Building an arcade cabinet for the first time

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>>3688382
I bought an old cab and gutted it. I'll post results, but how do you remove these kinds of buttons? They came with the old machine and I wanna reuse them.

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>>3688398
forgot image

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>>3688404

>>3688395
You just unscrew the black nut on each button and take off the micro switch and pull them out.

>>3688382
You'll need a CRT if you want light gun games and most games will look better on a CRT.

Not perfect, arcade monitors are significantly different than standard consumer CRT's but CRT's are the closest you can get without getting an actual arcade monitor and rigging up a VGA to CGA encoder.

>How powerful of a PC
Honestly, for these kind of projects I just frankenstein something together with spare parts, or use my old PC once I get a new one. MAME requires a lot less power than you'd think. People run them on Raspberry Pi's.

>Best PCB for wiring controls
Don't even know, but I'd look at something either modular or something that just emulates keystrokes. Depending on budget and what you want to do, things like the X-arcade tank stick can be a reasonable option.

>>3688395
The microswitch should separate from the actual button by a bit of wiggling it around. There's 2 plastic nubs that hold them in.

Don't keep the buttons. Do yourself a favor and spend the 20 - 40 bucks and get new buttons and sticks. It really sucks when your friends come over to play your new cab and you find out a few switches are dead and the sticks are unresponsive.

Before you fuck around with the buttons take a picture of the wiring layout, and take some painters tape and mark what the buttons input is. That'll save you a shitload of time and effort rewiring up the quick connects when you replace buttons.

>>3688382
You should start with an existing cab and modify it. Or an even easier option is to just fantasize about something that's never going to happen like every thread like this ever posted.
Get a tri sync CRT
Read up on how MAME works before talking about "powerful"
i-pac is a bit of a meme product but it's solid. Personally I roll my own but you won't be able to do that.

>>3688382
Seems like you went to sleep, op but you'll probably wake up soon so I'll do my best to give you some specific advice based on what I can see/assume of your personal situation

>This cab no longer has a jamma harness, has an incomplete one (1 player only, no monitor connected) or at least will never be restored to full-authentic to plug arcade PCBs into
You can probably forget about bothering with theipac as it would have you spending as much time and way more money building a jamma harness as it would take you to just wire directly to your chosen interface

>You currently have a nicely fitting consumer Trinitron in there that probably has component inputs already, and you have a zapper connected
As another Anon said if you want to play light gun games and it looks like you do then you're going to want to stick with a 15khz at least. You can continue using the TV you have there as it will make doing what you're doing now (hooking up consoles) very simple while you're working. If and when you get to the point of going full PC MAME you'll have to transcode but that's no more expensive than getting a wider format monitor and depending on your location could be much cheaper and simpler.

(cot'd)

As far as the panel goes, get yourself a new piece of plexiglass and drill your own holes then mount your sticks and buttons to that and just replace the plexi that's on it now. Sandwich graphics of your choice under it.

If I'm correct that you want to use consoles in the easily foreseeable future I'm going to suggest that you build the control panel to give Playstation output by simply gutting two generic digital Playstation controllers and soldering to their contacts then screwing the PCBs to the underside of the panel. Not only are there lots and lots of arcade games on Playstation but Playstation input can be converted to most other consoles' inputs via adapters including PC. Mame purists will point out that this is not as good as using the PS/2 input from an ipac but it's much much more versatile and just in case you never make the big step to PC Mame you can use a Wii (with Playstation to Gamecube controller adapters)as an inexpensive, simple, versatile device to push the cab. It won't have real light gun support but it can use a Wiimote as a crappy substitute.

Take all the hypernerd advice you're likely to get with a grain of salt as it's likely very few of these guys telling you the "right" way to do it have done it themselves and remember that even if you grow your cab organically and it's less than ideal, if you just have it functional even pushed by a Wii you can sell it for more than enough to fund a "proper" cabinet using the skills and knowledge you'll have gained through experience having fun with this one.

>>3688406
The black nut won't unscrew.

>>3688419
It's just a start button anyway