Speaking of Nintendo cabinets... He traded back the R-Type to his friend who he said wanted to convert it to R-Type II... did he ever do the conversion? I'm in the midst of doing exactly that...
Before:
Currently at around 95% complete with a dead PCB (awaiting possible repair) and a new PCB shipping from Germany (Gawd, love to all friends in Germany, but shipping from your country takes forever!):
^Install new PCB, mod the wooded inserts in the PCB cage to fit the R-Type II board, and install the CPO and it will be pretty much completed! So I'm wondering what happened to the R-Type John had that went back to his friend to be converted to R-Type II? Did it ever get converted? I'll personally have R-Type 1 & 2 side by side. My main R-Type cab is 100% original and in great shape (all original buttons and everything, only 14,000 plays when I got it). It's going to be so kick-ass to have part 2 sitting beside it in an original R-Type cab. I went through great lengths to restore the cabinet and return it back to all original parts (buttons, joystick, coin mechs, another burn free minty monitor, etc.etc...) Couldn't have done it without John's Arcade videos since I learned EVERYTHING about this restore from watching his vids for the past year...