Show off!
j/k
Nice work 
Thanks! I take that as a great compliment, especially coming from the guy who wrote the front end I'm using

Koz-
nice work!
Did you run all manner of signals (i.e. pushbuttons/joystick, optical/analog, usb) in the 50 conductor ribbon cable? Or was it just pushbuttons and joystick stuff? If the latter, how does the trackball get connected?
when you populated your connector/cable with your signals - did you just run everything alongside each other or did you run grounds between each signal to minimize crosstalk (interference)?
Rock
I ran all the signals through the ribbon cable, including +5v to drive the LED and the trackball/spinner. I'm not using a usb trackball or spinner, (using an opti-pac) so I'm not running any usb signalling through the ribbon cable. If there's any interest in testing usb through the connector, I could probably hack apart an old keyboard and do some testing, just let me know.
Since there are no hi-speed communications on the cable, I really didn't worry much about cross-talk. I made positions 1+2 a shared common ground for all the buttons/joystics etc. Positions 47+48 were a doubled ground for 5v, 49+50 doubled +5v. Positions 39-46 wired to the opti-pac for trackball or spinner. That leaves 3-38 (36 positions) available for joys + buttons.
I've never had a problem with any form of interference/ ghosting/ lag/ droupouts/ whatever, and I play Tempest quite a bit (not that it helps me get any better at it, I pretty much stink.)
I attached a small 'guide' on each side of the panel to make sure the panel position was correct when being inserted. (Hopefully the pics will help explain this.)
Just interested...how well does this work? Do you have any problems lining things up? It looks as though the panel would have to be in the exact right place for it to work...
Actually, this seems to work really well. I do have the advantage on my cab, that the panels are sort of sandwiched between the sides of the cab, so the left to right alignment takes care of itself (you can see this in one of the pics) The guides take care of front to back alignment. It's really very easy to swap panels, my wife does it to play frogger on occasion, and the neighborhood kids took about 2 seconds to figure it out. The cab is two years old and I've never had to do any maintanance on any of the connectors/guides etc. If anyone wants, I might be able to take a short vid of swapping out the panels, again just let me know.
And Minwah, thanks again for the great front end. In fact, if you ever get the itch to build a rotating monitor setup, I have a spare motor and enough parts to build another interface, yours for the taking with my compliments!
Koz