My Dynamo HS-5 cabinet came with a switch on top.  It was always my idea to eventually use that switch in order to have an easier and better way to turn on the MAME cabinet.  Before I was plugging and unplugging the extension cord to turn the cabinet on and off.

There are many articles telling you what you need in order to make a MAME cabinet.  This article shows you how to do MAME on the cheap side.  It could also be a "What you need in order to make a MAME cabinet" article as well.

This is all personal preference of course, but I wanted my MAME cabinet to be set up for fighting games.  I especially wanted it set up for Street Fighter.  Since the whole Street Fighter series, before Street Fighter 4 at least, used six buttons, I knew that is the amount of buttons that I wanted.

After getting the cabinet together, I wanted to find a monitor that I know will work in it. Since I didn't have anything to hook up to the monitor that came with it, I wanted to find a new one.  To the right is a picture of the monitor that came with the arcade cabinet.

I started out researching everything.  I wanted to absorb as much information as I could about arcade games and MAME.  I wanted to have a MAME cabinet that mostly for fighting games, such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, but didn't know the exact cabinet that I wanted to start with.