Arcade Cabinet

The Find

Berserk!

So I took a different road home from work the other night and along the side of the road was a "Berserk" arcade cabinet sitting amongst a stack of things that looked to be destined for the dump. Overall the cabinet looked in fair condition. I made a note of a sign that said 'Tent Sale Fri-Sat' and I stopped by this morning before going to a family gathering. I asked how much and the guy said "You can take it. It boots to a test screen, but that's as far as it gets. The manual is in it, but I can't do anything with it and I can't sell it as working."

Free.

I went back tonight with my nephew and a truck.

It is mine!

Tomorrow I'm going to do some measurements and then start gutting the internals. Hopefully I'll have some slow progress over the next few months on this, but for now I'm happy that I have an arcade cabinet and I'm going to start working on getting a MAME machine running within it.

I have to also do some research (part of the measurements reason) on controllers. I'm not sure that the X Gaming controller set (which IMHO looks to be the slickest out there) will fit in the width of the current controller.

CRT swap out might be a bugger....so much to think about it.

The Gutting

Spent the better half of the morning gutting the machine. Turned it on and the CRT tube powered up, but nothing else. Reset the cables and checked the fuses - no reaction. Unfortunately this thing has been sitting outside for a bit and I'm not sure it really could have been salvaged.

Internals removed

19" CRT installed and XP boot

Pulled the guts out, including the wiring harness and CRT. Kept the CRT bracket and re-used that with a 19" CRT monitor that I had in the attic. Unfortunately the bracket connectors on the monitor are slightly smaller than the CRT's, so there are some gaps. Hopefully I can work on this.

Hauled it into the back room tonight and I need to start loading the PC OS. Still reading on controllers.

Update 1

• Loaded the PC OS
• Mounted the motherboard, hard drive and power button assembly
• Placed temporary speakers in the box
• Booted successfully and tinkered with MAME using a keyboard as the controller deck
• Picked up some bolts and brackets
• Created one corner connector for the monitor - mounted good
• 1/3 of the way to purchasing the controller deck