Sooo Confused getting PC to Arcade Monitor...

[JLR2000]

Ok, so I'm totally confused now.  I picked up an old neo-geo cabinet with a nice monitor in it. Figured I'd get a jpac to easily interface with a pc and make a dedicated driving cab with a mad katz steering wheel for PSX thru a USB converter.  Never really looked into it, but now that I'm researching it I'm getting lost.  From what I read, only *some* video cards support output to arcade monitors, mostly only dos, and then a FE that can support an arcade monitor.  What's the simplest solution?  IE: Jpac + Video Card + ArcadeOS?  seems like arcadeOS is pretty complicated to setup...I'm currently using Emuloader on win98, which I would need windows to use USB.   What do you guys that have been thru all this recommend for someone who needs windows working on an arcade monitor?  Thanks for your input.....

[Slice]

Hi there, have a read of the "Only mame on an arcade monitor post" It basically is a discussion on exactlty what you are looking to do!!

[MrTomcat]

Ok, so I'm totally confused now.  I picked up an old neo-geo cabinet with a nice monitor in it. Figured I'd get a jpac to easily interface with a pc and make a dedicated driving cab with a mad katz steering wheel for PSX thru a USB converter.  Never really looked into it, but now that I'm researching it I'm getting lost.  From what I read, only *some* video cards support output to arcade monitors, mostly only dos, and then a FE that can support an arcade monitor.  What's the simplest solution?  IE: Jpac + Video Card + ArcadeOS?  seems like arcadeOS is pretty complicated to setup...I'm currently using Emuloader on win98, which I would need windows to use USB.   What do you guys that have been thru all this recommend for someone who needs windows working on an arcade monitor?  Thanks for your input.....

The basics are that :
a) If you want to run DOS only, pretty much any old video card will do (although the ATIs tend to fare better here) and JPAC+ArcadeOS is the easiest way to go. Its woth noting that arcade monitor support in the official MAME release was discontinued some time ago so you'll need one of the derivatives such as AdvanceMAME.
ArcadeOS is not difficult to set up. The first time you run it automatically creates a list of all the games that your version of MAME supports. Provided you only want to run the games with the default options and are not too bothered about customizing the interface you can start gaming more or less right out of the box.

b) If you want to run windows then at the moment only the G400 and trident blade3d have a suitable driver, but there is ongoing discussion regarding the use of PowerStrip which should allow you to use any video card. Or you can just use a scan converter instead.

Steering controls I can't really help you with since I only have standard joy/buttons on my cab so I've never looked into this.

[AlanS17]

I have a sort of a similar situation going oh here. I can get some things working in DOS but not enough to have a full fucntioning system.

I can get ArcadeOS to run, but then dmame won't run right. Then I can get advmame to work, but i can't get advmenu to run at all. And it sems as though ArcadeOS doesn't work with advmame. What to do??? I have a 25" low res screen that I'd hate to go to waste!!!