Received the two Joypads today, and they work great. None of the latency or rapid push problems I had with the adapter. The gamepads themselves are almost exactly the same size and shape as the original Sony pad, but are a little bit lighter and the buttons are more responsive.
Control panel is coming along very nicely. The box itself is complete, but still needs paint (which has been delayed due to weather), some sort of graphic overlay for the top of the control panel (but I'm thinking of just going and picking up a poster instead of struggling with Kinkos), and the acrylic.

Hoping to have construction and drilling of the control panel done today, and maybe get it primed. Painting will likely be later this week or next weekend if time allows. Pics when I've got something to show :)

Received the 3" blue trackball (looks really nice) and 17 pushbuttons from Bob Roberts, as well as some Halloween candy :).


Placed an order with CompGeeks for two translucent blue USB gamepads (Playstation knock-off), which I plan on lighting with USB powered LEDs. Will get pics of that when/if it works (probably even if it doesn't).

Got the SNES and NES emulators set up, and transfered all my music. Added a couple of mamewah layouts for the emulators. Going to have to replace the PS-USB adapter (it's slow, doesn't allow for anything even close to a quick button press). Not sure if I'm going to go with a new playstation adapter, or use N64 controllers instead (I think they're more comfortable).

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Finished organizing music for use with Digital Jukebox, which means getting songs into directories in the format: [Artist]/[Album]/song.mp3, and having cover art as [Artist]/[Album]/Cover.jpg. Used MusicMatch Jukebox to tag mp3s, Mp3ImageTagExtractor to get album art out of mp3 tags, and Lupas Rename to convert album art names to Cover.jpg. Never figured out how to move album art to the album's folder (img tag extractor extracts images like this C:/Music/Artist/album.jpg, instead of C:/Music/Artist/Album/album.jpg), so I had to do them manually :P

Received the power strip today. Nothing much to say about it other than that it works great. PC now turns the TV and speakers on and off when it's started up and shut down. It'll be controlling the marquee lamp, too, when I get it.
Also got my no-name playstation-usb adapter. It works beautifully in the two console emulators I'm going to be using in the cabinet, ZSNES (Super Nintendo Emulator) and FCE Ultra (Nintendo Emulator). I'm thrilled. Mamewah does not support support them, but I may install Joy2Key, which should take care of it.

Placed a few orders. Bob Roberts will be sending me some Happ horizontal microswitch pushbuttons, and a translucent blue trackball ($53 shipped), All Electronics will be sending some .187 quick disconnects ($15 shipped), and Bits Ltd will be sending me their smart strip LCG1 ($38 shipped), but it'll be shipping out of New York, so it'll be a while before I get it. Trying to get a guy to write back to me about a Happs monitor bezel he's got, but no such luck yet. May just use foam core (should be OK behind smoked glass).

Installed the T-molding today, I'd take a picture, but I'm too embarassed by the 'scrap-with-joystick' bit of ugliness on there atm. More pictures when it's prettied up again.

Ordered a 2 player psx-to-usb adaptor on ebay for $9. Plan on having a few console games for the cabinet, too, and it just seems right to have a gamepad for them.
Hastily mounted a joystick to a piece of scrap particle board, and i'm amazed at how much more fun it is now. Next purchase will be through Happs (buttons, monitor bezel, replacement trackball – $73.50+shipping), but I"m trying to see if I can get any of it used or cheap.

Parked the cabinet in my living room this evening, and it sits pretty much where I thought it would. Paint cured even darker, so it matches the paint chip I chose (finally). Notes about the picture: Coin door panel is just sitting on the ground, instead of mounted in place (a few inches higher). The panel will be removable, and will be how I access all the components inside. Secondly, I don't have a control panel for it yet, (but that may be obvious), and now I'm feeling the urge to get that completed as well. Will be going to a local lumber yard (hopefully tomorrow) to pick up some scrap to rough out the control panel top, and play with layouts, as well as to have somewhere to set the trackball and keyboard until I get the final control panel done completed.

Received the T-Stiks and I-Pac today. Cool stuff. The sticks are very clicky, and they're not messing around when they say 'short throw." I'd like to get them mounted to something for testing, but I'm a bit low on materials at the moment, so it'll have to wait. They're considerably more blue than the ones shown on their website, but they'll do anyway. Don't know if their photo's color is just off, or if there are multiple versions of this stick. The microswitches are different too (white vs. black) but I have no idea how that affects it, if at all.
Theirs:

Mine:

Had fun with the cabinet today. The paint I got (semi-gloss latex) sprayed remarkably well for being a 1-coat (only supposed to be used with an airless sprayer, or rolled/painted on) paint. I'm very happy with the results. It looks like my ipac and joysticks cleared customs, so I should have those pretty soon. Still unable to make any decisions about the buttons for the control panels. Next purchases (buttons, smoked glass, marquee plexi etc.) will put the project over budget officially. With the crayola trackball giving a lot of backspin, I'm hesitant to hack a mouse into a spinner, and am leaning one of the oscar spinners instead, which I think I'll just be leaving space for until my wallet feels a little heavier.

The pictures are immediately after painting. It dried a bit darker and less blue than shown.

Had some trouble with the spray gun but got the cabinet assembled and primed today. Paint tomorrow. Nice to see it coming together.

Long day :P. Finished all the cuts for the cabinet except for the control panel box, which I won't be starting until all of the control panel parts arrive (joysticks, buttons, etc.). Cabinet is now partially assembled, with only the coin door panel and monitor shelf remaining. Tomorrow I'm going to bondo up all the counter-sunk screws on surfaces that will be visible when the cab is complete, and then prime. Weather permitting, I'm going to try to paint tomorrow too, but likely that'll come sunday.

Received a larger drive today so that I'd have room for music for my cab. Drive is a 7200rpm 30gb fireball (old drive was a 5400 20gb). I traded a KVM switch for the drive plus $35 on, you guessed it, the Anandtech forums. Should finish cutting and assembly tomorrow, and with any luck, priming as well. We'll see. :)