Changeable control top on pedestal instead of rotating panel?

[newbiesupreme@yahoo.com]

I am in the very, very, very, very beginning stages of even thinking about perhaps maybe making a Mame pedestal; the cabinet I would love but think it would be good to have a more mobile modular arrangement, where I can move pedestal out of way and still use TV, etc.

I fell in love with lots of rotating panels, but because I want to play so many things, I was wondering if it would be better timewise to just have a few different control panel tops, and take one off and put other one on.

My question is, are these connections from the panel to the PC easy to snap/unsnap, or would it be an issue of undoing like 500 little tiny wires and re-doing it all when putting other panel on?  From some of the designs I've seen, it looks like the ipac or whatever is used as the controller plug/harness can be on the underside of the control panel itself, but I haven't seen how they connect to the PC itself.  Does the ipac (or whatever) plug unto the PC using USB?  Some weird card that has a thousand little wires?

Thanks for any info

[PL1]

Welcome aboard.   

I fell in love with lots of rotating panels, but because I want to play so many things, I was wondering if it would be better timewise to just have a few different control panel tops, and take one off and put other one on.

Swappable panels might be a good option, but it depends on what games you want to play.

Check out the "What type of build meets my needs?" section of the FAQ.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160809113045/http://newwiki.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?title=FAQ

As you work through that process, you may find that you don't want/need swappale panels.   

My question is, are these connections from the panel to the PC easy to snap/unsnap, or would it be an issue of undoing like 500 little tiny wires and re-doing it all when putting other panel on?  From some of the designs I've seen, it looks like the ipac or whatever is used as the controller plug/harness can be on the underside of the control panel itself, but I haven't seen how they connect to the PC itself.  Does the ipac (or whatever) plug unto the PC using USB?

If you plan on doing swappable panels, mount the IPac on the underside of the control panel and wire all the controls to it.

The IPac connects to your PC via USB.



You can secure the control panel to the pedestal using latches like these. (Consider putting them inside the pedestal.)



A door on the back of the pedestal will allow you to easily connect/disconnect the latches and USB cable when swapping panels.   


Scott

[ed12]

wow
wow
wow

ed

[Cynicaster]

My question is, are these connections from the panel to the PC easy to snap/unsnap, or would it be an issue of undoing like 500 little tiny wires and re-doing it all when putting other panel on?  From some of the designs I've seen, it looks like the ipac or whatever is used as the controller plug/harness can be on the underside of the control panel itself, but I haven't seen how they connect to the PC itself.  Does the ipac (or whatever) plug unto the PC using USB?  Some weird card that has a thousand little wires?

Thanks for any info

I think swappable panels is better than having a single panel with 600 controls on it.  IMO,  two 8-way joysticks + associated buttons, trackball, and P1/P2 start buttons is about the limit of what you can cram onto a reasonably sized 2-player panel without starting to compromise usability.  I built a panel with all of that on it, plus a dedicated 4-way.  The 4-way is totally usable and worth having, but the positioning of it is slightly sub-optimal due to everything starting to get a bit crowded.  I've since converted my cabinet to use swappable panels, so if I were starting over, I'd leave the 4-way off the original panel and put it on its own panel so that it could be positioned right where I want it. 

As for connecting the different panels to the PC, I have mine set up to share a single iPac that is mounted in the "box" of the control panel.  The connections between the swappable panels and the iPac are made using (4) RJ-45 connectors (aka Ethernet cable), which makes it pretty painless.   

By the time I ordered all the parts to do this conversion, it dawned on me that it probably would have cost about the same to just buy a new iPac and have one iPac dedicated to each panel. That would have the added benefit of reducing the 4 connections to a single USB connection.  Oh well, my setup works so I'm happy.