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If you could change one thing for your control panel what would you change?
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brock.sampson:
I would move my spinner farther to the 1p side and cut down on the admin buttons.  I've jammed my fingers a few times on a hard game of golden tee.
shateredsoul:
Seems like a lot of people would have removed the admin buttons.. so does this mean the keyboard buttons? Like esc? If so, Do you think putting them on the side of the cabinet would have been nicer of just not having them at all?

So how many buttons do you need other than for playing? player 1, player 2, a coin button, side buttons for pinball... so 5 extra holes should be fine right?

This is how the cp i'm looking at comes standard

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330402984044&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

What are the smaller holes on there for? Anything you can see that could probably be removed?

I'm probably going to remove the flight stick.  And I wanted to add 5 arcade button holes, maybe on the side or front for the jukebox software (at least for play, pause, next track, previous track, add track).

Paul Olson:
The only admin buttons I ever have on my modular cp are 1 and 2 player start. I have three buttons underneath the cp that seem to be intuitive for everyone who has played a game on the cab. I have the coin buttons in the corners and  pause button in the middle. Player 2 Start is the shift button which shifts pause to esc. p1 coin shifts to tab, and p2 coin shifts to enter. That is all I have ever needed during normal gameplay; actually I don't think I have ever needed enter. For configuration of the system, I use a wireless keyboard and mouse sitting on the shelf. I have two barstools for the cab, and the buttons underneath have never been accidentally pressed by knees, so I am very happy with it.
markronz:
Two things, I would move my exit button.  Right now it's directly above my trackball.   When I play golden tee, and I give er a good push, bye bye mame right in the middle of a game.   I originally put it there so that the control panel would be symetrical.   So there's got to be some equality between symetry, and functionality.

Secondly, I have 3 dedicated mouse buttons on mine.   While they are nice for admin work on the computer, they go largely untouched in daily use, and just take up a lot of room.   On my next CP I will be using a DPDT switch.  The switch will be hidden under the control panel.  Flipping the switch will change P1B5 and P1B6 to be the mouse left and right clicks.  So that way I will still have access to the mouse buttons as needed.  It's just handy to use the trackball as a mouse.
UberCade:
One thing I'm really glad I decided to do is make my control panel modular (the two middle players anyway), because I like to play as many games with their original controls as possible, like two joysticks for each player (Smash TV, Karate Champ), the Star Wars yoke (Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Stun Runner), steering wheels, the Tron stick and spinner, etc. I designed my panel with swappable pieces so I can just replace one control at a time rather than having to remove and replace the whole control panel top.

If you feel the same way, it's something you should think about. There's no way you can possibly fit EVERY different type of arcade control on one panel, so you'll either need a modular panel or swappable tops. Of course it's not for everybody.
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