New Cabinet - Inspired by 4 Player Secret Arcade and Pacto Tech 4000T

[flynnb]

I’m super excited about my arcade cabinet rebuild.   I’ve ordered my encoders, joysticks, pushbuttons, trackball etc and in the process of building a design on paper.  I’m getting close to building…realistically a few months off with my work schedule. Be forewarned - it may be a long while before I can post any real updates.

Here’s what I’m going to be using:

Pacto Tech 4000T
Dongle Master (Wireless Adapter for XBOX controllers)
SpecVision (Status Display)
4 SEIMITSU LS-56-01 Joystick (Dedicated 8-way for each player)
1 Sanwa Denshi Joystick JLF-TP-8S-SK (Dedicate 4-way w/restrictor)
SEIMITSU PS-14-GN Solid Color Pushbutton (30mm - Screw On)
SEIMITSU PS-14-DN Solid Color Pushbutton [24mm - Screw On]

IPAC2 for trackball/spinner plus 2 Admin buttons (ESC/P)
U-track trackball
Spin track rotary control

It’s going to be a very large (long) control panel.   My panel’s design is inspired from “a secret 4-Player Arcade cabinet” from ILikeToMakeStuff.  If you haven’t seen it, google it.   It’s a control panel hidden in a piece of furniture. I bought the plans and am going to modify them to allow me to fit a trackball/spinner and make the panel a little deeper.   Did I mention it’s going to be long?  I will have at least 17” between players 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 joysticks and 22 inches between players 1 & 2.  Also I love the simple color scheme and I’m making a graphic overlay similar to it.

Looking forward to adding a trackball into the mix.  I have one in the current cabinet but it’s crammed on the panel which doesn’t make it very usable.  For the new cabinet I will have no obstructions in front or behind this trackball and about 5 inches on each side.  I don’t plan on tearing down my old panel for parts.   I want a working machine while I’m building.   I may put the parts on sale/trade down the road if I don’t find a good home locally.

I went with 30mm buttons for the action buttons and 24mm buttons for the control buttons (start/coin/etc).  I went with seimitsu’s for each player and a sanwa that I will set to a dedicated 4-way joystick.  I’m thinking I may use phreakmods detachable lever to disconnect when not playing 4-way games.

I’m still very much tweaking the placement of the components.  Getting close to printing out another set of blueprints so I can finalize the layout at the exact scale.

I’m really super excited about the new encoder (4000t)..  I think it will solve something that has plagued my setup for years.  I built it 20 years ago and I only have 6 buttons for players 1/2 and 4 buttons for player 3/4.   As I had kids and they started playing on it (mostly steam games now) I found myself having to try to work through my limitations.

I'm using scripts to kick off Keyboard2Xinput to load/unload configurations on a game specific basis to emulate xbox controllers (very much needed for PC games via steam).  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.    It's frustrating because it's 'delicate' and it's not simple enough for everyone to use.  I'm always tinkering to make it work which takes away from the appeal.  Plus it's harder to maintain (I have to configure certain games to run additional applications at load/unload).  I want / need it to be easy to maintain (add games) or for anyone to walk up and use it.

When I read messages on this forum I see people being dissuaded from putting more than 4 buttons per player.  In my opinion it’s a dated approach based on MAME use alone.   My kids are more interested in playing PC games via steam.  We have several great local co-ops games (4-players) that work well with joysticks already.

Now I love it that I can simply throw in 10 buttons (8 actions/2 controls) and joystick and call it a day. No more scripts or additional apps to map keyboard buttons as a d-pad, left stick of button/trigger/etc. All emulators see is a full blown xbox controller (minus the right analog stick) regardless of how many buttons it needs. I’m covered.

Cool thing I learned today is that the encoder has a disconnect/keyboard mode that maps back to keyboard bindings.   If/when you read about this board you’ll understand why that is really cool.  I have atari joysticks/spinners, sinden lightguns, xbox controllers that show up as a gamepad devices.   The encoder has a disconnect mode to make it easier to use them but I wasn’t sure what that meant if I exited back to the frontend (in disconnect mode).  Now that I understand how the board works it’s simply making sure launchbox maps the hotkeys/controls to both keyboard and gamepad inputs.  Really really simple and clean.

I’m attaching my current design.   As you can see I have some dedicated encoder buttons that will be on the control panel front side (recessed so there are no accident hits).   The encoder supports twinstick mode for games like berzerk/smash tv/crazy climber, can switch between emulator a d-pad or the left analog stick, amongst a few more things.   There is an optional OLED display that gives you the configuration status.  It’s really neat looking - can’t wait to test it out.