Next Step....PC to Arcade Monitor??

[Peja]

Being completely new at this, I have tried reading up as much as possible but I am not sure exactly what I need to buy to get my configured pc to the monitor.

Currently my monitor is hooked up to the Soul Calibur 2 namco board.  Do I need a J-Pac, Arcade VGA card, special cable?  
My PC currently has onboard video but I do have an Nvidia 8600GT card laying around I can put in there for the Dreamcast emulator.  It stutters without that card installed as I assume my onboard Nvidia isn't powerful enough.  

So how exactly do I hook this thing up?  Keep in mind I will be changing out my control panel for a quad panel but all of that will be going to through usb and an ipac 4 correct?  

Thanks for any help you can give me or maybe point me in the direction of a walkthrough/tutorial/thread.  

Peja

[mrcram]

Soul Caliber 2 has a VGA monitor.  I have a vga monitor on my pga tour golf cab.  No special video card or software needed, I just lowered to 800x600 and lowered refresh rate in windows and that was it.  Get a keyboard encoder from ultimarc with cable/ground set (or cheaper keyboard encoder set) and you are good to go.  Use winipac to set you buttons.     

[Peja]

Ok, I think I get what you are saying.....for my controls, I will need an Ipac4 since I am doing a quad panel (assuming I don't go with U360s) and then for the mapping of the buttons use the winipac software?

Since my Soul Calibur 2 game is VGA like you said, how do I hook up my VGA port to the monitor?  Do I hook it up through the namco board....because I all I have up top on my monitor is wires coming down to that board and to the power supply.  Here is what it looks like: 

So if I truly don't need any fancy video card or jpac, then I would just hook it up to that vga port on that board right? 

Also my monitor is a 15/25 Sharp Image DSR-629.

Thanks for the help on this!!

[mrcram]

Oh, I see how namco did this.  My vga monitor actually has a vga out.  What you have is this wired for Jamma with the vga from the board to a finger board to jamma.  From googling around, it seems your monitor may be switchable from stand res (15khz) to medium res (25khz).  Should be a simple switch on your chasis board (high is medium res and low is stand res).  I would recommend staying in 15khz res as this is the res for 90% of the games out there.
so.........I would suggest these two options

#1 You get a J-Pac and ArcadeVGA card.  This is the easiest option.  All the buttons are already wired in the jamma and if you wanted to add extra buttons, you simply wire and screw the extra ones to the j-pac. 

#2 You find the wires from the monitor (red, green, blue, sync, ground) and connect them to a vga breakout cable from ultimarc.  You then plug the vga cable into your video card on your computer.  You run soft15khz software to switch refresh rate to 15khz.  You need to make sure that your video card will work with soft15khz though.  I can tell you that my ati x1300 card works perfectly with soft15khz.  You still need a J-pac.

[mrcram]

Sorry man, didn't see that you were wanting a quad control panel.  You could use an Ipac4 but it really depends on how many buttons you want for each player.

Easy way is to get ipac4, buy premade wiring harness and ground harness (make sure you have enough for each microswitch)

I am not sure if the 8600GT card will work, maybe google it, but you could use a VGA video amplifier cable from ultimarc, wire in your monitor wires to cable and plug into your card, use soft15khz or even try powerstrip to get computer to output arcade resolution.  Or just get an ArcadeVGA.

Hope this is helpful man. 

[Peja]

Thanks for getting back to me mrcram.....I am taking your advice and just ordered the ArcadeVGA and a J-Pac.  This will be the easiest route and I know this will work for what I want. 

I then plan on getting the ipac4 and wiring it up to some sticks unless I go the u360 route.  But that is to be determined. 

Once again, thank you for the awesome advice.  I appreciate it.

[mrcram]

If you got the J-pac then you could do the I-pac 2 (the ipac4 is overkill).  You then would have to reprogram all of the ipac keycodes for player 3 and 4 in place of player 1 and 2.  You can get the keycodes from here http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac2.html  You should be able to connect both boards (jpac and ipac) together.  Good luck.