I was about to build a wide "frankenpanel" when I found a thread on that described a concept for a modular control panel. I decided against a "swappable" panel where you swap the whole control panel out at once - partially because I really did not want to build a whole bunch of panels for different games. Unfortunately since the original cabinet was only 24" wide and <10" deep the choice was between either widening the panel or building a new cabinet. I wanted to add a full size arcade trackball, 4 way joystick for older "pac-man" style games and also a top fire joystick for tank games and games like Tron. It was great for about 85% of the games, but left some room for improvement. It also had a wireless trackball that was good for many games, but tended to backspin if spun very hard. The original panel for the cabinet had two joysticks with 7 buttons each and a Oscar spinner in the middle. Two player fighter with spinner in middle The machine itself was out of service for two days on the weekend while new rails were installed and the IPAC was rewired. It took just over a week to do the actual conversion (cutting panels, wiring, etc). It took about two weeks to gather all of the parts (cables, connectors, etc) to convert to the modular panel. The net result is a very versatile arcade cabinet! With a little keyboard mapping you can create a panel that closely matches just about any arcade game! Reconfiguring the entire panel to a completely different layout takes just over a minute! I've also cut out a 12" steering wheel panel and about a dozen joystick and button panels for later expansion.Īll of the panels on the cabinet are swappable with no tools in (literally) a few seconds. In my case, various joysticks and a spinner are mounted on 4" panels, a six button panel is 6" and the full size arcade trackball occupies a 8" panel. These panels can be mounted in any order on rails to create any desired control panel. Two player with "Pac-Man" style 4 way stick in the middleĪ modular panel is something different - individual small joysticks, trackballs, and button sets are mounted on small panels. Pinball buttons are also visible in this picture.
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