Main > Main Forum

First timer: Please give advice on control hardware!

(1/3) > >>

Cfour:
Hey guys this is my first time building a MAME cabinet and it's been a great learning process so far.  I bought a WWF superstars arcade on craigslist for $275 with a one-year old monitor in it.  Worked great!  Now, comes the time to convert it, and I want to decide on the most appropriate controls.

I want the layout to be the most "universal" possible.  I.e.:  probably won't make more than one control board.  So, I want a two-player setup with a trackball in the middle.  I will definately get the Happ's 3-inch with the Opti-Pac to run that.  But, my main question is the joysticks...

Which 4-way/8-way interchangable joystick seems to get the best feedback from the community?  Ones that seems to work good with older and newer games.

I'm not as concerned with the buttons as the joysticks I guess, but any tips here are appreciated.  And I plan on using an I-pac for programming purposes here.

I also plan on using the existing arcade monitor.  I found this tutorial and was wondering if people find this the best way to go:
http://dragonsden.emuunlim.com/ddvgatutl.htm

The total amount of buttons I plan to have are:  (2) Joysticks, (1) Happ's trackball, (6) Buttons per player, and a P1 and P2 start button.  Are there any others buttons I should consider putting on the control panel?

Also, one main concern is that I will not have enough room on the control panel to put the happ's trackball on as well, the stock board is only about 23" long, and might be too much to cram onto that, so multiple control boards is definately a possibility.  Any tips here would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks for the help in advance guys!

Jeff AMN:
Here's the panel I finished up last night:



I'm using two Perfect 360 joysticks for P1 and P2, but Competitions or Supers are great as well. Right now I have a Super as my "4-way" stick, but this isn't necessary. I'm using the Happs 3" trackball, and a Slikstik spinner. In addition to my buttons for the players, I have two next to spinner (which are actually P1 buttons 1 and 2 duplicated) a P1 coin, P1 start, P2 coin, and P2 start. You don't need many buttons since the IPac line of encoders uses a shift function which essentially allows each button to have two functions.

For my encoder, I'm using a Mini Pac. You might want to look into that as well. It's perfect for a 2 player panel and a trackball. That one encoder will handle everything you need.

Cfour:
Thanks for the reply, lots of help.  Any other tips?

Jeff AMN:
One great place to get inspiration is over in the Project Announcement area. You'll see tons of cool examples of what people are doing and probably see something that makes you yell, "I want that!"

Buddabing:
Your cabinet is JAMMA. Why not just use a JPac and ArcadeVGA? Is it because your JAMMA harness doesn't support enough buttons?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

Go to full version