Main > Main Forum

Need advice on hooking up 25" arcade monitor to mame machine

Pages: (1/3) > >>

Wyluli:

Did a search on this and read several threads but still not sure.
I have a cabinet with a 25" monitor in it and a Jamma harness.  I want to build a cheap pc to drop in it to run mame (and possible other emulators).  My question is, do I need to buy both the J-Pac and the Arcade VGA card to hook my pc up to the arcade monitor?
(I currently have my controller hooked up to an I-pac card, not using it in the cab yet)
Could I just buy the J-pac and some cheap VGA video card off of e-bay to save money?


quarterback:

My understanding (and I could be wrong since neither own nor have ever used either of these things) is that you could indeed buy a Jpac and use a 'cheap VGA card'.

But if you go that route, you must also find some way to get that 'cheap VGA card' to output 15kHz.  There are numerous software means of forcing your 'cheap VGA card' to do this but I also believe that not all 'cheap VGA cards' are even capable.  So choose your 'cheap VGA card' wisely.

The way I understand it, the JPac provides you with 4 things: (1) a way to hook up your Jamma harnessed controls (2) a 'protection' against sending "bad" refresh rates to your arcade monitor (3) an interface between your arcade monitor and your PCs video card and (4) a power bump to bring the video signal up to what the arcade monitor wants.  The ArcadeVGA card provides you with an easy way to output your PC's video signal at the specs that your arcade monitor wants.

If I'm wrong or if I missed anything, I'm sure someone else will chime in .
HTH

Wyluli:

If I plug the Ultimar ArcadeVGA card into a computer and hook up my computer to a regular monitor, will I be able to see anything?  (so I can configure my machine,etc before putting it in the cabinet with the arcade monitor?)

Goz:

Yes.

There are two places to attach cables, one of them is intended for standard VGA / SVGA output and the other one connects to a JPAC or a hacked cable.

-Goz

Will:

To answer your question about the arcade vga and a normal pc monitor,the answer is no.The arcade vga will only display on a arcade monitor.I have a old geforce card that I can swap in if I ever needed to use this pc with a normal pc monitor.You will be surprised windows displays good enough so you can do most of the "set up" you speak on the arcade monitor.The arcade vga makes set up easy but be warned it takes some set up as well and you still have to tweak the size,v-hold for different resolutions.I expected the arcade vga to plug in and display horizontal and vertical games perfectly without any tweaks,unfortunately if you display horizontal games filling the screen and than switch to vertical games a small portion of the game will be chopped off.To read more about this look through the monitor section for "arcade resolution tool"threads.Hope this helps-Will

Pages: (1/3) > >>

Go to full version