I found an original Tempest control panel on ebay for $30. It has everything, including the LED volcano switches and a spinner with bad bushings that goes brrrrrrrr when it spins. It's all in rough shape, but it really adds to the machine.
I spent this weekend converting the control panel over to USB. I built a circuit board around a Holtek 3D USB mouse IC. It should have been a no brainer, but the output from the spinner was goofy (the output would only go left, regardless of which way the encoder phases were connected). I had to build another circuit board to clean up the signal. Thank goodness for Radio Shack. I drove across town and bought a $.19 chip for $1.49 and burned $6 in fuel doing it.
I got the circuit working and the control panel is now semi-installed in the cabinet. I need to tidy things up a bit, but tempest is working better than ever. My homebrew spinner has too much inertia and the knob is too small. The original spinner is way better (and it's not made out of wood).
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