Final thoughts on making my CP for cab...

[CthulhuLuke]

Alright all, here's what I decided, after slackin off for a month and a half, I'm finally workin on my cabinet.  I've talked on the chat room a lot, and I've posted a lot of messages, and it's been decided un-officially that this is how my cabinet's CP will be layed out:
 -3" Illuminated Blue Trackball w/3 mouse buttons
used for FPS along with either a keyboard, or some kind of gaming device such as a raider pro joystick (the grid style)
 -1 4-way Pac-Man repleca with 2 buttons
was originally going to use four buttons but after much discussion, I could not think of one 4-way 3 or 4 button game that was worth while to play.  The placement of the 4-way will be up and to the left of the trackball, so when I play Golden Tee Golf I won't hit the joystick accidently.
 -2 8-way Super Joysticks with 6 buttons each
the plan till tonight was to have 8 buttons next to each joystick, but I was thinking about any games besides the saturn X-men vs Street Fighter type games that used the extra 2 buttons for anything.  I'm thinking of hooking up the L2 and R2 to the button 7 and 8 on the I-pac I'm going to have on the side of the CP for pinball games.
 -2 starts for 1p and 2P, 2 coins per side, 2 pinball flippers on each side, because I have extra buttons and having the extra button might make for different hand positions, plus the coin door should be fully fuctional.  (Disable coin buttons during gatherings = a meal at taco bell)
  I would like some input on this, the controls are wired to an I-Pac, plus 2 psx pads for the 8-ways (note, I will not turn the PSX and PC on at the same time)  The trackball will be in the middle towards the edge, the 4-way above that to the left.  The 8-ways on the left and right of that.  Any comments or suggestions are highly welcomed, now that I'm actually working on this I might get some pictures or something of my wiring so far.
  Ok, here's a question I have though, is it safe to use not too thick wood underneath plexi-glass?  If I have the wood too thick, the plexi + wood might mean the joysticks wouldn't be able to stick out far enough and fighting games would be impaired.  I was thinking about using metal, but then I realized what a pain in the ass metal would be, and how much easier it would be to use wood.
 -thanx all
   -CthulhuLuke

[Jonathan_the_Red]

It's probably a good idea to use nice thick wood for your CP (5/8" or 3/4") for sturdiness. If you're worried about joystick height, you can always route out around the joysticks so the wood is thinner just for them.

[Dan]

Most custom control panels I've seen have 6 buttons per player, but I prefer the 7 button layout that the HotRodSE panel uses.  The reason is that it's perfect for playing Neo-Geo games because of the extra button.  This gives you the 6-button Street Fighter layout plus the Neo-Geo 4-button layout.  MAME automatically maps the bottom 4 buttons for Neo-Geo games so no extra configuration is necessary.  Of course this is only if you plan on playing Neo-Geo games

Dan

[CthulhuLuke]

yeah, I was chattin with my brother online and he mentioned that I should definitely give it an extra button for Neo Geo games.  I might go a little different from the HotRod SE and put the 7th button on the top right part of the buttons, but I'll see how much space I'm going to need, because I'm going to try to keep the control panel pretty close to original's size (a 3-player Simpsons control panel is f(_)CKIN huge!!)
 -thnx for the advice though
   -CthulhuLuke

[CthulhuLuke]

Well, I set up a final diagram of how the wiring board is going to work in MSPaint, real quick and converted to GIF.
Check it out here.