Last time I had a nice post then that log out after 60 minutes thing went off and I lost all of it

so heres a short rundown:
I am making a table top arcade box with a laptop in it. the laptop outputs to a television, so the box will plug into a television.
IMPORTANT STUFF:
* Laptop has a 700 mhz processor, 64mb ram, 3.2 gig HDD and a ATI RAGE mobility-P graphics card.
* I ordered 2 8-way joysticks and 12 buttons (plus 2 player and 1 player buttons)
A few questions:
1. How can i get 2 players playing smoothly at once? From past experiences I have seen keyboard don't like more than 3 things happening at once.
The laptop has its built in keyboard, serial port, usb port, and a ps/2 port.
2. I have a windows 98 disk, will this be good? (i play on trying to do a "front end", all I have to do is edit the boot file right?)
3.How many buttons do most games need, I can have up to 6 buttons a player but i would still need exit and coin buttons right?
Any other tips/ tricks will be welcomed.
PS. Sorry for being so blunt, I'm pretty sick right now and don't fell like typing another super post