Next Saturday there is an upcoming Super Auction in Pennsauken, NJ. I'm hoping to get my next cabinet there. I still haven't thought up a good theme for this project (suggestions anyone?), but I am going for an "80s" look. I will be making a custom marquee of some sort.

I have decided that for this cabinet I will be going with a Hagstrom Electronics encoder. A high speed model LP24 should work nicely. I had considered hacking a powerramp, but I didn't think that I could get all of the control keys that I needed for playing, and still have the control keys for manipulating MAME and other emulators. Besides, the LP24 should allow me to plug in an auxillary keyboard for when I need to configure games. Also, wiring will be much easier, as one of the wires to the inputs will be common (when you hack a keyboard, you must have two different wires for each and every input).

I had toyed with the idea of a "plug and play" control panel. Well, someone has recently done this! Very impressive. I will be using some of the ideas that Craig developed in his Roswell 88201 machine. For example, I will probably use a ribbon cable to plug different control panels into the LP24 encoder. I want to use an arcade-quality trackball this time, as well as build a control panel that makes Tron playable. Finally, I may try and tackle a Star Wars yolk. I've seen some pretty good ones out there...

To rotate, or not to rotate, that is the question. The biggest feature that I'd like to make for this cabinet is a rotatable monitor. Now, the monitor that I currently have is a 19" one. The casing on those suckers are big. The challenge will be to build it in such a way that it is possible to rotate. One idea that I'm thinking through is a try that slides out of the back so that the monitor has the clearance it needs to rotate. I'm not particularly found of this idea, because it would require me to move the cabinet away from the wall in order to rotate the display.

That's all for this weekend. I hope to have some pictures to post for the next entry.

--James

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