Before I can tell you the story of how I started to build my MAME cabinet I think it's important to cover a little about myself.

I'm a young, single 23 year old dude that enjoys tinkering with all sorts of electronics. Advanced computer terminology was every-day vocabulary since age 10! I grew up playing computer games but would play any arcade system wherever availible when I was near! Fast foreward to today; I work at an unusually unique Silicone Valley landmark: WeirdStuff Warehouse Inc. Where what we do is remarket used computer equipment or other electronic related equipment we purchase from other Silicon Valley Companies. We've got hardware from companies like HP, Yahoo, Lockheed Martin, Nasa, and many more! The vast majority of what we get is computers or directly related computer hardware. But... On occasion we do get some truely "cool" things! And I as the "Inventory Manager" on the WeirdStuff e-commerce site, I have a front row ticket to see everything that we get!

There is a company in this world called ultracade and they make arcade games and the sort. And there is another company in this world called GlobalVR and they, like ultracade, produce arcade games and the sort. These two companies, which are both located here in the Silicon Valley have just merged with each other and they are moving together to be under on roof. And like hundreds of companies before they called on WeirdStuff Warehouse to haul away ther surplus equipment. Some of which was empty arcade cabinets.
What I managed to get is an ulracade Street Fighter Anniversary Edition 27" arcade cabinet. Sans EVERYTHING! Quite literally there is nothing in the cabinet. Okay when I say there was "nothing" in the cabinet I mean there was no electronics and there was no joystick and button console. But there was a monitor mount for attaching standard 27 inch arcade CRTs into the cabinet. That and there was some severe cosmetic damage to the artwork on the sides of the cabinet so I was forced to remove the side decal stickers thus making a plain black arcade cabinet. Which suits me fine because I'm not sure I even like Street Fighter!

Working where I work I was able to find a Sony Trinitron TV (KV-27S15) That has S-Video input so I can hook the TV to the computer I plan on using. Speaking of the computer... Let me discribe my proposed system!

Athlon XP 2000+ Palamino core
1GB PC2700 DDR Memory
ATI Radeon 9200SE W/ 128MB DDR Memory & TV out
Seagate 40GB 5400RPM ATA-100 Drive
Lite-On DVD R/W Drive
250Watt Power Supply
Windows XP Profesional
II managed to also find at my work a Hydro Thunder ArcadePC chassis. it's not the actual arcade, just the PC that ran it. It had an old Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard and an intel Pentium II processor. But it's standard ATX so I'll gut it and stick in my MAME pc!
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1