I ended up buying someone else's from-scratch, DIY rig. It's got some drawbacks in that there is no glass or bezel and a big --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- TV just sits in the display area. Its made of custom cut MDF so its heavy, and we had to disassemble it to get it out of the guy's apt, but this guy had some nice touches with custom re-wired speakers and a 4 player control panel. It was half the price of most kits I found so I just went with it. Maybe I'll post a a picture later (if I'm not too embarrassed at the giant TV).
Anyway, I put it together. Screws went back into place as they should. The 4 player control panel had a few points on it that came loose, this guy used IPAC4 but didn't put the crimps on the switches, just soldered them individually. I found the ends of the wires that came loose and re-soldered using the solder that was already there in all cases but one - which was a stiff copper wire that I guess is part of the daisy chained ground wire.
The fact that I didn't wire this myself is both a good and bad thing because I don't have to go through the time it takes to make the thing work, but I also have never wired a control panel, so I have to figure out after the fact how the thing is supposed to work in the first place.
Testing a few games and I discover that player 4 joystick up is configured correctly, but it does multiple presses when pressed. Pushing it in notepad gives me minimum two little 'y' s. 2 of the solder points I had to fix were for player 4, but they were buttons 1 and 4 which seem to be working fine.
Any ideas on what can cause a double press like that?