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Fixing an old cab, a few build questions


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Hi Guys,

 

I've been planning on building a MAME cab for over 10 years now, and have finally accumlated everything I need (well almost, my MAME PC that I'd had running for the last year just died, but I'll be using my current PC until I pick up a cheap PC from MSY), including a full size cabinet that needs only minor repairs and modifications.

 

Now I've seen some people do some fantastic work on these forums, and in most cases this come down to patience. This is not something that I have alot of, so please take that into consideration when answering my questions.

 

Firstly, fixing the paint. To try and get the missus to let me keep this in the house, I need to keep it nice and simple aethestically, so I'm going to go with all black (which is what the machine is now anyway). My current plan is to give the machine a good sand and give it several coats of black spray paint.

 

Are there any particular paints I should go for (keeping costs to a minimum)?

 

 

Continuing with painting, I have a couple of ceiling mount speakers (picked them up dirt cheap from a closing down sale 6 years ago) that I want to mount in the sides for when I'm using the machine as a jukebox. Problem is, the bezel is white plastic, and the mesh is white as well.

 

Can I get away with spraying the mesh and bezel (I'm assuming I'd need to sand the plastic to make sure the paint sticks).

 

 

Now as for the marquee, I've already made something in Photoshop to match the MaLa RetroGUI theme. I plan on backlighting this with a fluroscent light.

 

Whats my best option for printing the marquee?

 

 

Next up, the screen. I have 22in CRT that I picked up a year ago for $50. I want to make sure it sits nicely against the acryllic. I was planning on making a mask with black foam rubber to sit tightly between the monitor and acryllic.

 

Is this a good idea or is there a better cheap option?

 

 

And speaking of the acryllic, I've seen that some people go for tinted while others don't. Thinking back to my time in the arcade, from (sketchy) memory, some machines were tinted.

 

Is there a benefit to using one over the other? Also, for masking off the rest of the acryllic, given that I may go to a different screen in future, is it a bad idea to using black card with a whole cut out for the screen?

 

 

Well, I think thats it for now. I know it's alot of questions, but I don't want to go buggering things up, and I trust the opinions of the people on this forum.

 

Cheers

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One thing from me, be careful how close you mount those speakers near the 22" CRT. If they are a good distance away with magnets facing away from the CRT (as in many cabinets), should be no problem, otherwise you may have some screen colouration problems caused by magnetic fields of the speakers. Shielded speakers will not cause this problem. Just a thought.
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Any suggestions on shielding speakers? I thought that Jaycar would carry something, but I haven't found anything on their website. And then some googling makes it look like I can just use some steel guttering/aircon caps that will fit over the magnet at the back.
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Any suggestions on shielding speakers? I thought that Jaycar would carry something, but I haven't found anything on their website. And then some googling makes it look like I can just use some steel guttering/aircon caps that will fit over the magnet at the back.

 

Yes, somthing steel that covers the magnets is needed to contain/minimise the magnetic field. Here's a simple tip that may work for you (depending on the size of the magnets - take two tin cans which will fit, soup tins or the like, cut em to fit and Arayldyte (epoxy resin) them to rear of the speakers cage so that magents are covered , before gluing, test them first at the distance and position from the monitor that you intend to fit them later into the cab - to see that it works.

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