Bought a slightly damaged Centipede that had been converted to a NEO geo Samurai Showdown. When I got it the only "guts" were the wooden shell and the coin door.

first computer was a Motorolla Starmax 3000, one of the few official Mac clones. I had a borrowed hotrod joystick connected via PS/2 running MacMame .58.

upgraded to an iPac and Happ buttons and joysticks. I changed the mac to a G3 then a G4 over the years. but the hardware was still the same other than a 17" CRT being upgraded to a 19" CRT.

Made the jump to an XP powered Dual 1 GHZ PIII and started messing with front ends.

I moved from Arizona to Denver ~2006 and broke down my cabinet into pieces to leave with my artist friend to paint the sides. http://joesorren.com if you are interested. He Is showing in Rome and LA this fall.

I traveled back to Arizona and came back with the sides of the cabinet. I asked for a sketch style and am very happy with the results.

the "brain" computer was dead so I built a new one- AMD quad core.

the monitor never made the move so I researched other kinds of CRT's and ended up buying a 25" 480i TV off Craigslist for ~$20. I wimped out and mounted it by cutting off the sides instead of de-casing it.

front ends on windows had come a very long way so I setup MaLa then Maximus Arcade. I played with Hyperspin too.

This is around the time the second cabinet came in. I went to go look at a dedicated Galaga because It is my favorite game I wasn't fully satisfied with it on my horizontal (at the time) monitor mame cabinet. I tried ~ 10 different video driver setups and the picture was never really "right". I realized some of this was due to picture size so on a whim one night, I flipped my display vertical/ tate. 25" of full screen CRT was exactly what I was looking for in a mame cabinet but XP and my PC front ends had to be reworked so I started researching other options.

I've been a long time XBMC on xBox user and stumbled across CoinOPS 2 r3 researching better ways to interface with a TV.

This is an important part of the story since screwing around with an xBox 1 for 20 minutes was an exponentially better result than 20+ hours of playing around with video drivers in XP. The Front end of CoinOPS wasn't quite as slick as some of the PC based front ends but it took almost no effort to get setup. Even without much tuning, the picture I was getting in CoinOPS 2 was the best I had ever achieved in my cabinet. The xBox + CoinOPS combo played may favorite games, Gallaga and Raiden flawlessly with Tate rotation. I was sold.

This is an important part of the story since screwing around with an xBox 1 for 20 minutes was an exponentially better result than 20+ hours of playing around with video drivers in XP. The Front end of CoinOPS wasn't quite as slick as some of the PC based front ends but it took almost no effort to get setup. Even without much tuning, the picture I was getting in CoinOPS 2 was the best I had ever achieved in my cabinet. The xBox + CoinOPS combo played may favorite games, Gallaga and Raiden flawlessly with Tate rotation. I was sold. Getting controllers properly soldered was a pain in the ass... I've soldered a bunch of consoles including 1.6 xbox rebuilds and early wii mod chips that required soldering on tiny chip arms and I found soldering xbox controllers very annoying. The guides were all outdated so when I finally tracked down some of the supposedly easy to solder 3rd party controllers, they were later revisions that had multiple grounds or undocumented PCBs. If you know of a good guide for finding the correct controller and soldering it, please let me know. I believe this is the weakest part of building an inexpensive cabinet using an xBox1.

getting my trackball and spinner working in CoinOPS has also been a pain. First off, I found out that the xBox only supports one mouse device at a time. My wife really wants my trackball working (it is an 8-ball in the pics) but I can't seem to get it working on the xBox. It works fine in XBMC4XBOX so I have hope BP will magically make it work in CoinOPS 3. My USB spinner works pretty well in COPs2 and "clicking" it can be mapped as a fire button so another one of my favorites, Tron, can be played.

Cabinet is running CoinOPS 2 r9

TV is hooked up via component cables

controls are encoded via two soldered xBox controllers. P1 is an official Microsoft "Duke" controller. P2 is an old Universal DDR pad that was super easy to solder but is lacking buttons.

for the first time ever, I got the Marquee and coin slot lights working.

Cabinet is mostly done but I'm going to tear it apart and refine it a bit after I finish my other cabinet and figure out the trackball yes/no question. If you know of a trackball that works out of the box with CoinOPS 2, please let me know.

I have a minimalist skin for XBMC that works OK with the vertical CRT. I'd likely have it auto launch CoinOPS if the front end had an FTP client built in. I sometimes use this cabinet to play music so I'd prefer a better XBMC solution for Tate.

I'm going to redo the control pannel because it is a bit low and I don't want the ridge where the CP and sides meet- it hurts my wrist. I'm waiting on CoinOPS 3 to see if I have to ditch my trackball or not. I'll likely stick with 4 buttons but might move to 6 and keep the spinner if I have to get rid of the trackball.

I need to remount my monitor. I flipped it Tate the wrong direction and mounted it in a somewhat ugly but structurally sound way. I think I'm going to de-case it and build a mount similar to my other cabinet. If I flip it vertical the other way, I can play Raiden II via the PSX The Raiden Project. Right now, that game is upside down with no option for flipping it. BP coded CoinOPS to allow any monitor rotation (thanks again BP)

better Tate XMBC4XBOX skin or autolaunch CoinOPS

see if I can get the newer dodonPachi games working in Tate properly. Fingers crossed for CoinOPS3

remove the horizontal games after moving to CoinOPS3 (hoping for a sort by tate/vertical option)

This is my first cabinet.Gallery for each cabinet:Thread for second cabinet:I wasn't planning on posting this until it was closer to done hardware wise as well as running CoinOPS 3 but Ace encouraged me to post so I'll go for it. I'll be making a second post for my newer Horizontal monitor cab too. This Post is about the cab on the right:Since I'm not quite done yet, I'll link to my constantly evolving imgur gallery instead of embedding pictures. I'll add some pictures of the CP build to this gallery soon:Older History:Recent History:Current State:To do:I should point out that I'm going to write a guide for doing this kind of thing as I get my other horizontal cabinet more together. I think that CoinOPS + xBox 1 is the best solution for emulating older games on a cabinet unless you like messing around with XP for hours and hours. I have Dual Strike and Ultimarc encoders I'll be reviewing as well. I hope to be able to pull together some sort of guide for soldering xBox controllers as well as inexpensive ways to add a trackball or spinner but I'm going to need help to accomplish those things.