USB Arcade Joystick using a Minimus 32  Sparkfun and their
various resellers offer arcade style joysticks and buttons. I
put them together to make a controller for MAME and such.  The
joystick in action    The joystick I got was this, which turns
out to be a Seimitsu LS-32 clone made by ZIPPYY. Most sparkfun
resellers seem to only sell the short-shaft version, which is
really too short if mounting to anything thicker than a few
milimeters. Hardboard is fine, the 12mm pine I originally tried
really isn't. This shop sells the longer version, which would
have been a better bet had I known. They also have diagrams of
the base plate which are very handy.   There are 2 sorts of
buttons available, cheap convex and more expensive concave. The
concave ones are definitely worth the extra 80p, they feel like
the real thing and the others are somewhat dissapointing in
comparision. Both take the same mounting holes though, a 28mm
hole-cutter drill bit is perfectly sized for both buttons.   A
cheap AVR development board th