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Adding trackball to built cab
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tore-:
Hello BYOAC!

About an year ago i finished my cab, a few pics of it can be found here: http://home.no.net/eyeboard/arcade/

Because of lack of hard cash, I didn't include a trackball, and now I want one after playing Marble Madness, adictive, but not nearly as fun with a trackball. I can't be less adicitive with a real trackball!

As you can se from the pics of my cab, adding  a trackball to the CP is'nt to easy. So I have three options:


* Build my own box, solder and wire for myself (1player) Around 100 bucks
* Build two boxes to enable 2 players, around 155 bucks
* Buy an X-Arcade, around 100 bucks.
PS: Is there other prebuilt options i should look at?

The idea with building my own boxes to contain the trackballs, was that i could design them to fit just over the buttons on player1 and player2. Thus providing some sort of a module setup, remove the box when not needing the trackball, easely add them when I need them.

Currently im usin an IPac2.

What would you suggest? Considering that I could use the trackball on normal pc-games (not xbox, correct?) also, I in favor of buying a prebuilt version.

Thanks for all your support and  :blah:
DaveMMR:
Dude, are you using beanies babies as a marquee.   :laugh2:  Very original.

I know you're looking prebuilt, but what you could do is buy one (or preferably two) trackballs and make a dedicated panel.  If you screwed down your current panel semi-permanently, it would still be easy to replace those screws with panel clamps.  Then you'll need either a USB harness for the trackball or an encoder (e.g. Optipac) and you can make a trackball panel quite easily.

By the way, if you hang around eBay long enough, you can find good prices on used trackballs (I got a 3" Happs for $40 and it plays fine). With enough shopping around, you'll save money over a prebuilt panel and it'll feel a lot better.

One consideration if going that route is that you'll probably have to convert your wiring to modular.   It's time consuming but not terribly hard or expensive.  Conversely, if these were to be your only two panels, you can dedicate the iPac to the joystick panel and the analog encoder to the trackbal panel and switch out with a simple USB cable. 

Your cabinet looks good and simple.  You could stand to cover the white in the monitor and add a non-stuffed marquee but otherwise I think it looks excellent.  Intergrating a nice homemade trackball panel over a pre-built solution would ultimately be more satisfying and you'll do a lot better at Marble Madness.
lloydcom:
My suggestion is to build an extension on wheels that would extend your CP.  Then you can wheel in the trackball extension and lock it to the front of the cab.  Incidentially you can make the trackball wireless, and put a spinner on it too.

No wires and it would look cool.
tore-:
If I understand correctly I cannot use a trackball(or two for that matter) together with me IPac interface? I know that I would have to aquire a Opti-pac, but I cannot have them both connected at the same time? I would have to switch cables each time?

I haven't had time or the money for a real marquee, had theese muppetshow beanies laying around and its much better than a black marquee.

ahofle:
You can definitely use an Optipac and an IPAC at the same time.  No problems.
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