First Cabinet Build

[JohnyO]

Getting started slowly on my first cabinet. Starting a thread to keep myself motivated. My plan as of now is to build a 2 player cabinet with a 4-way stick in the middle. I've already assembled my pc. An AMD A6-6400, dirt cheap motherboard, and a few spare parts I already had lying around. It seems to run everything I'm interested in pretty well, SF3, Dodonpachi, Classics, etc. So I think I am good there. I have gotten as far as getting Mala set up an functioning pretty well, just not customized. My first parts orders arrived last week. Next step is to build a mockup cp to play on while I build and find out where I want everything.

[AzureKnight]

Welcome to the forums and good luck!

Do you have an artistic theme picked out yet?

[JohnyO]

I am thinking of doing all original art, no game characters, pre existing graphics, etc. I have a design in ming, but theres a good chance it will change during the building process.

[JohnyO]

I spent some time this weekend putting together my mockup cp. Picked up some valuable lessons about, mdf tearout, and accounting for bushings when making router templates. Good exercise. Got my 3 sticks all hooked up to an ipac 2. I would like to use the third stick as a dedicated 4 way, I hooked it to the ipac in the player 1 - 7 and 8 buttons and the player 2 - 7 and 8 button spots, however mame doesn't seem to let me use it like this for some reason. Is there a better way to configure this? Everything else seems to be working well. Now to stop play Street Fighter long enough to make some progress on the cab.

[05SRT4]

I like the button and stick color scheme.

Someone will correct me if I am wrong but couldn't you jut connect the 4 way to the same ports as the player one?

Are you using the default config on the I-pac? I know you can go in and change each port to what ever key. Then make sure MAME is set to the same.

[AzureKnight]

Yes, just run the wires from the 4 way joystick to the same connections that the 8 way joystick switches are run to.  You can feed both wires into the same connectors.

[JohnyO]

Got a chance to cut some mdf today. I have to do all my work in the basement, so routing mdf means 20 minutes of cutting = 2 hours of cleanup. Now on to home depot for framing material and primer, and I'm sure countless other tiny parts that I don't know I need yet.