1993 Atari Arcade Cabinet Restoration — 3 WEEK CHALLENGE

I have only three weeks to restore this 1993 Atari Arcade Cabinet into a fully functional MAME based system sporting the Street Fighter II Livery.



Why three weeks? It’s my buddy’s birthday on October 11th and this is going to be his gift. He plays Street Fighter at a competitive level.

Join me as we turn this 26 year old used-n-abused hollow arcade cabinet into a restored machine in only three weeks time.​

=== Some Info ===​

MAME is an open source emulation software that runs on PC’s. This cabinet can have more than 10,000+ games stored on the computer.

The plan is to use an old 2005-era Compaq Presario desktop computer with a fairly old GPU that supports S-Video. The computer will run the MAME emulation software and the cabinet functions. You don’t need much of a computer to run 32 bit games from the 90’s.

As for a monitor, I’ll be running a CRT television. (Cathode Ray Tube) Why CRT? CRT has excellent response time and refresh rate which is important when it comes to quick-paced games like Street Fighter or Super Smash Brothers. A modern flat screen television cannot compete with the response time of a CRT.

 

Here is how I found it on Craigslist. Simply a hollowed out shell of an Atari arcade machine.



Here are the original pictures from the ad.



I had to have it. Emailed the guy, and picked it up the next day in Oakland.
Just barely fit in my 6” bed with my toolbox and RTT/rack.

 

This machine has switched games several times in its 26 year lifetime. Now, if you look close at this picture of the control panel you’ll see what’s left of the original graphics:



This indicated this machine used to be Dig Dug. Take a close look under the “Pooka” character in the center. This triangle graphic ends at the edge of the control panel, as evident by the remains of the sticker you see.



This is what the machine looked like new, versus now:





As you can see, it’s clearly not Dig Dug anymore. Throughout the cabinet’s lifespan, it served as many different games beginning with Dig Dug, then Street Fighter II, and then eventually Windjammers.

Now here’s the issue. As you see in the picture above, Dig Dug only had four buttons and a joystick.

Street Fighter, and whatever many games succeeded Dig Dug has several more. Every time a game was swapped out, the Arcade simply drilled new holes for new buttons — as a result you get this:



When the game served as Street Fighter, the holes from the previous game were replaced by a Plexiglass overlay.



I will be cutting this section out and welding a new piece of sheet metal in.

 

I grew up on Street Fighter; kicking people's asses and making them run through their weekend's worth of quarters in mere minutes.

My question is, what joy stick will you be installing in this thing?

Need something that's going to stand years of abuse, especially if your friend favors throwing Hadouken's and Shoryuken's.

 

I’ll be using HAPP controls, which is the industry standard.

https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/251343306708

 

You’re in for an adventure, my friend.

 

Just picked up the brains of the cabinet. A Dell Optiplex with a Core i5 and Windows 7. Also got the most important part of any fighting game cabinet, a capable CRT monitor.

I had a real goddamn hard time finding a CRT computer monitor. I’ll go into detail why I chose a computer monitor over a CRT TV in the next post.

 

Looks like you got a Flat CRT. Those are the best, you picked wisely padwan.

 

@Speedytech7 can better explain why a Computer CRT is better than a Television CRT:

Originally, I wanted to run a Toshiba all-in-on CRT I had sitting in the house, I even went as far to disassemble it to test fit the tube in the cabinet.



I discharged the tube by grounding a screwdriver to chassis ground and sticking the blade under the anode of the tube.



While I would’ve preferred to use this TV over the Computer CRT simply because of size (23” versus 18” respectively”) the cons of using a TV far outweighed the pros and I opted for the smaller computer CRT.

Not to mention the TV only had a VHF and Composite input. Most computer graphics cards obviously don’t go this primitive. Closest thing would be S-Video, which this TV didn’t have.

 

Yesterday was all about fixing existing damage in the (to put it lightly, shitty) Particle Board. I’ve had some experience doing automotive bodywork, and I figured Bondo would be a good fix for this.

(I used WAY too much hardener catalyst here)





This most notable damage was the Portside panel of the cabinet. The bottom was notably rotten, or at least damaged from handling. The bottom of the starboard side of the cabinet had been replaced at some point, as evident by the clean and intact lower section.

Replaced section on right, rotten section on left.



In addition to fixing the damage, I replaced the crappy casters, reinforced where it mounted, and built a better base as seen below.





I created the base because I believe most of that damage you see stems from the bottom of the cabinet dragging against the floor:



Here I am beginning the Bondo work. I did a total of five layers. It took me more than six hours to get it perfect.

First layer:



Third layer:



The fifth layer. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what it used to be. This was mostly missing and chipped off before.



Really happy with how nicely it turned out.



I also fixed other damage, notable the mounts for the control panel:



And the rear panel above the door:

 

Today was all about paint. I used Rustoleum filler primer (in hopes it’ll smooth out the terrible particle board pores).

Goodbye Dig Dug!



1st Layer Primer before Wetsand with 400 Grit



Originally, I was going to use the Harbor Freight electric paint sprayer. It was terrible, and ruined one of my panels because the initial burst was just huge globs of paint. I had to strip and redo it. I threw that sprayer straight into the trash can.

This prompted me to pick up a legit HVLP air spray gun. This was 1000x better than the electric one and far easier to use.



This is the first coat of paint. I used Rustoleum Satin Black Enamel thinned down with 15% Acetone. I used a Viscometer to correctly determine the proper viscosity for proper spray.

First coat always looks patchy, I still have one more quart to make it look good.

 

This one hasn’t been in poop water.

 

Sweet

 

In for the build. Cool project!

 

Here’s the computer I will be using. I decided against the Compaq Presario (circa 2005) I had sitting in my house because it needed some work. I got this last minute from the guy I bought the CRT monitor from. This computer will be running the MAME emulation software.

I upgraded it with some spare parts, notably two more sticks of RAM and a good GPU. Here are the specs:

Dell Optiplex 700-Series (Circa 2012)
- Intel i5 2400 Quad Core @ 3.10GHz
- 12 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1333MHz
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 745 4GB GPU
- 1 TB Seagate HDD

Here is where it will be mounted. The lower door below the coin acceptor is usually where the coin box would go. However, since I’m not a high volume arcade I did away with it.

This allows you to access the important functions of the computer without removing the rear door, like power, USB, CD drive, etc.



But do not fear, we will be utilizing the coin acceptor. I’m using a USB controller that will allow me to map the coin acceptor and the genuine arcade controls to function on the PC. This means you have the ability to actually insert a coin to play a game, as the real life counterpart would.

 

Thanks guys! I’ll say I got a little bit carried away with this project. This is for a good buddy of mine’s birthday.

 

Subd for so much awesome in this thread.

 

It’ll only get more awesome as the days progress, trust me.

 

In.

One of my goals is to someday have a cocktail Pac-Man console to serve as the table in a breakfast nook or entertainment room of some sort. That’s the kind of frivolous spending that goes at the bottom of my priority list but still.

A project like this is right up my alley too since it incorporates a wide range of skills and abilities to finish the product.