Showcase add on?

[paigeoliver]

This front shot shows the control panel area of my Amazing Maze cabinet. I had originally had plans to make a 3rd Mame cabinet with swappable or rotating panels. But now I am just kind of leaning towards making a second control panel on kind of a false machine front that I can just set up right in front of the cabinet.

Has anyone done this? I can't really do any decent swappable panels on the cabinet itself, because the panel is too shallow for a trackball, or a T2 gun. Right now I have a 4-way stick, a top fire 8-way, several analogs, a 3" trackball, a T2 gun, and a spinner just laying around waiting to be used.

The only thing really holding me back is that I have never seen anyone do this before. Is there some reason not to? The new front section would only go on the machine when playing the games that needed it.

[Tiger-Heli]

Sounds good to me, as long as the add-on doesn't place you too far away from the monitor.

[tmasman]

One problem you'll run into is that (depending on how deep the add on is) you'll have a hard time seeing the monitor at that angle... It seems a little too tilted back to really have a good view from a couple of feet away.

It would probably still be playable, but it would seem a little odd to say the lease.

As far as "would I do it" or "how does this sound" I think it's a pretty cool idea! You could build a pedistal  (sp?) for your swapable panels & have your panel connections just inside the coin door... (See sketch).

Just unplug the permanent panel, plug in the pedistal & you could have another connection right near the top of the pedistal to make panel swapping easier...

It would be a neat project, but would also leave you with a LOT of misc pieces lying around when they aren't being used.

[Tiger-Heli]

Tmasman has some good points, but I was thinking more on the lines of - Have the Primary CP always wired to the encoder.  Have a DB25 cable (or SCSI 50) running in parallel to the encoder and going to a port on the front of the cab.  Pedestal plugs into this and then a separate connector in the pedestal for swappable panels.

FWIW

[eightbit]

I had originally had plans to make a 3rd Mame cabinet with swappable or rotating panels. But now I am just kind of leaning towards making a second control panel on kind of a false machine front that I can just set up right in front of the cabinet.

Why the pedastel? Why not just swappable panels?

Either way its easy to make your panel/pedestal easy to disconnect.

[Tiger-Heli]

Why the pedastel? Why not just swappable panels?

Lack of below panel depth.  Stated in initial post.

[eightbit]

Why the pedastel? Why not just swappable panels?

Lack of below panel depth.  Stated in initial post.

A larger panel that came up and out would be easier to build and store than a seperate pedastal.

[paigeoliver]

Why the pedastel? Why not just swappable panels?

Lack of below panel depth.  Stated in initial post.

A larger panel that came up and out would be easier to build and store than a seperate pedastal.

I AM NOT going to chop up my cabinet to install a larger panel. Sorry, I am not an idiot. Doing that is akin to just throwing the cabinet in the garbage as far as I am concerned.

[paigeoliver]

Here is a more recent picture, so you can get a better look of how things are working. The drawing tmasman made is pretty much how I wanted it to look, and I wanted it to be the exact same width as the cabinet, nothing wider.

[hooded_paladin]

since you've taken out the control panel and you're considering just adding a pedestal CP, you might consider making a CP type box to mount in there that rises the surface up to give it depth.  Sort of EXTRUDING the control panel up, to give some lame 3d modeling terms.

"A larger panel that came up and out would be easier to build and store than a seperate pedastal. "  I though he was talking the same thing (that I am), but I think you took that as a big wrap-around panel that would involve more mangling of the cab.  Definitely NOT a good choice for the last remaining amazing maze cab, I agree.

[paigeoliver]

Well, check the later pictures. The panel was just out in that particular picture. I very much want to keep my panel, and I want to keep the normal lines of the cabinet whenever I am not playing the games that will use the pedestal.

Oh, and I checked, you can get way back from the thing and still see the screen just fine, and my pedestal was only going to be maybe 12"-18", so it should not mess with the playability.

[grafixmonkey]

My pedestal-style CP works pretty well for me, standing in front of my PC monitor.  (at least until I put it in front of my actual tv / stereo / everything)

Here's what I'm thinking...   If you splice wires with your IPAC using either solder or those wire-splicing ties that  slip on over the insulation, cut it, and contact the wire,   then you can add two Molex plugs to the ipac inputs, to cover all the inputs for two-player games.  That'd give you the same wiring setup as hooking two switches to one Ipac pin, except you'd just plug in the molex from your podium CP and make it automatic and swappable.  

Then, leave the back of your podium open, and your original cab's coin door can just sit open, swinging partway into the open back of your new box, allowing you to run a cable with your new CP's molex plugs into the opening.  I think you could easily get your new CP thin enough that you'd only be eight inches or so farther back from your screen, especially since you're building an add-on and not a dedicated CP that's supposed to wow people on sight.  

From there the only problem I can see is how to keep the new thing from tipping over, since it's going to be pretty thin front-to-back.  You could try taping free weights to the bottom of it and maybe that'd work, but you could also take advantage of your coin door being open to hook bungee cords between hooks on the inside of your CP, and the metal corners of the coin door opening.  That should attach your panel firmly to the old machine, without marring any surfaces that you care about.  You could even try and make padded grooves for the T-molding on the old machine to fit into, keeping it from moving side to side.  The bungee cords could be attached and detached by reaching through the addon panel's coin door.

[paigeoliver]

Definitely going to splice into the I-Pac to have a plug to get some connections there. Going to put an identical coin door on the secondary panel as well.

I am currently thinking about the following tops for the secondary panel stand.

3" trackball +4-way joystick. (Don't know any games that use that combo, but I gotta put a 4-way somewhere to get those horizontal 4-way games that my Artic Mini Mame can't handle).

Wico leaf 8-way top fire and spinner. (I also have one of those blue raider pro sticks, may try a hack first to see if I can get that on an 8-way base).

Single T2 Positional gun.

Analog flight stick panel.

Asteroids panel.

Stargate Panel.

Stepmania panel (with the buttons in a 2 player Pump It Up config).

I MIGHT have to drop one or more of the above panels due to a lack of buttons, not exactly sure if I have enough buttons laying around to do all of them. The Stargate panel would be the first on the chopping block

[grafixmonkey]

well the pedestal sounds cool.  I'm inspired to try making an add-on panel for my cab too, because I have no 4-way joysticks and I'm starting to miss them in Mame.

(can't use the Oscar restrictor plates.    My joysticks are kinda mounted "special".)