pretty much just do a search for "mame machine" and find a bunch of one people have done themselves.

The most common way I've heard to get the cabinet itself is just go to your local arcades and ask them if they have any old cabinets they want to get rid of. The only person I know with one bought a Burgertime machine from one of his neighbors for $25. Sometimes you just gotta get lucky. His wasn't even empty, it works perfectly.

theedge

I bought an old Donkey Kong cabinet from eBay ($100), drove to Cincinatti to get it. Brought it home and gutted the thing out. I found some adapter which plugged into the existing joystick, and connected to the USB port on the computer, put a computer inside, a 19" CRT monitor, got some new molding and it works great! Only thing I would like to do is get a drawer for the keyboard. I saw someone do it online and it looked pretty sweet.

buzzdalf

You'll definitely want to spend some time at the arcadecontrols.com forum and also look through their examples.
That's where I started.
You can try auctions to get cab's. Live auctions from superauctions.com and usamusement.com can be a place to start.
I ended up building my own cabs from scratch. I do have an old Pole Position in the basement I'm tinkering with, though.

There's a link to my creations in my sig.

DaveNinja

Running a MAME machine without owning the rights to the ROMs = the same as raping your sister.

you're all criminals that will burn in hell. especially for converting a poor old DK cabinet. why couldnt you got something lame, like a Bad Dudes or Pit Fighter?

MAME will never equal the real thing.

dek

KLOV goes down and Dave busts out the cocaine!

He's Rick James, Bitch!

jw2299

I did this just a few months ago! It was great fun, and now I have a really cool machine that is the life of every get together and the envy of my friends.

I'm going to build one for my dad starting this Sunday, when I go pick out a cabinet from him. In building my dad's machine, I'm going to do some things differently than on mine, the main thing being building my own control panel, instead of buying an x-arcade like I did for mine.

I got my cabinet from an arcade auction for $50.00. It was a working Midnight Resistance machine, and the cab itself was pretty beat up. I spiffed it up a bit, cleaned it out, and installed an old AMD K6-2 in it and looks great.

I was told about the arcade auction in my area by a friend who had bought a pinball machine at one. But, I've also just googled "arcade auction" and a city name, and looked at the results to find other locations.

I'm going to make a web page to display mine as well, as soon as I get around to it. I don't have any pics since it's been completed, but I'll take one and post it here later.

I love the look of buzdalf's machines, but I don't have the extra cash or woodworking expertise to make my own cabinet, so a cabinet conversion was the way to go for me. The only thing I'd suggest is to buy a cab that you're sure you can get into your door, and try to get one made of plywood. Mine's made of particle board, and it's chipping away at the base of the cabinet, near the floor. You can sand and repaint plywood, you can't really sand particle board.