CP advice appreciated

[pavlov70]

Hi folks,

I'm building my first cab after doing a lot of reading and research. My CP is 35"x15" and am designing it in Visio.  Picture follows:



A slightly easier to view picture can be found here: http://www.krackmedia.com/dev/arq/cp1.gif

Anything obviously wrong with this layout? Enough spacing between buttons, controllers, etc?

Right now I'm leaning towards Happ Super 8's with a separate 4-way.  I'd like to lose the 4-way and upgrade the Super 8's with Precision 360's, but I'm a bit unclear on the P360's.

Are they easy to wire? Will they perform (almost) as well as separate 8-way's and 4-ways?

Thanks a bunch and look forward to your input!
Rob

[Tiger-Heli]

Anything obviously wrong with this layout? Enough spacing between buttons, controllers, etc?

Looks like a long reach to the 4-way, but I can't say I see a better solution.

Right now I'm leaning towards Happ Super 8's with a separate 4-way.

Okay, but the drawing says Ultimates for the joysticks.  Ultimates are about the least popular Happ Joysticks, and pretty much any common Happ joystick in 4-way mode sucks.  Recommmend either a Happ Ms-Pac reunion, the GGG Omni-Stick, or even a Seimitsu for dedicated 4-way stick.  The Ultimarc E-Stick (Happ Universal) or J-Stick (Sanwa) would be other options.

  I'd like to lose the 4-way and upgrade the Super 8's with Precision 360's, but I'm a bit unclear on the P360's.

Assume you mean Perfect 360's.

Are they easy to wire?

Yes, they have 5 terminals - Up, Down, Left, Right, and GND (not sure of the order).  Run one wire to each encoder input and the fifth to Ground.  (You need a dedicated encoder, they won't work with the X-Arcade one, and I don't think you can do it with a keyboard hack.)

>Will they perform (almost) as well as separate 8-way's and 4-ways?

No - well depends - if you replace the 8-ways with P360's in 8-way mode and the 4-way with a P360 in 4-way mode, you'll have awesome gameplay.  But to switch them from 8-way to 4-way, you have to take them apart and flip an actuator (like a Super).  Even then, they are not restricted in 4-way mode (they just don't register diagonals) so the feel is different from a true 4-way stick, but many people like them.

[unclet]

I like the Super 8-ways as well.  I have 4 of them and they are great.   I would recommend a Top Fire Super joystick for the right joystick location in your drawing so a person could play Tron (ie: game uses a top fire joystick and spinner together).   Without it you would need three hands to play Tron correctly.

Maybe even throw a couple of button on the sides for Virtual Pinball (this software allows you to play ctual pinball games)