Another newbie here

[urgrue]

Hello everyone,
I've been bitten by the cabinet bug and am currently investigating options. I'm thinking of making a rather simple bartop cabinet for starters. This will be primarily MAME with mamewah as a front-end but I might also throw in some other emulators. I've read a lot of the guides and threads here and they are all immensely useful and well-written but I still have a few newbie questions. Ergo:
1.X-arcade or I-PAC? I don't really know anything about electronics but having looked at the I-PAC series it seems quite simple. Program it with WinIPAC, connect the buttons/switches to the right slots, and connect it to the PC via USB, where it is seen by XP as a keyboard. Is it really that easy?
2.If I also want a couple trackballs, is there any reason not to use pre-built USB trackballs? Ie should i consider something like the optipac?
3.True or false: I can forget about adding optical guns if I'm not using a TV as a display. CRT monitors don't work either, and especially not LCDs.
4.Can a trackball work as even a half-way decent gun replacement?
5.I figured I'd hide a keyboard under the CP, and use the trackball as the mouse. Can I easily remap, say, P2 buttons 1,2 to act as mouse buttons, or does this kind of double usage cause problems in mame or windows?
6.Preliminary thoughts on CP buttons: 2 joysticks, 2 trackballs, 4 buttons for each joystick. Coin and Start for both players. Escape, Tab, and Pause. Finally, and this is probably blasphemous, but Save and Load State. Am I missing anything critical, is anything mentioned here silly? I noticed most people tend to have 6 buttons per joystick, sometimes even more. Is this justified? I can only think of fighting games needing that many buttons.
7.Joysticks: 8-way. But normal, rotary, or with top-button? I am finding it impossible to decide. Is a rotary (or perhaps a trackball) a usable replacement for a spinner?

Thats it...for now...

[xmenxmen]

Okay, I will try to answer some of your question.

1. If you are going to build, get either an ipac or the keywiz.  Both are quite easy to setup.

2. If you got the money, definitely get the pre-built one, as they cost more.  The optipac is my recommendation with either a happ or betson trackball.  Lots of cheap ones off ebay.

3.  not sure as I don't have any.

4.  again, don't know.

5.  Don't think so, but could be wrong.  I haven't seen any app that can remap button into mouse and don't know anyone thats done that. 

6.  Most people use 6 buttons for street fighter style.  7 button for street fighter plus neo geo style.  If you want a clean setup, I would only consider the 4 to 7 buttons, player buttons, coin buttons, and possible a pause and quit button.  All the other buttons should either be hidden (shift key on encoder) or use the keyboard.

7.  Get a spinner...

[u_rebelscum]

1. Yes. Or keywiz or gpwiz.  The nice thing about the xarcade encoder is, with adapters, can be used on consoles.  The keywiz and Ipac are both great keyboard encoders, the gpwiz acts like a gamepad.  There's lots of discussion of these three here, IMO any will work great and should be used instead of xarcade unless you want to hook the controls up to consoles, too.

2. Not very much.  I can think of only two. I don't think the USB trackballs from happs or betson have different IDs, which means TB 1 might switch numbers with TB 2 on reboot, sometimes.  Replacing the optical sensor boards are more specialized, and probably a little more $ and/or harder to find.  Personally, I like the optipac or optiwiz option over the USB ready TBs, but many here find the USB ready TBs great.

3. False.  Actlabs has CRT PC monitor lightguns, and there's the LCD lightguns (that need the included sensor bars mounted on the monitor and you to be a little farther back than in arcades).  AFAIK, it's true real arcade lightguns will not work as you say, but they won't work on TVs or arcade monitors with PCs either (there was an interface that was supposed to work that no one here tested).

4. Yes, except for offscreen reload, TBs make great substitutes.  In fact, games that used mounted guns (eg terminator 2), TBs ususally are better than lightguns; able to hold "trigger" while moving "gun".

5. It's easier for windows to have those buttons wired to the mouse (and not the encoder).  However with this setup, you have to have the mouse enabled to use those buttons in mame.  There are other options, including a switch that either sends the buttons to the encoder or the mouse, and using key2mouse software; you should be able to find threads about it in this forum.

6. It's mostly fighters that have six buttons, but there are others (toobin has five, for example).  If you have friends/family, they might want to play games with six buttons, so you might want to think about it.  [shrug]  Also, having tab and excape as individual buttons that can be easily accidentally pressed isn't a good idea (think about using ipac's shift mode buttons).  Pause is a good one, IMO.

7. TBs are better subs for spinners in most cases, but optical rotary sticks can work, too.  OTOH, I prefer the mechanical rotaries, which make terrible spinners.  If you like spinner games, though, get a spinner.  Other questions that will effect what stick to get:  What games do you want to play?  Normal 8-ways are great for most games, but some games do better with rotary (ikari) or top fire (assault) or 4-way (pacman).  Also, do you like to feel the corners, or smooth circle movements?  Long or short throw?  Clicky (micro-) switches or quiet (leaf or optical) switches?

Glad to "help"