Just wanted to post a pic of my first panel before I tore it apart recently. It's built out of a 48" shelf that I bought from the hardware store. At the time, I didn't have a saw, so I asked them to rip it to the pieces that I needed. It's cheap 5/8" particle board with cheap wood grain laminate on it. I ordered Happ Ultimate buttons and a Happ Ultimate stick for it because I didn't know any better. For about 5 years, It ran on a keyboard hack. I had plug the thing in, reboot and play my games. If I wanted to use the keyboard again, I had to reboot again. When I got MAME fever again earlier this year, I ordered the iPac and installed it.
The holes in the upper right were for the P1 & P2 start buttons, but I drilled them before putting the top on the base and to my chagrin, they didn't clear the sides. D'OH!. But with my lemons, I made lemonade and used the ugly holes to route the PS2 cable out of the box.
The hideous series of holes below the joystick are there because the stick shaft was bottoming out and I didn't have a way to route some room, so I drilled a bunch of holes. It used to be a mess of 24ga solid wire connected to .250" 18-22ga female quick disconnects. When I installed the iPac, I just threw all that crap out and soldered everything. Also while I was doing that, I used my rotary tool with the drywall cutting bit and the depth attachment to route out another 1/2" of clearance for the stick. It took a long time and looks pretty rough, but I was able to beat the particle board to submission and get the extra clearance I wanted.
Well, that's it for our tour of my first jankey old control panel. I'm going first class on the my next one. The next one will actually be attached to a damn arcade cabinet this time.