I have been looking for a small cabinet for some time due that I dont have so much room.. I had some candidates but here in Spain it's very difficult to get one... At the end I have found an Aero City in "fair" condition, which I will have to repair.
My questions are:
It's a cabinet easy to tate? yeah, alone and without help, how many minutes it take?
I am considering seriously in changing the monitor to a trisync to take profit of the shmups in PC, Dreamcast and the new 360 to come: Ottomedius, Raiden IV,etc... Where can I buy a 25'' cheap trisync in europe? Do it like crap under the dark parsol?
Do you feel comfortable with the low inclination of the screen against cabinets common used for shmups as Egret II or Astro's?
Apart from www.rs-2006.co.jp where more can I find aero city spare parts? Anyone have the Aero city manual in english?
If everything goes well and finally I get it , I am sure I'll make a website with lots of stuff related to the aero cabinet.
The angle of the 29" Nanao RGB monitor on an Egret II cabinet is spot-on...meaning it's perfect for all those cool tate and yoko arcade PCBs. There is the all-important issue or trade-off of losing the crispness afforded of such dual-sync RGB monitors in 15kHz mode when upgrading to tri-sync (with such 15.7/24.5/31kHz sync rates). Whatever you decide to do, go with either default dual-sync or upgrade to tri-sync, it's your call. If you want the robustness of such an arcade RGB monitor to play all your PCBs + gaming consoles, then tri-sync would be the way to go. ^_~
Some arcade PCBs like Capcom's Hyper Dyne Sidearms on such a 29" RGB monitor look too big IMO and must be adjusted to make it look user-friendly with a smaller picture/image footprint. Playing such Sidearms PCB on a smaller analog RGB monitor does the trick for me -- it looks great on such a 19" or 20" monitor. It's really a matter of personal taste. Some folks feel that such a 29" monitor is too big for them and downgrade to a 27" monitor and vice versa (if they feel that such a 27" monitor is too small and upgrade to a 29" one instead). ^_~
If the Aero City is like the Astro City, you should only have to screw off the 4 nuts on the monitor frame. Lift the monitor off the bolts, rotate 90 degrees and put it back on the bolts. I can do the whole thing in about 10 minutes.
You're going to have trouble finding parts for that cab since its fairly old. Your best bet may be to reburb the ones you have. You can find generic arcade parts as well as newer panels etc on akihabarashop.jp.
Its not too hard to rotate an Aero City. The only really bad part is there isn't much room on the side of the cabinet to place your hands, so its tough to get a hold of the monitor. I usually rotate monitor with them being upright. I'm a bigger guy so I can do that, but I'd say 2 people would be a lot safer/smarter way to do it. I'd say if you aren't too big, then your best bet would be to lay the cabinet on its back then rotate it that way so you have better leverage and can use your legs to lift. I have never used this method though. I own an Astro City and my neighbor "Joe T." on here has an Aero City. Its pretty much the same to rotate just a lot tighter fit on the Aero City. Also the bezel around the Aero City is a bit tricky. Joe T. had to cut his in 2 corner to slide it out as the screws were rusted, this way he could rotate it for vertical games. I'd say you probably wouldn't be rotating an Aero City as much as say something like an Astro City due to the difficulty of it. Overall, I'd say 5-10 minutes to rotate the monitor.
As far as the other questions go. I have not seen parts for them other than the site you named. The inclination isn't too much of an issue as I play Joe T.s cab quite often and it doesn't bother me at all. The screen on my Astro City is clearer since there isn't a shroud over the monitor but to me it really isn't that much of an issue seeing that it is your only option.
As far as the monitor goes, I don't know anything about Europe so no help there. Hope this helps you somewhat.
aero cities are really great cabinets, they have 20 years and are still rocking.
Unfortunately the cabinet I've been offered it's not in the condition as I was expecting and the buy + refurbished goes over the price of an Astro or a New Astro... so everything it's clear, going for a Astro or a New Astro and just make the room smaller
Mastercello, your cabinet it's really great.
If you like the Aero's, or need to restore one I recommend this:
jandrogo wrote:Thanks to all for the replies given,
aero cities are really great cabinets, they have 20 years and are still rocking.
Unfortunately the cabinet I've been offered it's not in the condition as I was expecting and the buy + refurbished goes over the price of an Astro or a New Astro... so everything it's clear, going for a Astro or a New Astro and just make the room smaller
Mastercello, your cabinet it's really great.
If you like the Aero's, or need to restore one I recommend this:
Or you could try your luck at a Taito Egret II cab with it's famous one-handed ability to rotate the 29" Nanao dual-res monitor in about two to three minutes tops. Considering that the Egret II's were made back in 1996-1997 timeline, you might fare better with one of those. The catch-22 situation will be getting such replacement Egret II parts in the foreseeable future -- not a easy task to locate and source these days. ^_~
