Picked up my first cabinet!

[cityside75]

Hi all,

I finally took the plunge and bought my first cabinet. It's a standard JAMMA cabinet made by Dynamo and right now has Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 in it. It's in pretty good shape all considering and I picked it up at a local auction for $200.

I do plan on converting this to a MAME cabinet when I get some time.

I'll probably do it in stages, and I'm looking to keep it relatively inexpensive and not too difficult. I also want to keep the unit as intact as possible so it can be converted back to a dedicated game at some point if I choose. I've been doing my research at KLOV and BYOAC among other places, and right now the plan is probably to get a J-PAC and ArcadeVGA and continue to use the existing control panel until I get the time to upgrade the panel. The screen is pretty good, and if I'm correct I should be able to get this set up fairly quick and easy.

I am wondering if I eventually want to add a trackball/spinner to the control panel, do I need to go with the Opti-Pac as well? Do I have other options? Can I install the Opti-Pac with the J-Pac?

Also, am I going to have to do anything special to keep the marquee and coin slots lit if I go this route?

Any help is appreciated.

[XYXZYZ]

Congratulations, brother... you don't yet realize what you just stepped in, that one cabinet is going to start looking awfully lonely after awhile. You'll soon want another one. And another, and another...

You don't really *need* the arcade VGA, but they're nice. Look for a thing in BYOAC's video forum called "Soft 15KHz" (I think it's stickied.) get that an a compatible video card, and a JPAC, and you should be good to go. you shouldn't have any problems with the marquee light, but you're going to have to run some new wires from the PC power supply's 5V line to the coin lamps. (Be sure to use 555 lamps) Or, you could use the 12V line and some 161 lamps instead.

For me, configuring the damn computer was the hardest part.