Also, if I may ask, I only played a few arcades as a kid so Im not too intuned with them. Do they all come with a back? The one I seen locally Centipede did not have a back panel or anything. You could literally see the wires and the back of the monitor when viewing it from the back. I was not sure about it but it was only 150 or 175. And it looks so heavy to me and I feel I would break it in the course of transportation.
Can you give me any pointers on how to spot a good quality machine? And what are those motherboards for them I see on Ebay? To me, an arcade is just a big arcade machine you put in quarters and play.
I'd say that they all have back panels. There is some pretty high voltage stuff back there. If you didn't cover it up, some jackhole would fry themselves.
They are pretty heavy. That much wood and those heavy monitors add up to a couple hundred lbs. If you move it, stand it up in the back of a truck or on a trailer, strap that dude down, and take it easy in the corners.
As far as pointers, I don't have a whole lot. If it powers on, looks good, the monitor looks good, and the controls work; I'd buy it. $150 for a working Centipede is a steal. I'd still try to make an offer on it though.
Those boards on ebay are replacements out of cabinets that were trashed. Things wear out and have to be replaced. If you have a JAMMA cabinet (an effort to make arcade cabinets standard), you can swap out JAMMA boards to play different games pretty easy. I need one of those.
