Bartop/Desktop 2 Player design question

[quick2shoot]

    I am in the design stages of a portable bartop mame cab, my question is should I try to design a CP with both players controls on the front of the (little) cab or just one player with a "sidecar" detached panel for player 2 (like I had planned to do)?
     I figured since I have an abundant supply of computer fodder laying around, i could wire a 15-pin d-sub female to the second player connections on the i-pac ve, mount it through the right side of the cab then have a second player cp that plugs in via a converted monitor cable, since player 1 controls are a little to the left of the attached cp (to make room for a trackball) I don't think P1 would be blocking P2's view.
     I feel there wouldn't be room for both players joys and 6 buttons each on the front of a 20" panel
     Any advice you could offer would be most helpful, and I would be most grateful

[bfauska]

Daisy-chaining two cps from one encoder works well.  I did it with a GPwiz and a DB 25 cable (it's way too many wires but it was free.)  I think it would be an interesting idea to have the second cp optional, but would recommend prototyping it first.  Maybe even just setup the controls in front of the size monitor you are planning and see if player 2 feels removed from the action.

Here's a link to the thread that shows my daisy chained cps, by the time I finished them I was prety set on doing a full-size cab, so I didn't make them very pretty.  It was sort of done just to see how well it would work.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=63800.0

Long story short:
Go for it with a prototype at least, 'cause it sounds novel and cool.

Later,
Brian

[leapinlew]

I'm getting ready to build a bartop like this. It's going to have a T shaped base instead of arms to hold an extended CP. The body will be approximately 17-18" wide and the CP will be 24-25" wide. In my head it looks decent, we'll see how it turns out.