Perdigao's Arcade Blog: Control Panel on a Shoe Box

Hello!

Lot's of work yesterday!
Gathering the material and tools I have for the Vertical Bartop.

First, the TV candidates (13'' Basicline with PHILIPS CRT and a 21'' Grundig), finally found the remotes! Still haven't decide what to use. Because of the size of the cabinet and the amount of wood I have, I'll may choose the 13''. We'll see.

Then, gather all the tools and check the control panel material.

Control panel items:
- Player 1 and Player 2 buttons plus 2 action buttons (all old buttons of my X-Arcade Tankstick), costs around 6€ (1,5€ each) plus shipment, reference from eBay with microswitches included;
- 1 4-way Joystick (got from DealExtreame, you can find it here), costed less than 10€ (free shipment);
- 1 HUID-nano bought a couple of years ago from Ultimarc, costed more or less 31€ plus shipment;
- 1 HUID modular harness (also form Ultimarc, can be found here), 8€ plus shipment;

You will also need crimps to connect the joystick and buttons to the HUID-nano PCB. I didn't need it that because I got the crimps already soldered to the wires from the X-Arcade Tankstick, when I replaced the joysticks (that already came with a simplified harness). You can find OEM arcade harness in multiple arcade shops, check Ultimarc's Minipac page to see an example.
If you prefer a prebuilt harness, it will cost between 20 and 40€, if you don't mind striping, cutting and crimping the wires, you can build your own harness for less than 20€.

So, until now no money spent on the control panel (I already spent it somewhere in the past!).
The costs of the material are ~75€ without counting the shipping costs.

If you live in the USA, UK, Germany or Spain (there are lot's of local options) the shipment costs will be cheap, otherwise try eBay and DealExtreame for some good deals, or buy everything from a single e-store.

I can give some good references of the following stores: Ultimarc (bought an ArcadeVGA2 AGP, HUID-nano, etc), Gremlin Solutions (bought the X-Arcade Tankstick Joysticks and buttons replacement ), and Cinco Duros (the shop from where I ordered the Tankstick).

So, in order to test the control panel, I used a shoe box. It allowed me to put everything in place, and test the feel of the control panel layout. I played Pac-Man and Kung-Fu Master, and it works perfectly! For 4-way games it really makes a difference.
Here are a few pictures of the CP's prototype.