Minimame laptop prototype with pinball finished

[joeman]

I've gotten alot of ideas and inspiration from this website and message board and I want to give back by sharing info and pics of my finished (except art) project.

This is a prototype of an Idea to make a small box and just set a laptop with no modifications inside it. This can be adapted to virtually any laptop.

Control panel features:

I used an old Epyx 500 XJ joystick (c64)... perfect for minimame
A Homemade button array using tactile switches and buttons from an old remote
A numeric keypad (for intellivision colecovision and some atari 5200)
A pinball plunger made from an old RC antenna, leaf switch, terminal strip and spring.
Left nudge, Right nudge (brass corners), and Front nudge.
A Homemade coin slot using small leaf switch.
2 usb ports

[IG-88]

Sounds like an intriguing project, but the pics.... way to dark. We like to see the details man!!  Can you post some better ones?

[joeman]

I posted some different pics, they're still not too great...I'll get more when my wife gets home from vacation with the GOOD camera.

[metaHipster]

mmmm..... Epyx...  What adapter did you use to plug that in to your computer?  I've got a coupla old ergonomic epyx sticks & paddles from my C64 that would rule for use via emu's...

i like how you've cobbled everything out of what you had, despite how much easier it could have been paying top-dollar for the real deal.  Does it *feel* authentic still?

Nice that you've got that numeric keypad - you should hack it with an old rotary fone handset so that it can double as a Skype phone booth   Plus it's great should you need to do any numeric data entry 

[theCoder]

Very cool approach.  What did you do for the bezel around the monitor?