I ordered 20 buttons and 2 eight-way
joysticks from Ebay. Total cost was $40. I didn't think that
was bad at the time the same stuff would have cost me over $60 from
Happs. They have worked fine for me so far. The only
difficulty I ran into was that the Joysticks didn't come with any
instructions on how to put them together, but that was easy to
find. Thanks to my ol'friend the Net.
I decided to build a keyboard hack. Because we were between
houses my family and I were living with my Mother, lights out was at
9pm. So, I had plenty of time to tear apart a keyboard, soldier
the connections and figure out the matrix while everyone else were in
bed. I wanted to test the joystick and button layout so I made a control
panel out of a cardboard box. I used a template I found on the
net, laid out the buttons where I thought they would be most comfortable
and cut the holes with an exact-o knife. It took me about a good
week to get the buttons mounted, keyboard interface hacked and
wired. I used some cat5 network cable to wire it all up. I
wish now that I had taken a picture. Everything worked great, I
was able to play MAME on my test system just like at the arcades on my
cardboard - Jimmy rigged - control panel.
Later when the cabinet was ready I transferred the hack, joysticks
and buttons over.
No fancy rotating keyboards here, just a hinge so I can get in there
when I need to.
I'm using two eight way joysticks and 6 buttons for each
player. The two green buttons are for player 1 and 2.
Originally I had 2 yellow buttons just below where the coin door is now
for coin 1 and 2. I ordered a coin door again on ebay, not bad
total for shipping and all was $20. I was surprised when I got it
that it was stainless steel and the coin return buttons were actually in
good condition. It didn't have a coin mech, but I wasn't planning
on using those anyway. The door cleaned up really nice with an SOS
pad and stainless polish. I wired the micro switches to the back
of the coin return buttons, printed new labels for the buttons and
installed 12V lights wired to the PC power supply. It looks really
cool, when you want to play just press the coin return for
credits. I used 4 tiny buttons that I got at Radio Shack for the
"TAB", "Enter", "ESC" and power button for
the computer. I recessed them on the control panel so they
wouldn't be pressed accidentally. I would like to add some kind of
back light because they are really hard to see being so small and
recessed. I have to use the "esc" key all the time with
the front end that I'm using.
I later added a trackball, If you look close you can see a hold in
the middle of the 2nd picture. The trackball has since broken and
I took it out to replace.
