An update... *Now With Actual Progress!!*

After a busy summer, and a few missed deals on monitors, I am back with some progress. The other day, I was scouring Craigslist for deals on 20 or 21 inch CRT Monitors. I emailed a few of the sellers, and got a response from one guy, Rick, that said he still had his for sale. It was a 21" IBM monitor that wasn't too far away, and the best part... he was selling it for $10.00!! He said it was in excellent condition and the photos looked good as well, so I promptly contacted him and arranged to pick it up. Thanks for the great deal, Rick!!

After I got home with my shiny new monitor, I tested it to make sure that the picture quality was good, and then I started to install it in the cabinet. First, I took the monitor out of the plastic casing. I wanted to see if I could get it to fit onto the existing shelf that was in the cab. After some slight modifications to the cab and a lot of elbow grease (the monitor weighs a ton) the monitor was finally in the cabinet!

calling this a tight fit is an understatement!

(As an aside, if you ever take the casing off of a TV or CRT monitor, discharge the tube. Even after sitting for a few days, you can still be electrocuted and its enough juice to kill you! Luckily, mine had a metal cage around the guts so I could safely handle it.)

I then put the smoked glass on the cab and the old control panel on to see how it would look, and here are the results:

starting to look like a real arcade machine!

Other Progress:

Also, I hacked up a pair of powered computer speakers and wired the four speakers that came with the cab to the circuit board and they all sound great. As I understand it, most computer speakers are 4 ohms and usually the speakers in arcade machines are 4 ohms as well. So all I had to do was remove the old speakers and solder the new ones to the board. Some people use car speakers in their cabinets, and those are usually 8 ohms, so you cannot directly connect it like I did.

Also, I have changed my mind about what front end to use. I may switch to Hyperspin later, but I would rather stay with the Space Duel themed art, so I am designing my own layout for the frontend MaLa. I am almost finished with it, as soon as I am, I will post what it looks like and make it available to anyone that wants to use/modify it.

I think thats all for now... I will be back with more progress soon!