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FE that supports PHYSICALLY rotating the monitor..
Hoopstar:
As my plans for my cabinet come together (and the realisation that AVGA will not allow me to play Galaga properly on a Horizontal monitor) I am investigating the possibility of using a rotating monitor like Carlos did..
I know he wrote his own FE but this is out of my skill level, so my question is...
Does any front end support monitor rotation?? Pretty much the program needs to indicate (say via the parallel port or maybe even the un-used scroll lock led) to an external circuit (something I can handle easily) if the current ROM is vertical or horizontal.
Howard_Casto:
It's a tad more complicated than that.......
here's what you do.
Make an interface to control your rotation. Then make a small command line app to rotate it... (monitor.exe -ror or whatever)
Then you might get some of the developers to add support for it. Otherwise you are on yoru own as we can't possibly know how to interface hardware we don't have. :)
PacManFan:
Howards' right, Create (or get someone to create) a small command line application that rotates your monitor by signaling on your paralell port. Then it is a simple matter of calling the application when launching a game.
Kymaera would be able to do this easily.
-PacManFan
Howard_Casto:
And just on a final note... in xp this will be difficult.
Parallel communication is wrangled by xp immediately upon bootup. This isn't a big deal, there are ocx's and dlls to override it. The major problem though is that all bits are "on" until your custom app gets ahold of the ports and wrangles them away from xp.
I'm having similar issues working on the universal light driver for mame. (Don't even ask it might not ever be finished.)
Howard_Casto:
Update:
I found something that might work for both of us......
http://www.eidusa.com/Interface_Boards_USB_6_IO.htm
It is a little pricey, but it's pre-made, usb, and well documented. The 6 pins can be used for input and output, so you should be able to rig something up easily.