After hooking up my Dreamcast to the monitor at 15khz, I found a strange vertical ripple running through the picture. Great I though, the guy wrote in the ebay auction that the monitor was a perfect 10!...what a load. Another annoying thing I noticed was sitting this close to a huge rotated monitor at 15khz ment looking at a lot of ugly flickering scan lines. Its definately not as noticeable when the monitor is oriented horizontally. Around this time I read Kevin's review on the Betson 27" monitor and decided I'd get one (especially since the Betson West location was only 50 minutes from my home).
You all can read the problems/issues we discovered with these monitors in the monitor forum. But after going back up and talking to the tech, I decided to stick with the monitor, and was able to get it calibrated to a playable condition, and am actually very happy with it now. One thing I did have to do was transplant the tube and PCB into the original rotating chasis/frame. Thankfully I was able to secure the PCB onto the frame with the help of a couple oversized washers.
Next up was replacing the Seimitsu LS-40 joysticks and buttons. The left joystick was pretty worn and the right one looked brand new. I don't mind the sticks, but they felt kinda weak, and looked cheezy. The buttons were an odd combination of yellow and red with some that made no click when you press them, and other that did. Very strange. I believe they are Seimitsu buttons as well as they do not have sanwa written on them. I'll take a closer picture of the buttons later, so if anyone wants japaense style buttons that click when you press them, they should look into getting these.
I replaced the joystick and buttons with new Sanwa parts. A pair of JLF-TP-8Y sticks and standard Sanwa buttons. These are the very light feeling buttons that make no click at all. It takes a bit to get used to, but I think is a neccesity if playing shooter style games as you don't want your fingers to get tired constantly hitting the fire button. Another nice little hack was securing the JLF-TP-8Y sticks to the original LS-40 mounting plate. My only options were to buy new mounting plates or drill holes in the LS-40 plates. I figured out that 4 other holes (not the original mounting holes) on the JLF-TP-8Y sticks *almost* lined up with the LS-40 standard holes. I then got the idea to take small zip-ties and run them through the holes to secure the stick at the 4 corners. It worked like a charm!
Since the original monitor was gone, I had no need for the japanese 100W power supply. That also ment taking out the ajoining stereo sound board. I then hooked a powerstrip up to the mains just after the AC ripple/noise filter, and use a RadioShack SA-155 amp to power the 8ohm speakers.
After wiring up the sticks/buttons to a standard 15 pin molex connector, I was in business. The cab can now play any of my consoles (Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox) in either 15khz or 31khz, and I can also play Mame via my laptop (although currently only at 31-38khz). And let me tell you, playing Dreamcast shooters (Ikaruga, Psyvariar 2, Shikigami Noshiro 2) at hires is a sight to be seen. This is the way true Naomi games are ment to be played at 31khz.