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Rebuilding cabinet
SirPoonga:
Man, it's been a while since I have been here.
I am rebuilding my cabinet. I moved around a lot. It was in storage for many years. The plexi is in horrible shape. I need a monitor as it use to have an old 21" CRT that was really heavy. So, here's my questions to get up to speed with modern times.
1) What's a good monitor to use now?
2) What are the good places to get controls?
3) What's the control interface of choice these days for buttons, joys, trackball, and spinner?
I have an old PS/2 ipac so that's not going to work anymore. I know there are now controls that do not have the bolt heads on top of the control panel, so I will probably want to update those. Though if that is the case I might not put poly carb on the control panel. I might spray it with a coat of polyurethane.
Is there a place to get a custom marquee? Though I might make an infinity mirror marquee with some WLED led strips in it.
Also, is a raspeberry pi good for playing? Otherwise what is a good frontend?
Edit:
So far reading through the forums it looks like the ipac is still the way to go. I just need to get a newer one with usb.
bobbyb13:
Can't lose with an I-PAC.
And if you have a functional crt why abandon it? Does it have component inputs?
LCDs are not only disposable they don't display properly anyway.
A decent PC and graphics card, groovymame and CRTEmudriver and you're all set with that old tube.
SirPoonga:
I no longer have the monitor. Also, it was insanely heavy. So I am looking for good alternatives.
Fursphere:
I am not a purist. I don't care about CRTs (because they're insanely heavy for one). I use ASUS LCD panels with VESA mounting. Usually in the 2k resolution range (2560x1440). Nothing special, but I do make sure they are IPS panels to give better viewing angles.
In MAME I turn on the HLSL effects to get a decent CRT emulation (scan lines and such). I use bezels to fill in the 16:9 vs 4:3 "extra space", usually giving a feel of the original machines to some degree. For most console games, I use the Mega Bezel Reflection Shader project to give a very good CRT emulation. https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-introducing-the-mega-bezel/ if you're curious.
For the control panel - I use Sanwa JLFs with octogon restrictors and with 'blind hole' mounts to mount the sticks underneath. I use an Ultimarc Ultimate I-Pac for the input encoder, and use the LED drivers to light up my buttons with LEDBLinky to mostly match the original arcade machines on a per game basis.
Windows 10 is the OS I use. Launchbox/BigBox for the front end. I have all this running on an older Intel i5 2500k system, with a Geforce GTX 1650 video games (way overkill). I used to have a GTX 660Ti in it that was more than enough as well. Only upgraded because I had an extra laying around.
bobbyb13:
I'm not sure why weight of a crt is important, unless you are carrying your cabinet around regularly.
No LCD will ever look right or play with proper timing.
I would refer you to one of the dozen plus machines I've built but those details don't seem relevant here.