i am just getting a flickery screen. i have my j-pac plugged in on to my usb and vga on my laptop. when i checked windows vista said my second monitor is not plugged in i am thinking it must be a driver or something 
Well, wait a second ... you're trying to drive an arcade monitor off of a notebook VGA ?
While I'm pretty sure that I can futz my video drivers to produce a 15Khz signal from one of my notebooks (and, quite frankly, I won't bother to try), that is far from a foregone conclusion for all notebooks.
Before we get into what you need, you should tell us what you have ... I am guessing:
JPac (OK, not much of a guess)
Standard Res Arcade Monitor
If that is the case, then you need to be able to push a signal at 15Khz, not 31Khz (VGA). The
JPac does not do this conversion for you.