Playing with player 1 from 2 different spots

[jakl14]

I am almost finished with my cocktail arcade and I have a question about the wiring.  My arcade is set up so that there are the usual one player per end, and then a panel on the side with room for 2 more players.

        |---3P--4P--|  
   ----------------------
  |    |--------------|   |
1P   |                  |  2P      <--bad ASCII pic of arcade(overhead view)
  |    |--------------|   |
  -----------------------

Now the purpose of the side panel was for me and a friend to be able to play games that are horizontal in orientation, and also be able to play vertical games.

My problem comes in when I want to wire this thing up.  I have an I-PAC4 and Im wanting the side players to be player 1 and player 2 also.  I am either going to be playing on the ends, or on the side but never on the side and end at the same time.  

I know that I can wire the player 1 and player 3 buttons to the same slots, but then while I am playing, I know for a fact that friends with evil intentions will come over and start messing with the controller Im not using and get me killed(especially if I am going for some sort of high score).

I tried just wiring each player to their respective buttons and then going into MAME and setting all the 3rd player buttons exactly the same as the 1st player buttons, but that did not work.  Is there any way to disable the end players while I am playing on the side or vic versa??

I hope I explained this clearly enough, and any ideas or anything would be greatly appreciated.

[traknfieldSUPAstar]

you could try wiring the grounds for the end joysticks to a spst(single pull single toggle? not sure if this is the right one to use) switch... with the switch turned off, that should disable the joysticks/buttons i think.... you could buy a switch from radio shack

[Tailgunner]

Well my first suggestion would be to keep a blunt instrument handy.

Beyond that, maybe a DPDT toggle switch hidden on the bottom of the cabinet would suffice. You could run the button ground loops for the  control panels through it, and disconnect the grounds from the buttons you're not using via the switch.

[SirPoonga]

If you feel like compiling your own mame (it isn't that hard to do) I have a ctrlr file hack on my site that would work perfectly for this.

[jakl14]

Thanks guys, I will definitely go with the hidden switch idea, I cant believe I didnt think of that.   Thanks.