3 Sided Cocktail with modified control panels

[badweasel]

Here is my project.  With details of where I am so far and some questions if anyone has time to help me out...

I purchased a 3 sided cocktail cabinet from recroommasters.  It's actually a 50th birthday present from my wife.  It'll be a mame setup although I strongly considered wiring it jamma and then using a jamma to usb interface.  That way I could have used a jamma board on it as well.  But at this point I don't think I'm going that direction.  Mostly because I'm doing 3 trackballs and 3 spinners.  And I didn't think that would work as well in a jamma configuration.

This is how I am modifying their cabinet.

1. Glass table top. Theirs comes with a plexi top which just won't work with kids in the house. Plus I want it to look more authentic and professional. I purchased a replacement mrs pacman glass top (4 inch radius) from Holland Computers via amazon and it arrived very quickly.  I also got the glass clips from Paradise - also arrived quickly.  My complication there was with the gap.  The table top is 3/4, the glass is 1/4.  Even with a rubber bumpers under the glass there is still a significant gap.  I think these clips were made for a 1" board.  I have other rubber solutions to close the gap but I wish the clips wer 1/4 inch shorter.

2. Counter sunk the table top bolts.  The plexi was to be screwed on to the top.  So with glass that's not happening now.  And I want the artwork to be flat and not under the screws. So I counter sunk the bolt heads and they'll be covered with the bezel artwork.  I did an ok job there and didn't mess up the table top too much.  Could have done better.  I just sharpie'd the wood black so it's not obvious.

3. Monitor mount.  Their monitor mount didn't work with my monitor.  I got a samsung 24" and while it does have a vesa mount on the back it didn't line up with their wooden mount. Also there is geometry on the back of the monitor that prevented their mount from working with it.  So I built the cabinet body and then held the monitor in place with a couple of L brakcets.  I used rubber bumper strips a few places around the monitor to provide some cushion between it and the underside of the wooden top.  I also used a thicker rubber bumper strip between the metal L bracket and the back of the monitor.  Again to help buffer vibration and to protect the monitor a little.

4. Control panels.  The supplied control panels are completely made out of wood.  I am going to have a trackball on each of the 3 control panels.  Those don't mount easily in wood. So I'm going to replace the control panel tops and fronts with metal. I'm in the process of designing those and hope to take it to the metal shop early this week.  So I'm trying to find reliable info on the placement of mounting holes for both the joystick and the trackball.  I have the 2 1/4" happ trackballs here but have not ordered the joysticks yet (Omni2).  I think I have that information all figured out but any help is appreciated.  I'll post my designs later in this thread.

5. Widening the end panels.  Since I'm replacing them anyway I decided to widen the end panels.  With trackballs on there I'm really short on space.  I can widen them 3 inches (from 12" to 15").  I wish I could widen the side panel also but that won't work.

[badweasel]

I haven't ordered all of my controls yet.  I've been waiting until I design the underlay artwork on the control panels so I know what colored buttons to buy.

I'm 90% sure at this point that I'm going to buy most of my controls from Groovy Game Gear.  I'm going to go with Omni2's and Gold Leaf pushbuttons.  I did like Ultimarc's spinner better but not necessarily his knob choices.  Anyone have a good comparison between those two spinners?  I want a classic tempest feel.

The open question at this point is about what I need for interfaces.

My biggest concern is that I want the trackball to be XY and the spinner to be Z.  I don't want to be able to mess up a game by buming the wrong control.  With the board layout so tight the player will probably rest their hand on the trackball when using the spinner.  I think GGG's optical interface can do that, and I don't think the Ultimarc ones will.  And I was also worried about player 2 being able to mess up player 1's game by touching their controls.  So I don't want all 3 trackballs to be in control at the same time.  I would assume that by now this would be handled in the mame world. Seems like it would be a common issue.  But I'm not in to the software end yet.  But I do want to get the right interfaces to support this issue also.

Also on the topic of trackballs and interfaces.  I ended up buying 1 usb trackball and 2 optical connection ones.  Now I'm thinking that I probably should have gotten all 3 as opticals.  For one, I'll have 3 spinners also and so how do I hook up the 3rd one?  Probably will need an extra Opti-wiz for that 3rd spinner.  And if that's the case I probably should return the usb trackball and get another optical one.  Anyone have input on this?

Next.. If I get 3 opti-wiz boards, that would support 3 buttons each.  So what do I need to support the remaining buttons?  I'll have 4 player's worth of joysticks and buttons. Plus player starts and coin drops, volume controls, and whatever else I need to select games and escape them.  Seems like a single GP-Wiz40 MAX USB would do the trick.  Anyone have input on this?

[badweasel]

And here's a dumb question.  When mounting the joystick, can it be mounted wide ways or tall ways?  Seems like it shouldn't matter since you just attach to the switches anyway.  it's just that I see it a lot drawn mounted wide ways.

Second dumb question.  There are 2 sets of mounting holes on the Omni2 and other joysticks.  The outer set are round holes and the inner set are angled pill shaped holes.  Is there a more standard way to mount them?  Should I use one over the other to make sure my mounting is the most compatible with other sticks if I later decide to get a different stick?

[HaRuMaN]

They make smaller glass clips... 

[badweasel]

They make smaller glass clips...

In black? These were the only ones I could find that had the classic tapered look. Links?

[HaRuMaN]

I'll have to search. Maybe at twisted quarter

Sent from my SPH-L710T using Tapatalk

[PL1]

My biggest concern is that I want the trackball to be XY and the spinner to be Z.

Windows uses a 1 to 1 ratio on X- and Y-axes (1 optical transition=1 step) and 4 to 1 ratio on Z-axis. (1 optical transition=4 steps)

IIRC there is a MAME source-code edit that divides the Z-axis input by 4 so each optical transition = 1 step -- same as the X- and Y-axes.   

IIRC, the scroll wheel issue isn't that simple to resolve, but I haven't personally tried it.

TopJimmyCooks did a one-line source code search/edit/recompile using code from u_rebelscum's patch.

Related threads in case anyone wants to try this:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,75693.0.html

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,117634.msg1246580.html#msg1246580

So I don't want all 3 trackballs to be in control at the same time.  I would assume that by now this would be handled in the mame world. Seems like it would be a common issue.  But I'm not in to the software end yet.  But I do want to get the right interfaces to support this issue also.

The feature you're looking for is called "multimouse" and it is enabled/disabled in mame.ini.

multimouse = 0 -- All mouse device inputs are added together. (TB1 X-axis + TB2 X-axis = mouse X-axis)

multimouse = 1 -- Each mouse device input is kept separate. (TB1 X-axis will not move TB2 X-axis)

The downside to using multimouse is that you might run into Windows reassigning  ID numbers.   


Scott