Megatouch Force Questions

[Dazzzzz]

Hi guys,

I have a Force 2011 (was originally a 2006 before i bought a new Key and HDD), its the Force Upright version without the coin door.
Now the monitor has unfortunately died on me and i have been getting a lot of grief of the mrs to get rid of them as they take up so much space but im determined to keep hold of them, in some form.
Since the monitor is dead i have taken the motherboard, I/O board, sound amp, controller, etc. out of the cabinet in the tray and connected it to a spare monitor and spare Force Touchscreen i had and connected it all up, it works perfectly, well as perfectly as it can be when the touchscreen is separate from the monitor 

now i would really like to get this up and running again so i have a 3M Touchscreen coming (2nd hand) and i was hoping this would work with the force software? is their any chance it will be compatible? will i need to do some tinkering? im not a linux user but have a generally good idea of software/hardware so hopefully will be able to sort something out

i have ordered a new CPU Fan, new thermal compound and i intend to clean up the board and get the CPU nice and cool with the new fan, i have upgraded from i think 64MB to 256MB of RAM to improve performance (definitely helped when i upgraded from 2006 to 2011)

also i plugged the audio out (green) from the motherboard to some speakers and the sound was pretty low and crappy, now i know this the sound amp is obviously for this reason but theirs 2 wires coming out the sound amp labelled J2 (i think) and i needed to know if these are the Left and Right audio out? can i get these back into a 3.5mm connection for external speakers?

is the force software the same across all versions of the hardware range (upright, elite, radion etc.) with the same key, im very happy with the 2011 software and would like to keep everything just as it is

any help you can give me guys will be much appreciated, absolutely love these machines and want to keep them going for as long as possible

thanks!

Daz

[mahkeymike]

With force software its hit or miss when it comes to the touchscreen. It has to be 3m "capacitive" microtouch EXII. It can be serial or usb though.

By hit or miss i mean i have a controller that is microtouch EXII "usb" that for some unknown reason will not work with force but works fine when installed on a pc running windows xp.

[Dazzzzz]

Thanks for the info Mike thats very helpful, i think the screen will be compatible then (hope!)