Arcade Cabinet Advice

[warmachine]

Hello all, warmech here. It's been a long and very crappy summer (I'll say something about it after I've gotten some rest), so I've decided to try to cheer myself up a bit and do something I have always wanted to since the age of four (almost twenty now): own an arcade machine.

I realize this sounds a bit off, seeing as some or many of you know that I am in a bit of a financial and automotive rut (Dan knows more than all). However, several months ago, my now former church was dumping some old arcade cabinets that stopped working in their game room. I had gone over to our neighbors' house to help pick up some brush and lo and behold, there were the game cabinets! Among the ones waiting for trash pickup was a Gaplus/Galaga III machine that had a shot capacitor on the power supply board which I finally had repaired today by a good fellow by the name of Raymond Jett, who runs http://www.arcadecomponents.com. He carries tons of old ICs and arcade stuff for those who need to repair old computers and arcade machines. So, now that I have a semi-operational arcade (I need to switch out the shot Gaplus ROM for the Galaga III ROM), I want to scrap the old particle board cabinet and replace it with something better.

For starters, I have always wanted to have a tabletop machine, like the kind you could find at Pizza Huts where you sat down and played over a large glass table. So, here is where I come for advice. First, since I am operating on a small budget, cost will be a big factor. Second, what kind of materials do you guys suggest for building a tabletop machine from (considering the previous statement)? Also, I would like to make the new cabinet lightweight, so I can move it around when I need to (university this fall - sophomore, baby!), think of it as the largest "portable" that's ever come out of this site. Finally, it needs cool graphics on the sides to replace the Gaplus ones fromt the old, destroyed cabinet, so, does anybody know if there's a place that reprints old arcade graphics?

Thanks for the help guys, and I'll try to post some photos of the thing tomorrow, hopefully when I get the new ROMs put in it.

[tom61]

More about MAME machines, but should help as significant amount are from-scratch cabinets:
http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

This section should be especially helpful:
http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade_examples.php#cocktails

[SpongeBuell]

Scour everything you can (yellow pages, etc.) and find out where there are arcades (for playing) and arcade/jukebox/pinball parts stores. Odds are, you can at least find something. Also, check out craigslist and put up a wanted ad if you don't see anything. Oh yeah, check ebay listings within a reasonable distance (expect 50 miles) from your zipcode, and see what you can pick up.

One of my cabinets I got for free, the other was $100, to give you an idea... both of which had working motherboards, but no monitors (or a bad one)