My Goal

Greetings!  This Blog will be my progress on taking an old Daytona Arcade sit down arcade machine and turning it into a MAME cabinet.  My ultimate goal is to have what appears to be an original unit, but with MAME capabilities integrated into the machine such as PC and even a PS3 console for even more choices and the HD Daytona which I want running perfect on this cabinet for obvious reasons.

It arrives!  I got this gem for 160$ when you include fee's which I consider a great deal!  It is a Daytona USA Limited Edition Single Sit down Cab!  I have not seen too many of these, mostly because when I do see these in arcades, it is either the Twin or the 4-8 player units.

This unit came without a monitor, and to those purist who shudder at my idea to convert this into a MAME arcade, rest assured I did try to get it working stock with the original PCB's but alas, I could not overcome a bad board and lack of sound and control issues.  I even bought one of those VGA converter cards to give it a try because having a stock Daytona Cab would have been fine with me as well.

What I can do to benefit another stock machine is to auction off the spare parts on eBay to give another Daytona machine life with the needed parts, and then to outfit mine to have the spirit of arcade for all to enjoy!

I am a fan of the cabinet as a whole so my goal will be to keep the original look in tact.  No ridiculous race car seats... no shiney diamond chrome plating, I want to keep some authentic style to this project.

Today I do not have a whole lot of time to work on this, so I just wanted to focus on something small.  Took off the VR buttons panel and noticed some gross stuff under the clear plastic showing on top of the color.

Was pretty bummed that this part was so gross looking despite how much I cleaned the outside, someone must have used a wet rag in the past and the dirty water got behind the plastic...  I was pretty sure there was nothing I could do but I looked and to my suprise everything is able to open, even the clear plastic and on the inside, I was able to clean out the buttons to look like new!

Here I am starting to take off the wheel so I can strip it out and make room for the planned Logitech G27!  It is a shame because I like the old style wheel and love...LOVE...the Sega Shifter but compatibility issues will be more trouble than worth if I went that route!

Took off the seat as well...going to paint the back, will post pics of that soon.  Going to replace all the hardware that keeps this stuff together are a lot of it is rusty or just missing completely.

 This will be the perfect spot for a SUB... Looking at possible candidates for a nice sub inside the base.  Going to port a hole in the bottom and get a down-firing sub with some power.  Will also have to mode a cable that will actually be detachable if needed so the seat section can still be taken apart from the unit.

This dashboard is a little more generic than the usual twin Daytona sit down arcades - maybe it will be easier to stick a Logitech G27 on the inside without modding the shaft? Hoping that is the case! 

Now that this is off, I am going to gut out this dashboard, the only thing that will remain is the classic V.R.Buttons which I will get something to make them selection buttons or maybe some other feature I can integrate with those? Start and Select? Up and Down?

I'm Back!

More pictures to come, I just ordered a  bunch of parts I needed to start up on this again and I have just finished mounting the actual wheel into the dash.  Pictures at on the way!