My Insane Aracde System Build (Part 2)

As with all "simple" projects, this one got out of hand in a hurry.   The first thing I needed to do was to figure out all of the things I didn't know I needed to know about.   That is always a fun thing.   So, with a little Googleing, I tracked down the Arcade Controls Forum.   This place is an insane wealth of information about every aspect of arcade game systems you could imagine.   Perhaps the worst thing about the forum is that there is SO MUCH information that it can be really hard to track down exactly what you are looking for.   However, when I couldn't find what I wanted to know, I found that registering and asking a question in the forum usually netted useful information, with few exceptions.

But, lets start with a quick recap of what we know, and what we need to figure out.

1. The arcade cabinet will be a North Coast Custom Arcade Ultimate Arcade II Cabinet kit.
2. The control panel (where the sticks and buttons are installed) will be North Coast Custom Arcade Ultimate Quad kit.  (I chose not to have the pinball buttons added, as the size of the control panel seemed like it would put them too far apart for comfort.)
3. I want RGB lighted sticks, buttons, and trackball.
4. I need some kind of computer to run it all.
5. I want the computer to boot up and be ready to play without needed to use a keyboard or mouse.

Tracking down a computer was pretty easy.   I have an old AMD Phenom 1.9 Ghz Quad Core system that badly needed to be upgraded to support my wife's need for the latest versions of PhotoShop.   So, I ordered parts for a new system from NewEgg, and decided to convert the old system to be my arcade machine.

With the machine figured out, I needed to get the parts ordered so that I could start to assemble my control panel.   After doing some Google searches, and reading through a bunch of posts on the Arcade Controls Forum, I game up with a list of a few places to order parts for the control panel.

• Ultimarc - Has quite a good selection of buttons, sticks, trackballs, and light guns.  The web site was also reasonably easy to navigate for a newbie like me.
• Groovy Game Gear - Also has a good selection of buttons, sticks, and trackballs.  The web site was also reasonably easy to navigate for a newbie, but did take a bit more effort as they seemed to have a larger selection than Ultimarc.
• Paradise Arcade Shop - Has one of the largest selections of buttons and sticks of all the places I looked.  The web site was a bit more difficult to navigate for a newbie.   But, once you figure out who the different vendors for sticks and buttons are, it becomes a bit easier to understand the layout.
• Arcade Guns - Strangely enough, it is a source for light guns for building arcade systems.  With deeper digging, you will find they use the same innards as the Ultimarc guns.   However, the button layout, and shells are different.   They also don't seem to offer a recoil add-on like Ultimarc does.

Finally, you will need a bunch of wire and quick connects.   While some of the shops above offer these things, I found they were a tad cheaper at AllElectronics.com.

But, before I could start going crazy with the credit card, I needed to figure out exactly what parts I wanted to use so I could be sure that the control panel kit fit them all correctly.   The easiest thing to do is figure out a list of all of the obvious parts that are needed to assemble the control panel.   If you go to the page for the North Cost Custom Arcade Ultimate Quad kit, and scroll down a bit, you can find a template that is to be used to design an overlay for the panel.  The overlay graphic is perfect for getting a count of what we need. By my count, we need the following :

• 43 (total) buttons.  7 for each of the 8-way stick positions, 4 for players 1-4, 4 for coin inputs for the 4 players, and 7 more for the trackball, 4-way sitck, and asteroids buttons.
• 1 spinner
• 1 track ball
• 4 8-way sticks
• 1 4-way stick
• 2 light guns (not part of the control panel, but we need them anyway)

Then, of course, we need all of the gear to actually wire up those devices to be used by the computer.

But, lets start with the easy decision.   Of all of the places I listed, the only one that had the RGB LED joysticks that I wanted was Paradise Arcade Shop.   At Paradise Arcade Shop, they sell complete sticks with the RGB LEDs, along with kits to add RGB LEDs to other sticks.   Since I am a newbie to all of this, I opted to go with the Paradise Arcade sticks, rather than buy other sticks and retro fit them with kits.   One thing that was really unclear to me is if they offered a 4-way stick, or if I would need to customize one to work.   So, I e-mailed them to see what they had to say, while I continued to research 4-way sticks.  In my research, I discovered that most 8 way sticks could have a restrictor plate inserted in them that would convert them to a 4-way stick.   In addition, I discovered that both 4 way and 8 way sticks only use 4 switches for control.   8 way sticks were just able to hit 2 switches at once, where 4 way sticks couldn't.  So, there is not a lot of difference between the two.   However, many comments on the Internet indicated that a stick in 8 way mode can cause strange behavior on emulators with a game that is made for a pure 4 way stick.   So, I wanted to make sure I had a "pure" 4 way stick for those games.

After more research, and an e-mail response from Paradise Arcade Shop, I found that the 8 way LED sticks actually include the restrictor plate to force the stick to a 4 way, or even a 2 way stick.  (Bonus!)   So, the decision on which sticks to buy was complete.   I ordered 5 of the RGB LED sticks from Paradise Arcade Shop.