My dad and I painted the cabinet black.

With some friends at my then-workplace Battelle (especially Don Hackman) I had various parts made - a new monitor bezel (I needed a horizontal mount; turbo had a vertical mount), a mounting bracket for the joystick, and other stuff. I upgraded the speakers and either put in a cheapo amp or somehow got the old Sega audio amps to still work.

I used one of my 19" Wells Gardner monitors I got from Hacker's Heaven in Columbus OH - they were surplus leftovers from a Phar Mor custom point of sale display. These were works of art. Easily the best 640x480 picture I've ever seen. Only problem is, that's as high as they go so I can't really use them anymore. Sigh. But it featured a wonderful Hitachi tube with a profoundly black mask.

When I fired up Tie Fighter in all its 640x480 Wells Gardner glory, with that big 15" speaker mounted to the back of the seat, and the big Thrustmaster TQS joystick w/ throttle firmly attached to the center I was enraptured. There's something hugely great about having a joystick rigidly mounted.

As time went on I tried out driving games, Descent, etc. Heck, just playing Robotron on MAME was a trip.

Well, when I decided to move on to greener pastures I left the Game Booth in the care of DavidCulberson who has it today. David's done various upgrades (including the monitor) as described below. It does my heart good to know the GameBoothOfDeath has a happy home (even if it no longer has the actual real dust from my store on it)

Game Booth: Eternal Project #1764

Booth Upgrades!

Specifications: 
AMD K6-233 processor with MMX Technology 
64mb of 60ns EDO memory 
1.0 gb Micropolis SCSI-2 FAST hard drive 
(3) Toshiba 4101 SCSI CD-ROMs 
ATI Mach64 GX VRAM (2mb) 
SMC EtherPower 10 
Wells-Gardner 19" VGA display 
Thrustmaster FLCS, TQS controls 
Logitech TrackMan 
Ensoniq SoundScape VIVO 
     

So, okay, it's not pretty yet, but it will be!
I think this thing still has Virtual Dust on it!!
I also think I'm only a couple of days from putting the panels back on..! 

Game Booth Upgrades!

Upgraded, 02/03/1998! 

ATI 3D Rage II+ DVD video card, 2mb. 
Mounted slot cage to hold in cards 
The damn hard drive died!!!!!!!! I need a ~1gb narrow SCSI device. No way I am putting the MegaRaid (My only wide controller...) in there! 

Oh, and I dusted the thing. Sorry, VO! 

Here's an outside view. Here we see a mouse installed on the bracket where the joystick used to mount. You can also see the thrustmaster TQS throttle on the left where the turbo High/Low shifter used to be. To get that thing installed, I seem to remember going through all kinds of mechanical contortions that the controller somehow survived.

Another inside shot. You can se the front speaker, and David's ingeniously installed floppy drive where the high score LED panel used to go. Plus, a three CDROM array! Wow!

Here's a shot from behind of the floppy install.

Here, Dave has installed a motherboard sans case. When I had the GameBoothOfDeath, I just laid in standard Packard Bell P75 (overclocked to P90!) case in there somewhere. I recognize the grey monitor cable for the Wells Gardner

Dave installed a nice card cage here to neaten the installation...

-- MattWalsh - 07 Apr 2002