Control Panel Pictures
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Notes:
- I used a 3" Happ (Illuminated) trackball and replaced the bulb
with 2 LEDs. The buttons are Wico Leafs (lighted with LEDs) and HAPPs (Black
and White), the joysticks are OMNI-Stik BASICs, and the spinner is a SlikStik.
The PC I am using does not have a PS/2 Port, so I am using a GP-Wiz for the
interface. I would not recommend the GP-Wiz unless you have no other option.
It works great and is very well designed and built, but it is much easier
to set up the front end and other software with a regular keyboard encoder.
The GP-Wiz will only send GamePad (Joystick) inputs and lots of the FE software
out there does not support it directly. So, if you have a PS/2 port on your
PC, use a KeyWiz or something like that.
- Currently, all the lighting is always on, but I am in the process
of integrating an LED-Wiz modified with a IO-Warrior so that I can control
the LEDs with the MaLa front end.
- The final control panel consists of a laminated graphic stuck on a
Lucite panel which is on top of 3/4" mdf. I originally intended to have
the graphic under the Lucite but it didn't quite work out that way for a few
reasons. I had MameMarquees.com do all my graphics for me. They did a great
job but because of my ignorance about the types of media that they use for
the various graphics (cp, marquee, sideart ..) I wound up with 2 different
CP graphics - one was their laminated version and another on photo paper similar
to the paper they use for the marquee graphics. My intention was to put the
photo paper graphic under the Lucite. After spending several hours getting
the Lucite cut with all the holes in the right place, I peeled off the protective
sheet to find that I had a defective piece of Lucite. Instead of being crystal
clear, the Lucite was cloudy and when placed over the graphic, it looked lousy.
At this point, I had already cut the mdf to accommodate the joysticks and
trackball so making another Lucite panel would have meant making another mdf
panel as well (I used the mdf as a template to route the holes in the Lucite
to get an exact match). So, I used the laminated graphic and stuck it on top
of the Lucite and thought it looked pretty good, so I went with it. The laminate
kind of dulls the black a little bit but not too bad and there is much less
glare than if I used the Lucite on top. The laminate is as tough as nails
as well. Thanks again to MameMarquee.com for the great work with the graphics.
Click a picture to see a larger view.