I’m thinking of buying an Astro City pretty soon. Can anybody point me in the right direction? I’ve looked at CoinOpExpress and are considering them but I just don’t want to get raped on the shipping. HELP!
I would just keep an eye out on the trading outlet here, Neo Geo forums, Shmups forum and Arcade Otaku forums for people selling cabinets.
I wouldn’t be picky for an Astro City specifically. If you can get an Egret2, Egret3, Blast City, Net City, Vewlix or ANY then great.
It’d be much cheaper to get a used one from a collector that’s taken decent to good care of it then get one shipped from Japan.
I’ve seen Blast City cabinets on ebay occasionally for roughly $1200, but you can get others for cheaper. IIRC one of the SRK mods here was selling theirs for like $500 a few months ago. Shipping is gonna kill you in any way, but at least if it’s from the US it’s much cheaper.
Good luck. If I see something offhand I’ll post it here and PM you.
-FrankCastleAZ
Yeah, you’d be better off with a drive, even if its a few hours. I drove three hours both way for a tank and a half of gas. Otherwise it would have silly expensive.
learned about this badboy while working at our local arcade. tr-60. we would use it to remove the gum off carpet. And yes it works well with adhesive as well. apply, let it soak for 5 min or so, than use a putty knife to remove.
FINALLY some progress on my Blast City cabs.
Alpha 3 control panel redone.
Move lists for both games printed
-FrankCastleAZ
My office is too much of a mess to take a full shot, but here’s my Namco Exceleena:
http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee311/undamned_photobucket/Osman/th_DSC07998.jpg
-ud
that Namco cab is rad, I’ve never seen one before. Does it come with a stock 6 button layout or did you change it?
I didn’t change it, but I got it used, so I can’t speak for what the previous owners did with it 
Looks pro, though. I’m so happy I picked it up before the era we are in now, where resellers import a container of cabs they paid 20,000yen each for and then jack up the price 800%. Including shipping from CA, I only dropped like 5 bills. Hopefully the last arcade item I have to sell, if it ever comes to that 
-ud
Strider?!?
Should be getting my first arcade next week a 18 wheeler Naomi Universal cab. I have a CVS2 CD-rom kit that I bought that I would like to augment with it. I don’t want to do a full conversion, but do a ‘soft conversion’ where the the driving panel would be removable and I can replace it with a complete blast city control panel or modded dreamcast sticks. Pics soon.Thoughts? Or am I asking in the wrong forum.
Would like to see how you going to do that or is it as easy as unscrewing the control panel? How much did you get it for?
Well its not a done deal yet, off of craigslist its $600. Its from a rental place so I assume its not in the best condition.
My goal its to make the control panel completely modular. Where I can hook in a blast city control panel or something to that extent. Then there is a problem of removing the pedal plate/ butt rest. I have heard a complete conversion is an expensive pain so I am opting to try to go about a roundabout way.
1 - I’m unsure how the control panel works on the Naomi cab but on a few of the Sega cabs there’s 4-6 bolts that allow you to remove the entire panel. I suppose you could try to hunt down a Naomi standard control panel to switch in and out but it could be somewhat difficult to find separately from a cabinet and would be quite a pain in the ass if you switched panels often.
2 - Building your own control panel is possible, but would be very expensive if done nicely and for the cost of getting a custom one built from someone in the arcade stick modding community would cost you upwards to $500 or $600 (not including the wiring to harness you’d have to do yourself mentioned on issue 4 below) which is roughly 1/3 to 1/4 of what an entire Naomi cabinet would cost.
3 - The 18 Wheeler is a cartridge game where as CvS2 is a GDRom. I’m unsure how you swap games if you have a game in each slot but you might have to pop the cartridge or GD-Rom out when playing the other game if one boots over the other automatically. Once you find out how that works, please PM me and let me know as I’m interested.
4 - Most wiring from the I/O board to the control panel is game specific and you might have to buy a separate harness to handle a 1 or 2 player (depending on the panel) fighting game instead of a harness that supports a few buttons, a steering wheel and pedals.
If you’re lucky ALL of the possible connections are wired on the harness from the board to the control panel and there’s a Molex MtoF connection in the control panel you could unplug from 18 Wheeler and plug into CvS2 control panel.
That would still require you to buy the exact model Molex connector and find a pinout or determine exactly what wire does what and connect the fighting game panel wires to the Molex yourself.
Bottom line - It would be a LOT easier if you just converted the entire system to a fighting game cabinet as panels and wiring to both a fighting game and a driving game will be difficult.
IMO - I don’t see what other people see in the 18 Wheeler game as I never found it to be that interesting but to each their own.
Good luck.
It’s been a while since I updated and I’ve made progress on my cabs so…
Behold-
And my wiring plan with Molex connections to have the potential for console support in the future by swapping connectors.
And the wiring on one of the two panels.
YAY PROGRESS!
-FrankCastleAZ
Just completed my Kraylix ^_^…jacked up the panel art a little bit but function over fashion, right? 
https://p.twimg.com/AhUE8mxCQAAoYYO.jpg
I also have LED balltops (courtesy of Vicko)
https://p.twimg.com/AhUF3obCAAAcu_3.jpg
…and here are some more shots of my Kray…
https://p.twimg.com/AhUIyDFCMAAgoC4.jpg
https://p.twimg.com/AhUG2dBCMAA9Wru.jpg
https://p.twimg.com/AhUFuhVCAAABpYH.jpg
Knoxximus - Man that’s beautiful, i really like the yellow & black…Dont care for the Neo-geo/Capcom logo…What kind of lcd you have in there?
Thanks rcaido…you really have quite the collection! Kray said it’s the first yellow and black cab he’s done and really liked it’s look.The LCD is a LG…model 32LD350. Supports up to 1080P. Going thru HDMI in Game Mode is very responsive…if it is lagging it is barely enough to discern and my combos come out on time. However I did order a HDFury Gamer Edition cable just to ensure that I can have the best input response time possible.
I know the logos are more subjective, but I had to represent the 2 companies that I feel are the “King of Fighters”. …plus the color schemes of the logos worked well so I went with it.
Yeah i actually have the same LG LCD on my Kraylix…If you want less input lag, have it hooked up via VGA…Makes a huge difference compared to hdmi…
The black/yellow combination is off the hook! I don’t care much for the combination of CAPCOM and NEO-GEO though. Gives it a hokey pokey MAME vibe. The yellow fits well with CAPCOM though, just keeping those logos could make it look less cluttered.
So it does, eh? Then ordering the HDFury cable was a good idea then…thanks for the tip!
EDIT: Man…those HDFury guys ship FAST! 
I got my HD Fury gamer edition cable yesterday afternoon (ordered it Wednesday afternoon)…shipped from Taiwan via DHL…I can’t believe something got here that fast from that far away dead in the middle of the holidays! Anyhoo, hooked it up, configured the LG in VGA mode and VIOLA!..you were dead on. This shit is smooth as silk now…to the point where I have to adjust MY timing lol!