UnholyKnight's Megalo 410 Restoration

Tech Talk
1

This is a series of posts I made on ArcadeControls.com forums during the restoration of my Megalo 410. I decided to wait until it was near completion before posting it onto the Shoryuken forums. Each of the double dashed lines is used to represent a separate post from the original forum posts.

Feel free to post comments, responses, or ask any questions about my venture in general. There was virtually no information on the Megalo 410 series of cabs anywhere online that I could find, so I got to learn about the internals on my own. Technical arcade machine questions are also welcome, as I can probably answer them.

With that said, onto the content!

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Running total of parts and costs:
Initial condition Megalo 410 - $400
2 Player overlay + shipping - $65
Spray paint - $4
Painting Tape - $4
PS2 -> JAMMA adapter parts - $140
Control Panel work from MameMarquees.com - $35
Controls from Rollie Electronics - $84

Total so far: $732

After looking online forever to “maybe” locate a Megalo 410 for sale in my area, I come across a very old post on a forum from 2004. The post advertised the cabinet at $500. Looking for his username on Google I came across a second forum he was apart of and in his profile on this forum he had a link to his website. So I venture to his website to find a section labeled “for sale” and what do I find? The same Megalo 410 from the forum post, but he has gone down on the price to $400!

I live in Dallas, and the guy selling it lives in San Antonio, so off I go to pick it up! And consequently pull over several times on IH-35 to tie down the tarp that keeps flying off of the machine.

We get it back to my house in one piece. Everything is still functional, but the work has only begun. The cabinet’s initial condition wasn’t too bad. It had some cuts, bumps, chips in the paint, missing controls, and no game.

So the first step of the project is finding and ordering some sort of 2 player control bezel for the cabinet since only a single player control bezel was included.

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First Addition: 2 player control overlay.

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Step 2: Painting the cabinet.

Went to Lowe’s and picked up a spray paint in the closest color I could find, as well as some tape to tape off the Megalo 410 stickers. The color we used was “heirloom white”.

Before painting the cabinet looked like this:

And then we applied the paint in 4 coats over the course of about 36 hours, the ending result:

The paint job makes the cabinet look a lot better cosmetically. There is a VERY slight color differentiation between the color of the cabinet and the spray paint. You can only see this break around the Megalo 410 stickers where we taped off. Other than that, the paint looks great.

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Received the control panel work from Mamemarquees.com and it fit perfectly! I just stuck it on and used a hobby knife to cut out all the button holes. Seriously, they do TOP quality work and printouts.

So now all that is left is the controls! Which I’m waiting on Rollie for. Hes waiting on a shipment of Sanwas before he can give me my order total and ship.

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Received my button shipment from Rollie Electronics, tomorrow I will fit them all to the machine and then all I will need is wiring! I can’t wait!

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The controls are now all secured onto the cabinet! Pictures, of course.

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I am now awaiting the arrival of the final parts that I need to get this thing rocking again! Should be working by this Friday night!

2

great work! :smiley:

isn’t it supposed to have some kind of cover for the speakers, though?
also, sanwa stick height is kinda off. :B and even if you like the height, you should probably have mounted the stick with countersunk bolts before sticking the art on. that way you won’t have to deal with rusty bolts in the future.

still, good work. :smiley:

3

Just one question.
HOW BIG IS THAT FUCKIN MONITOR?
JESUS CHRIST!

I might need to make another trip to dallas again to play on that shit.
You cool wit dg and all?

4

I think megalo’s have 41" monitors…

Did that guy have anymore cabinets for sale…or was that just a one time deal for him?

5

The speakers are custom added. Somewhere in its history the Marquee and speaker section above the monitor was lost or broken.

I don’t see whats wrong with the stick height, its like less than an inch higher than it should be and the difference isn’t noticeable. The height difference is because I don’t have any sort of brackets to mount it lower, I measured the bracket it came with and it lowers the stick by about ~1/2 an inch.

There several bolts on it that have been on it for years and they aren’t rusting. There is NO WAY to sink bolts into a very thin sheet of metal. Where are they going to sink to? The only way to “hide” the bolts is to not use them by welding the pieces on there… and I really don’t want to weld a stick onto my cab.

6

41" screen, I know DG and all them, I live about 5 minutes from Geese and E-bortion

This was the only cab he was selling. He did have a garage full of other stuff that he was holding on to, Astro City, F-Zero arcade game, and a ton of JAMMA and NAOMI based games.

7

one quick questions why did you use happ buttons, instead of sanwa buttons? just wondering otherwise great work:wink:

8

How’s the burn in on the monitor? Got any pics of it running some games?

9

I used HAPP buttons for the 6 main buttons and the 1P 2P buttons. I used Sanwa small buttons for the 3 center buttons. HAPPs require simple cherry switches that I have tons of around, so if a button dies its a simple matter of swapping the switches. Also if I ever run out of switches, etc, I can buy parts locally from a friend who is a Tech at an arcade, all he has are Happs. So if it came down to that I wouldn’t want to have a cab full on Sanwas with one or 2 Happ buttons, the difference in the 2 buttons is very noticeable.

Surprisingly the burn in isn’t that bad, in fact there is nothing burned into the screen, its just a TAAAAD washed out, and here is why. The red channel is a bit weird, its either too weak or too strong within almost no adjustment movement. The screen looks better than ANY OTHER Megalo 410 I have ever seen in person.

As my last post said I was waiting on one final part to get it running games, the parts came in today, but there were 2 jumpers missing. The missing jumpers were the control jumpers so all I can do is sit at a 3s start screen and watch the intro video over and over :lol:

I did find a place to get replacement jumpers and I will finish the cab hopefully tomorrow night, and if not then Friday night for certain. When the cab is finished I’ll have pictures and also some video of it in action.

10

nice work man. The megalos are pretty rare and you got a really good deal on one. As for the buttons and sticks; while I use all sanwa stuff in my Jcabs, it really only comes down to what you like and play best with. No reason you shouldnt have american parts in it if thats what you play best on. Especially if you plan on having comp over there…house rules.

Cant wait to see the pics and vids. Great job.

11

The sticks are Sanwa of course, just for maintenance reasons I went with HAPP over Sanwa. When I build my PS2 stick it will definitely have Sanwa buttons.

What cabinets do you have? This summer I’m getting an Astro City 2 to add to my collection.

12

Astro City 2 is real nice man; they have Bose speakers on deck that are supposed to sound great. That’ll be a real nice set up.

I currently have a Taito Egret 2 running third strike, a Konami Windy running Alpha 3, a new Astro City that I rotate various street fighters on (alpha/2nd impact) to cut down on rotation time boredom syndrome, a MVS-U4 (old school neo geo candy 29) and I am getting pretty soon here a Capcom Impress; the holy grail which I will of course move third strike into.

the result of a lot of hardwork and frivolous spending. But the arcade scene here is dying fast and the competition isnt.

13

I just noticed something. Why cut out 16 button holes only to cover up four of them?

14

What happend to the Sega Virtua Stick Pro you cannibalized the control panel from?

15

He got the graphic from Mamemarquees.com, pays to read sometimes :slight_smile:

16

I didn’t make the control panel, they are manufactured by a company I found online. I went with 8 so that I could add a 4th button to the top row if I ever get any neogeo games for the cabinet.

17

I didn’t mean on the control panel itself but on the CP overlay(which by the way, assured me to go with MAME marquees from now on). In that case why not cut seven holes? But I digress, I’m just jealous.

18

I cut them all due to the neo geo fact I said before, I also have the cabinet wired to play playstation 2 and XBOX in addition to JAMMA boards. All 8 buttons represent the 4 buttons on the pad and the 4 trigger buttons.

I thought of not cutting holes in the art overlay, but I’m sure that if I didn’t someone at some point would accidentally poke a finger or object through it.

19

Quick question, what resolutions can the megalo play(low,mid,high res)? I’m really liking the big screen, and might be interested in one myself.

20

Maaaan, the cab is super nice. There’s no telling what sort of bodily appendages people might try to stick into open holes in something that good-looking.