Cabinet design question: Adjustable tilt monitor?

[kevin]

I'm currently envisioning a cabinet with a 27" TV for a monitor. If possible, I'd like it to have MAME/emu, JAMMA (using a supergun), and regular TV capabilities. Because I know next to nothing about building/mounting things, I have a few questions...

How do you mount/secure a TV so that it can be tilted backwards at an angle?

Is it possible to mount the TV so that it could be returned to a non-tilted orientation easily, allowing it to be used as a normal TV?

Finally, if the other two are possible and not too complex, could the design accomodate the TV turned on its side for use with vertical games?

If anyone has any insights, or if something similar has been done before, I'd love to hear.

Thanks.

-Kevin

[telengard]

I'm currently envisioning a cabinet with a 27" TV for a monitor. If possible, I'd like it to have MAME/emu, JAMMA (using a supergun), and regular TV capabilities. Because I know next to nothing about building/mounting things, I have a few questions...

How do you mount/secure a TV so that it can be tilted backwards at an angle?

Is it possible to mount the TV so that it could be returned to a non-tilted orientation easily, allowing it to be used as a normal TV?

Finally, if the other two are possible and not too complex, could the design accomodate the TV turned on its side for use with vertical games?

If anyone has any insights, or if something similar has been done before, I'd love to hear.

Thanks.

-Kevin

I'm not sure about tilting and the issues that would go along with that, i.e.
bezel and glass placement.  However, I have a rotating monitor which allows what you mentioned ( switching between vertical/horizontal ).  It's a little extra work but a few people on these boards have done it.

HTH
~telengard

[paigeoliver]

I would skip out on the JAMMA/supergun aspect altogether. It is a lot of extra work, for no extra benefit. There are very few unemulated JAMMA games (besides the newest ones, and who can afford those).

Also, swapping around PCBS all the time is a sure fire way to damage them.

You might just want to get a JAMMA cabinet to sit next to your MAME cabinet instead. Can usually be had for around $100 working. (Which is cheaper than a supergun anyway).

[kevin]

Well, I was originally planning on picking up a JAMMA cab, but I've been unable to locate any near me. Then I stumbled across those nice 29" sit down candy cabs, but the shipping is a little high for my tastes. So, that leaves me at the point of building my own.. MAME capable of course. Building is actually an appealing idea, as it would be nice to learn a bit of woodworking, and I'll likely end with a few tools I'll need later in life.

Because the cost of my project has grown from a few hundred bucks to pick up a used cab and a PCB or two, to something potentially taking up all my spare income for the next year, I just wanted to get all I could out of it. In order to justify dumping all my money into this project, I decided on a TV over an arcade monitor because of the price, and the fact that I don't own a TV myself. If my arcade cab can act as a TV and DVD player in addition to playing thousands games, I'm sold.

So, say I left out supergun/vertical aspect, how would one go about mounting a TV so that can be easily switched from a normal position to a tilted position?

-Kevin

[paigeoliver]

Also. I (personally) do not like swapping monitor orientation and tilt around all the time. They don't like it. Especially TVs.

Where do you live at that you can't find a standard 19" JAMMA cabinet local.

[kevin]

I'm from a small city in Manitoba, Canada, and the one operator inside my city hasn't returned my calls. The one time I did talk to him, he repeatedly told me it was too expensive, and took too much work to swap boards, and that I didn't really want to do it. The Namco site says there is an NFL Blitz '99 cab for sale 3 hours from me in Minot, ND.. $300usd with a 25" monitor, but it's mid-res, which is no good for any boards I'd want to use.

After thinking about this, maybe my best bet is to just buy myself a nice big tv, set it up at eye level, and set things up like a showcase cab where the control panel is only in front of it when being used. No tilting, and it can be used normally without any hassle.

-Kevin

[paigeoliver]

Ok. Don't deal with ops. Ops don't care about you. Deal with other game collectors. Have you tried the rec.games.video.arcade.marketplace newsgroup yet?

Have you tried ebay.ca there are currently 2 pages of games listed there.

And blast you. Making me look at ebay, and spot a JAMMA board that I wanted.  

[zowiebowie]

I would skip out on the JAMMA/supergun aspect altogether. It is a lot of extra work, for no extra benefit. There are very few unemulated JAMMA games (besides the newest ones, and who can afford those).
Also, swapping around PCBS all the time is a sure fire way to damage them

And blast you. Making me look at ebay, and spot a JAMMA board that I wanted.

Aha paigeoliver, I'm onto you!   dissuading everyone else from buying JAMMA boards so there's no 'competition' for you on eBay etc!  

Ha kidding, no you're right. I must say that most of my friends MAME cabs were made with the intention of using them for JAMMA games too, but as you mentioned there probably isn't that much point. (unless you already have a collection of boards.) None of them ever hook up JAMMA boards at all.

However, playing for example a bootleg Street Fighter 2 in MAME is not exactly the same as playing an 'original', with slightly corrupted graphics, big white flashes onscreen, distorted sound and so on. there's just something so cheap and nasty about that, which i like (yes i HAVE been told I am mad for enjoying this!)   ...

 MAME obviously doesn't emulate the manufacturing (or cabinet) faults that some of those bootleg boards had. So if you are sick minded like me and enjoy poorly put together bootleg boards (or faulty original boards) there may well be a case for the Supergun aspect.... *evil cackle*