Wiring Question

[Hovoc]

Ive saved up enough to finally build my cabinet.


However, I dont have any room in the house for one, and sadly since I still am shacking with my dad, he wont allow me to take over one of our free rooms. This means that if i were to build a cab, it would live in the garage, and prolly wouldnt see much play.


So due to that, I came to the conclusion that I can build a self contained arcade panel.

I orignally wanted 4 players, and I wanteed this to be relatively portable. I 4 player panel like this, wouldnt be too portable, so I figured I could break them up into 2 panels.

I was gonna wire up the main panel with an i-pac 4 and then lead off the wires for player 3 and 4 to a connector that will lead to outside the panel. Now my question is this, how long can I make the wires and how many breaks in the line am I allowed before performance suffers? If i use connectors on the first panel leading to cabling/wiring w/ a connector, to the 2nd panel, will it loose any performance? Also, im assuming the ipac powers the buttons and such, so would the power it produce be able to travel a decent distance away?

Or should i just say screw it and build the cabinet and let it sit? :D

[Flack]

6 foot extensions on 6 foot joystick cables aren't uncommon, so I'd assume you could make it relatively lengthy and still be okay. So are you planning on building a Supergun then, or a MAMEy thing? Either way, I think rather than having the entire unit in one people's laps, I'd build a small, self contained piece (shaped and designed however you want) and then four joystick ports on the front of it. That way when you're sitting on the couch or wherever, you're just holding a joystick and not some big mamma jamma box in your lap.

I wouldn't build anything to "let it sit", these things take too much time, money and effort to build something that you're not gonna use. Build something that meets your needs now. If you move out later or your needs change, build another one!

[Hovoc]

itd basically sit on a table or something, not really on a lap.

and yeah, itd be a supergun-ish type thing for mame.

its either that or i buy a arcade stick and just play on my computer, but then that leaves out anyone I may wanna play with

[chadtower]

You're talking about electricity, which moves exponentially faster than you could ever dream of being on your controls. Performance of signal, if the signal is correctly wired, is a total nonissue. Many people build their giant 4 player panels with half the controls wired in series for duplication of character associations on the keyboard emulator.

Short answer: wire it well, and performance will not suffer.