namastepat
Student
Hey everyone,
Recently picked up an Animal Kaiser cab that I plan to convert to a small form factor 2-player MAME machine. I will be gutting the cab and then installing a GroovyMAME PC + an ipac. I love these little form factor candy style cabs, and I was very excited when I found one locally for a decent price.
The Animal Kaiser game was booting to the test menu fine, but it had no IC card, so it couldn't actually boot and play the game. I had no plans to do anything with the game anyway, as it is a kids based card game that I have no interest in.
If anyone knows of people who would want to buy Animal Kaiser parts, I have a bunch stripped from this cab. Marquee plastics, original board, card reader, card dispenser etc. etc. No need for them, and I'd prefer they go to someone who might want them. I live in Australia, but happy to box up and post the parts if the price is fair.
The cabinet has a 17inch wei-ya 15khz pure flat monitor. Sadly, it has some decent screen burn, but when a game is running, it's hardly noticeable. I was very pleased to see that the monitor gets a great image and also has a direct VGA style input, which is perfect for using a MAME machine. No stuffing around with things like a J-PAC, just a direct connection from the PC to the monitor. The images posted are without a video amplifier, but the brightness and contrast of the monitor are cranked to max. I might end up grabbing an Ultimarc video amp to see what kind of difference it makes in the image.
The difficult part of this project will be getting the control panel fabricated. I plan to get a stainless steel panel made that covers over the entire top of the control panel housing. I will then get some Namco Exceleena CP artwork scaled to fit it. As the cab is Namco, and also the same colour as the Exceleena, I think that this is appropriate. I am visiting a mate who works in steel fabrication later this week to get him to start on the CP for me. He is confident that he will be able to make something that fits well and looks the goods.
An easy first step was to start gutting the cab. I removed most of the internals, just leaving the boards in the back, which are the audio amp, IO board and the power stuff. I am going to sell the rest of the internal parts as a bulk lot. I also jammed a small form facor Dell PC in there to test that it fits ok.
I removed the sample cards from the marquee display and instead I have printed out tiny version of Neo Geo mini-marquees to replace them. I chose them based on my favourite Neo Geo multiplayer games.
Next step is to build a new MAME machine and wire up the IPAC. Will likely be a while until I get that done, but I am on holidays in a week or so, and it will make for a good holiday project. I will update when I have the control panel made, which will also likely take a while.
Recently picked up an Animal Kaiser cab that I plan to convert to a small form factor 2-player MAME machine. I will be gutting the cab and then installing a GroovyMAME PC + an ipac. I love these little form factor candy style cabs, and I was very excited when I found one locally for a decent price.
The Animal Kaiser game was booting to the test menu fine, but it had no IC card, so it couldn't actually boot and play the game. I had no plans to do anything with the game anyway, as it is a kids based card game that I have no interest in.
If anyone knows of people who would want to buy Animal Kaiser parts, I have a bunch stripped from this cab. Marquee plastics, original board, card reader, card dispenser etc. etc. No need for them, and I'd prefer they go to someone who might want them. I live in Australia, but happy to box up and post the parts if the price is fair.
The cabinet has a 17inch wei-ya 15khz pure flat monitor. Sadly, it has some decent screen burn, but when a game is running, it's hardly noticeable. I was very pleased to see that the monitor gets a great image and also has a direct VGA style input, which is perfect for using a MAME machine. No stuffing around with things like a J-PAC, just a direct connection from the PC to the monitor. The images posted are without a video amplifier, but the brightness and contrast of the monitor are cranked to max. I might end up grabbing an Ultimarc video amp to see what kind of difference it makes in the image.
The difficult part of this project will be getting the control panel fabricated. I plan to get a stainless steel panel made that covers over the entire top of the control panel housing. I will then get some Namco Exceleena CP artwork scaled to fit it. As the cab is Namco, and also the same colour as the Exceleena, I think that this is appropriate. I am visiting a mate who works in steel fabrication later this week to get him to start on the CP for me. He is confident that he will be able to make something that fits well and looks the goods.
An easy first step was to start gutting the cab. I removed most of the internals, just leaving the boards in the back, which are the audio amp, IO board and the power stuff. I am going to sell the rest of the internal parts as a bulk lot. I also jammed a small form facor Dell PC in there to test that it fits ok.
I removed the sample cards from the marquee display and instead I have printed out tiny version of Neo Geo mini-marquees to replace them. I chose them based on my favourite Neo Geo multiplayer games.
Next step is to build a new MAME machine and wire up the IPAC. Will likely be a while until I get that done, but I am on holidays in a week or so, and it will make for a good holiday project. I will update when I have the control panel made, which will also likely take a while.
