Got my second shipment of arcade parts today from ultimarc in England. In the package were my two japanese style joysticks, the I-PAC (a keyboard encoder), the Opti-PAC (an optical encoder), and wiring for everything:

So now I have pretty much everything I need to start assembling a control panel prototype. I'm still waiting on a trackball mounting plate from Happs, which I had forgotten to order originally. Also I'll need to buy a few screws and whatnot for the joysticks. I also have yet to buy a spinner, that may be a bit down the line.

I also started an Illustrator mock up of the control panel layout to exact size. It's much easier to try out different ideas that way than to cut into cardboard. Only so much cardboard to go around! Anyway, now I'm ready to go gung ho, so this should be fun. ;)