Turned out I had some treated lumber 2x4's and the formica scrap formed when I cut a hole for my Kitchen Sink. I just squared it up and shot in some deck screws and it's plenty sturdy for my purposes.
My son, Logan decided he'd give me a hand with this part.
Once the framework was constructed, I set about trying to mark where I wanted all the holes to go for the buttons, joystick, and trackball (Since I don't have a spinner yet I left room but won't drill that until later). It was at this point that I discovered how laying out the joystick/buttons on the computer and printing out a template is crucial in terms of saving time and staying accurate. You may recognize the template as being Lusid's -- that worked well enough for now. He used different joysticks than my Mag-Stick Pluses, so while the big 1 1/8" hole for the stick was positioned correctly, the mounting holes for the stick were off. This didn't turn out to be an issue since I cheated on this CP and just used some woodscrews from the bottom. On the final version I will likely drill all the way through to use bolts/nuts instead for greater strength.
All of the holes were drilled with a 1 1/8" flat bit and were the perfect size for the buttons (and their switch mounts) to fit through. Here you can see the board with everything mounted in place. I've got Coin buttons for each player next to their start button. 5 green utility buttons at top. 6 buttons per player plus the 2 mag-stick plus's and the trackball. The only real problem I had was drilling the mounting holes for the trackball since I tried converting the measurements at Ultimarc from metric to english and I think I may have messed up. That or I'm just a sloppy measurer. Either way, it was nothing a bit of reaming couldn't fix.
Here's the back of the PCCP with switches installed before I wired it up.
The next step was to mount my Mini-PAC board to the PCCP so that I could connect up all the switches. As you can see, it's friggin' wee!
And, the underside of the PCB (oooh! electronics porn!)
Since I got all my Ultimarc items for christmas, I didn't place the order myself and a few more things would have been useful. Among these was the wiring kit and the mounting feet. Since I didn't have the mounting feet I just bought some standoffs at Radioshack and attached them to the board and a piece of aluminum. Then I just shot some screws through the aluminum to attach it to the PCCP. I think this will work fine even on the final one, though the mounting kit appears to save a ton of space. Since I'll be wiring two cabinets once my Brother-in-law starts carpentry on them both, I will cut the aluminum in half then and use a second set of standoffs for his Mini-PAC.
At this point my camera ran out of batteries. I'll post back more later to show the wiring and tell about my adventures there. To give away the ending, by the end of the night I had botched a few things and learned that splicing cat5e strands between the mini-PAC harness and its push on connectors is not the best way to do it. Furthermore I learned that some crimpable Scotchloks save a TON of time over hand-twisting and heat-shrinking/taping. By the end of the weekend I got to a point in which P1, Coin1, Joystick1 and P1Btns1-3 are working so at least I can play some stuff. But I still need to figure out how to wire the trackball (since the harness didn't have two connectors for it). I also need to rework my grounds, etc. But more on that later.
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