Dual Screen Custom Cabinet Design

[Dervacumen]

Has any one built a cabinet that has two monitors similar to a Nintendo VS DualSystem?  I understand there would (may) be a problem outputting a different image to each monitor, but what if you simply piped the same image out to both monitors?

I

[Knievel]

I thought of doing something like this around a telepost in my basement, using an LCD monitor on either side though. 2 CRT monitors is going to make for a pretty thick cabinet, unless you stack them.
Maybe make one side a sit-down/kid-friendly height?

[elvis]

The way MAME in particular spits out dual-monitor images makes it very easy to set up with Nvidia's "Span" mode under Nview.

Set up your system as Nview Span (don't use Windows' native multi-screen management).  Tell MAME to ignore aspect ratio (or force your aspect ratio to 8:3 or 4:6 rather than 4:3), and always stretch to the full extents of the screen.  Then fire up any dual-screen game, and watch it stretch neatly across two monitors.

"Span" mode treats your two displays as one giant display, removing the need to tell MAME you have two monitors at all!

Nview will let you set left/right monitors.  I can't remember if it will set top/bottom monitors.  If not, Ultramon certainly will.

http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

In X-Windows (Linux/UNIX/BSD) you can use th Xinerama extension which uses plain english config files to set that up (eg: "Monitor0 leftof Monitor1" etc).

[Dervacumen]

I hadn't really thought of stacking the monitors to make the cabinet smaller.

[mcdo15]

this was my plan to do this at first but it would of been to big for you.  i was gonna do 2 seperate cpu sets up with player 1 having duel output to both tv and 2nd comp can be a dedicated just for the second screen if need be.  if you do this, great..i wish i had the space for it.  LCD  might be a better to keep the space down, then you can have more of an angle but LCD = money.

[Chemixtry]

Depending on how much space you have I would go with the nintendo design because it will occupy less space. If you have it back to back you have to have it far enough from the wall so both players can use it. I had a nintendo dual for a short time and they are a beast. Definitely mock it up to get a feel for the space and layout before you commit to building it. The monitors were crammed in there pretty tight so plan that part out. I think that the Chimera theme is an awesome idea and you could go in a lot of interesting directions. Can't wait to see where you go with this.

[Thenasty]

Has any one built a cabinet that has two monitors

AFAIK, mine is the only one that has Dual Monitors. One Vertically Mounted and on Horizontally. Check my WWW page for details.

[Dougmeister]

Cool idea.  I've been kicking a similar idea around for a few weeks now.  I have a working cab w/ a 20" monitor jammed in there, and I picked up a 17" LCD a few weeks ago.  Gonna go with the "side-by-side" theme.

(I like "Chimera"!  I was thinking more of "Two-Face" from Batman, though  )

ANYWAY, the dual-control panel thing will be cool, as will the dual-display.

My buddy gave me the idea of splitting the video signal out to both monitors with a "Y" cable.  Then if I ever add a 2nd computer, a KVM switch, and some handy wiring/switching on Control Panel B, you'd be able to toggle back and forth between 4-player mode on both screens and two separate games going on at the same time!

[NoOne=NBA=]

My buddy gave me the idea of splitting the video signal out to both monitors with a "Y" cable.

I would just get a dual output video card.
That way you could have it either mirror the main display, or use it for a larger desktop.

[Dervacumen]

I've spent a little more time thinking about the ins and outs of the Nintendo-DS approach, and think I'm going to go for it.  Using a 6" vga splitter cable I hooked up my two monitors and set them side by side (3" apart) and there was no interference, which was my main concern.  I made some measurements, and though the finished cabinet will be large, since the monitors are only 19" it won't be THAT big.

Then I got to thinking about the whole theme of the project, and this is where I'd like some feedback.

I originally wanted the theme to be "Chimera" which is still a consideration.  But I am now considering:

"Fire & Ice" (Half red, half blue, with blue controls on the red side and red controls on the blue side)

"Black & White" (Same concept as above but with a black light added on the white side and a white light added on the black side).  This would be pretty straightforward.

"Yin & Yang" (Same as "Black & White" but opens me up to a lot of neat artwork possibilities.


Anyone have some other ideas, or thoughts on a theme?

Thanks for the "y" cable idea.  I was somewhat contrained by my videocard having TV out and VGA out.  Kinda hard to hook a VGA monitor to TV out.


Thanks,
Derv

[Crazy Cooter]

I have a VS cab... that won't fit in the house.  It gets plenty of play in the garage though.  My best advice is to have the cabinet split down the middle.