{"id":26,"date":"2008-04-17T11:38:21","date_gmt":"2008-04-17T11:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/?p=22"},"modified":"2015-04-15T08:25:24","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T08:25:24","slug":"mame-diary-004-stripping-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/?p=26","title":{"rendered":"MAME Diary 004: Stripping Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

So here it is<\/a> in all its glory.<\/p>\n

Well, excuse the condition but it had<\/strong> been living in a stable in North Yorkshire, and that would test the mettle of any man, and indeed the metal too.<\/p>\n

Do you know any metal men?<\/p>\n

Hmm.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Way back when I began this little foray into the world of Arcade cab renovation, I mentioned that the ideal scenario would be to get a cab that was no longer functional then I wouldn’t have the guilt trip of sacrificing a piece of history. Hardly Antiques Roadshow I know but a piece of history none the less.<\/p>\n

Well, this one was no longer working<\/a> so it fitted the bill.<\/p>\n

Originally the cab had been the 8th Solitaire Challenge cab sold by Valley Dynamo in 1984 to a UK company, but somewhere in its lifetime the game had been removed and had been replaced with a PC running MAME. However, once the then owner moved out of his parents house, his brother kindly stole the PC and the cab was abandoned until I rescued it.<\/p>\n

So, when I brought it home the PC was no longer present but the monitor<\/a> was. All 15 inches of it. The first thing I would be looking to do was upgrade that to a more respectable 19 inch model but judging from the original bezel around the screen though, it was clear that the original game had only contained a 15 inch monitor. While authenticity is one thing, squinting while playing games is another so a bigger monitor was the order of the day.<\/p>\n

The Control Panel<\/a> still contained the original controls of the Trackball and Fire button and 1 player game button, but more had been added to create a 3 button setup along with an 8 way joystick. I would be looking to install a 2 player layout with 2 joysticks and 4 fire buttons for each player.<\/p>\n

As you’ll see from my prototype panel<\/a> I had originally planned on 3 buttons, but playing Defender for example with 3 buttons is not the best way to appreciate it so a 4th button would be added.<\/p>\n

Obviously the cab was dirty and dusty but luckily apart from a couple of bashed corners was structurally sound, and I would discover, pretty solidly built actually. So much so that I wouldn’t in fact strip it completely, just take it back to a bare carcass<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first job though was to strip it out so that I could begin to check and repair the actual physical cab first, and once the insides had gone I took out the monitor shelf and coin door, then removed the kick plate and the damaged T Moulding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once it was gutted I could lie the cab down on its back and sides to work on it and I fitted some temporary wheels<\/a> to the bottom so I could move it around more easily. That allowed me to spin it round to get to the sides<\/a> as I needed to, and basically the main job just involved a lot of filling and sanding in preparation for a new finish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here it is in all its glory. Well, excuse the condition but it had been living in a stable in North Yorkshire, and that would test the mettle of any man, and indeed the metal too. Do you know any metal men? Hmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesonline.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}