Blake's Mame Cabinet

Today, work continued (finally) after much more research. I didn't have enough time to pull out the saw or do any woodwork, so I took out the control panel board and proceeded to figure out how I was going to lay out the buttons. I took the control panel templates from LuSiD and modified them extensively. They were essentially used for a crude layout and for approximating the sizes of the boxes (trackball and joystick). The basic layout mirrored the 1st mock-up I did but instead of the "1" button being between 2 & a, it is slightly below "a." This way, I am able to use 2, 3, 4 & a, b, c for fighting games that take 6 buttons and use 1, a, b, & c for NeoGeo type games. For games with only two buttons required, buttons 1 & a can be used. I figured out that I'll place 2 buttons above the trackball and then the spinner will be above those two buttons. I have some pictures of the first layout and spent some more time later tonight finalizing the layout. Pictures will be coming in a couple of days (my camera-to-PC cable is in San Diego and the cabinet is being built in Orange). I also sketched out some blueprints for future use by others who need some sort of guide to go by. Scans will be coming soon as well (scanner is in S.D.).

As a side note, I've been playing way to much Bump 'n' Jump lately.

Addendum: I continued my work on the control panel and finalized the positioning of all the buttons - there will be 4 spare buttons located on the control panel for future ease of use and I'm thinking about putting two buttons on the side of the control panel box for use in pinball-type games. I have finalized the blueprints and will put them up online once I have them scanned in.

The pictures are:

1. A shot of the control panel as it lays outside. Note the trackball in the middle, bottom with the two player controls on each side. Each one features a joystick and 7 buttons.
   
2. The control panel inside - I thought it would work better without the sun glare.
   
3. A close-up of the right-side player's control panel. Note the slightly offset 2nd buttons (top and bottom) with the more offset 1st button on the far left.
   
4. A close-up of the left-side player's controls. Same as the right. Both players are expected to be right handed or proficient with these controls as a lefty.
   
5. A close up of the trackball and left-hand controls. You can see that the controls are on a 22.5º angle coming off of the trackball outline. From my impromptu tests, the controls will work quite nicely.
   
6. These blueprints are the layout for the control panel that I will be using. In the middle, on the bottom is the trackball with the spinner above it. Between the two, are two buttons (left and right click for the trackball). On the top line are 8 little slashes - these are all buttons. 4 of them will be used, 4 will be left as spares - the buttons will be Player 1, Spare, Esc, Spare, Spare, Pause, Spare, Player 2.
   
7. These blueprints (on yellow paper) is the layout for the joysticks and buttons. This layout will be placed within the first layout - there are two hashes indicating their locations. The large box is the joystick (4/8 way) and the buttons are laid out as can be seen. The first button is offset from the others by 1/2 inch and the two buttons in the middle of the 6 are offset by 1/4 inch. These layouts have not been tested, but should work out quite well.