I've never owned an actual cab, but my first actual arcade stuff was probably when I bought Metal Slug and Aero Fighters 2 MVS carts to use with a Phantom 1 converter way back in like 2002 or something. A few years later I was actually in the process of getting out of Neo altogether when someone on this forum posted a MV1FZ consolized system for a really reasonable price that I snatched up, so that was my first arcade motherboard (even if the jamma edge never saw any real hardware.) Too bad that CMVS bit the dust eventually, I really liked it.