Noob 1p - 4way cabinet/ controller questions

[vortexblue]

Hi-
I'm building my first cabinet, and even after lurking/ reading up on the site, I have a couple of questions:

1- My cabinet is to be a 1-player-at-a-time cabinet used to play the 'classic' games like pacman, galaga, etc.  My preliminary need list is: 1 4way (or 4/8 way super) joystick, 1 1player button, 1 2player button, 1 'coin' button, and 2 fire/jump buttons. I will probably get them in full-sized buttons... but what about admin buttons?  I assume I need an escape button, but what else?  I was planning on hiding some smaller buttons somewhere for these.

2- do I need an Ipac for this limited application?  Seems like I wouldn't use even half of the inputs.  My PC has a PS2 port which I intended to use, but I also have usb and a joystick port.  Would I be better off hacking apart a generic controller?  I read that the ipac saved it's configuration-- will I have to reconfigure the buttons on a hacked controller everytime I power up?  If so, forget it- I'll have to get the ipac.

I will post pics of my cabinet when I take it apart for paint and final re-assembly.  You might get a kick out of it - it's definitely not a standard build. 

[Queeg]

1- The only admin buttons I have on my panel are escape and pause. If you really want a clean interface you could lose the admin buttons and make admin commands entered by a combination of button presses/joystick input.
For example, escape could be programmed to be hit by pressing the one and two player buttons simultaneously.

2- I would get an ipac for ease of use/ future upgrades. However if you're short on money you might opt for a gamepad hack if you don't mind a little work. And as for the configuration, mame will save its control list for each game when you exit, so you will only have to do the initial configuring once. This is of course if you keep that joypad assigned a certain number in the windows list, if you were to unplug it, plug in another joypad, and then plug that one in again, the devices would have different numbers assigned and mame would be configured incorrectly.

Sorry I'm typing at the speed of sound right now, let me know if you have more questions.