For controls, my panel is a little wider than LuSiD's as well. I used a nice, S-Video connection to a 27" TV for the bigger viewing of games. A friend of mine hacked an old cabinet and put a 21" monitor in it in the vertical position (for old games like Pac Man, Donkey Kong, etc) but with my 27" TV, I get as big of a vertical image as he did, but get a lot larger horizontal images that he ever will. Oddly enough, the 27" TV is better quality than what we have in our living room of our house, but I really wanted the S-Video connection for the games. Using a TV also means that I don't have to "turn on" horizontal lines for the arcade feel, but the TV is good enough, that the lines aren't as big as you might think.
Back to the controls...
The right and left controls are the Happs Supers (8-way) with 6 buttons. The one in the middle is a Happs Super but with 4-way control. It is just directly connected to the wiring for the player 1 8-way control. This joystick is the only way to easily play the old 4-way games like Pac Man, Donkey Kong and the like. The 2 yellow buttons by the 4-way joystick are also tied right into the player 1 button 1 since that is all that those games used. I have 2 there so that if you are right handed or left handed, it works the same.
I have a clear, LED lit trackball in the middle with 3 buttons. The ball glows blue normally, but when you press one of the green buttons, it turns red.
I printed my marquee on a thin vinyl materialat Kinkos so that it is one piece. Sandwiched it between 2 pieces of plexiglas and curved it. Put it on with a small florescent light behind it and it looks nice.
Coin door was used off of eBay. It works 100% and accepts any coin size. It has a counter on top that tracks the number of coins that have gone through the game. I don't remember what it had on it when I got it, and I have since reset it to zero. To date, I have a total of about 50 coins that have been put into it (since I just use the button combinations to fake the coin insertion).
I also have the player 1 and player 2 buttons.
Throw in the small Altic Lansing speakers and subwoofer, plus the 2 fans (one for TV and one for the main part of the cabinet). The control panel is actually more blue looking than the pictures show, but I didn't spend the time adjusting the coloration in Photoshop before I posted them. It is also made with regular laminate matterial applied to the surface of the MDF.
I put caster wheels on mine so I can roll it around if I need to since this thing is pretty heavy (even without the TV in it).
There are 2 things that I want to do with it yet. One is get a bezel for around the TV, and the other is get some side art for it. I guess it would be nice to get a faster PC too. I am running a Pentium III 500MHz with 768MB RAM.
I also am behind about 4 years on the MAME application and ROMS, although they are easily obtained.
