Modifying existing cabinet to a modular cabinet?

[sock2828]

I have been thinking of  buying a broken cabinet from my local arcade and converting it into a MAME machine for almost two years now, and was wondering if it would be feasible to modify one into a modular cabinet like doc's?

http://www.beersmith.com/mame/

[sock2828]

No one? 

[jban4us]

yes?

You would need some sort of keyboard encoder and all the normal mame cab things. Just build a new control panel in a modular fashion with some way to hook up the individual modules to the keyboard encoder easily. I think most use cat-5 cables.

[sock2828]

 I probably should of mentioned that I don't want the CP to be wider than the cabinet if that makes any difference . I also  found this.....
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Velcro_Based_Modular_Panel
 And will be implementing this design, guess I better make a few calls to my arcade tomorrow 

[werdna]

You would need some sort of keyboard encoder and all the normal mame cab things. Just build a new control panel in a modular fashion with some way to hook up the individual modules to the keyboard encoder easily. I think most use cat-5 cables.

Do most really use cat-5?  I used cat-5 for my joysticks but only used 1 wire of each pair and it works great.  When I tried to hook up my 6 buttons I had to use both wires from a couple of pairs and I was getting multiple button pushes sometimes from what I assume was crosstalk because the pairs are twisted so tightly.  If others are doing it successfully maybe I sould  re-visit what I might have done incorrectly.

-Andrew