New Monitor is here at last!!!!

[TheDriver]

Just back from pentranic with the forthcoming project's monitor, thought I would let you all see it as I open it!!!

Lovely looking sight this:


Looks promising:


Note the scratches are not on the screen, it's the bit of plastic covering it:


Labeled just for me!!!  :


Monitor controls:


The RGB interface so that the Jamma boards can speak to it:



Desperate to get the project started now I have the monitor so at last can work out the width and height of the cab, just about to hook it up now to see what it looks like so I will post back results.

Regards.

[ChadTower]

Is that a reflection or is the screen all scratched to crap?   

[TheDriver]

Is that a reflection or is the screen all scratched to crap?   

As I said: Note the scratches are not on the screen, it's the bit of plastic covering it:

I know what you mean though I had too look twice at it to make sure!!!!

Regards.

[ChadTower]

Cool.  Might want to bold those comments between pictures, I didn't even notice them jammed in there.

[TheDriver]

Cool.  Might want to bold those comments between pictures, I didn't even notice them jammed in there.

Done! 

Regards.

[whammoed]

Is that a widescreen monitor?

[Level42]

No, it's a small height monitor.







 

[TheDriver]

Is that a widescreen monitor?

Yes, that was the only option from 22" up as they never had part's for a 4:3 monitor so I settled on the 16:9, trying to think ahead as to what games will end up in the cab. It really is a cool bit of kit, just had a play around with it, look it:

JAMMA board connected:


Not quite the right aspect ratio:


Let's do an adjustment:


Looks much better the correct size, still need's centered though!!:


RGB adjustment's also:


There are loads of option's I have yet to explore that you can adjust with the osd, going to go through them shortly to see what is what.

Now to build the cab!!!!

Regards.

[SavannahLion]

Damn it! I was just researching about what it would take to get a JAMMA board working with an LCD.

Good to know it works.

What's the $$?

[TheDriver]

Damn it! I was just researching about what it would take to get a JAMMA board working with an LCD.

Good to know it works.

What's the $$?

I would assume there would be an interface to get a jamma board working on a normal lcd but the one you see there is unique to the pentranic, I thought about cheating and just getting the interface and using with a normal lcd but Pentranic explained that the conversion is done in the monitor itself as this is a gaming monitor ie. it work's like a tri-sync crt which can take the resolutions jamma put's out, I really don't know if a normal lcd is made the same way. I did try for ages to do a Scart to Jamma cable but only ever got a black&white picture so I must have done something wrong with the wiring. I just hooked a speaker up to the jamma board & thought the audio was gone, turn's out attract mode sound was off so I had to move the dipswitch, amazing the loudness of the sound that comes off a jamma board even with the pot turned down quite far, never realised they were that well amplified!!!

As for the price, £399.50, some would say a tad overkill for what it will be used for but
that data-east board won't be in it forever.

[SavannahLion]

Yeah, I did quite a bit of research with a few false assumptions about what PCB's put out. I know it's not as simple a lot of people make it out to be. Scart? I'm on the wrong side of the ocean. Scart's only available on really high end TV's and even then it's rare.

From everything I've read about scart, you shouldn't have encountered any problems. In any case, you got your monitor.

What I found was an industrial manufacturer that produces monitors for legacy replacement. I'm not certain, but I believe they do produce LCD's larger than 19" in 4x3 aspect. According to the specs, most of their monitors support what the PCB's put out. But their monitors are ungodly expensive. Even the refurbished or used CRT's sized at around 15" are selling for over $500 a piece.  At that price, I might as well just buy the ---smurfing--- thing from Happs. I can't even imagine what their 19"+ LCD's would sell for.

As for the price, £399.50, some would say a tad overkill for what it will be used for but
that data-east board won't be in it forever.

Jesus roasting in Hell. ~$830?!?  That's higher than what my conservative math on the monitors I did find.

[Level42]

Apart from the fact that I don't see how a flat 16:9 LCD can ever give you the true arcade feeling, you're in the UK right ?

Why didn't you just get a LCD TV instead ? Wire up through SCART and presto. Would have saved quite a couple of pounds I guess.....? And you would be able to watch TV on your cab to boot

[SavannahLion]

Why didn't you just get a LCD TV instead ? Wire up through SCART and presto. Would have saved quite a couple of pounds I guess.....? And you would be able to watch TV on your cab to boot

He mentioned earlier he was having trouble wiring up a SCART to JAMMA harness.

I did try for ages to do a Scart to Jamma cable but only ever got a black&white picture so I must have done something wrong with the wiring.

That said. Don't you non-yanks have to pay a yearly tax of some sort on T.V.'s? I've had people tell me there's a surveillance truck that drives around specifically for this purpose.

What happens if you gut a T.V. for use in an arcade cab? Gotta pay a tax on that too?

[Level42]

How hard can it be ? Just a couple of wires.

About TV tax: In Holland the taxes for radio and TV were included with our "regular" taxes, so there is no checking going on here. Long time ago we indeed had to pay separatly.

I the UK people pay for the BBC I guess, the system is quite different from ours.....I think it's country specific. Anyway, I guess you don't pay an a per TV basis, more per household....The UK price is very high by the way ! ANd funny that you still can get a license for a B/W TV. Now go find a B/W TV

[TheDriver]

Let's see if I can answer some of these question's 

Apart from the fact that I don't see how a flat 16:9 LCD can ever give you the true arcade feeling, you're in the UK right ?

Why didn't you just get a LCD TV instead ? Wire up through SCART and presto. Would have saved quite a couple of pounds I guess.....? And you would be able to watch TV on your cab to boot

I did think about getting a run of the mill LCD, I want to keep the size/weight  of the cab project down (And I notice there are a few project's appeared in the last few months going down the LCD route) price wise it would have been much cheaper but probably more to do with my stubborness to get an actual arcade gaming monitor in it was what steered me towards the pentranic. Also the pentranic was decided upon before I started to look at the possibility of a scart hack (which btw I could not track down a pinout that was the same, I have at least 6 different pinout's all wired differently) as for the authentic route with the picture myself I don't see a difference with this as it was designed as a gaming monitor, but I would like to do a comparison just to see if there is a noticeable difference (when the robo board is all hooked up the bezel will mask the portion's of the 16:9 that you would see once it's set to display a 4:3 picture) Really to be honest I wanted to build it as an arcade machine would be built using authentic part's. I have set a budget and I am currently under it, budget was set at £500 so at the moment I have:

Controls - £100
Monitor - £399.50
Jamma board - £20
Switcher - £20 (I bought 2 new at £10 each)
1x speaker - £0 (an old car speaker I had lying around, probably will end up changing this though)

Total: £539.50

But that's over you say??? Yes but get this, my partner gave me £200 towards the monitor, she does not mind this as a hobby (keep's me out of trouble she say's!!!) so that takes the total down to £339.50 so this leaves me with £160.50. The wood for the project will be got for free as this comes from someone I know so that will leave me to spend the rest on the finer details like artwork/t-molding etc.... I learned from the outrun cab that you really can overspend and not notice until you add it all up, something I ignored from saint's book which he recommended you do, so this time vowed I would not go over a set budget.

That said. Don't you non-yanks have to pay a yearly tax of some sort on T.V.'s? I've had people tell me there's a surveillance truck that drives around specifically for this purpose.

What happens if you gut a T.V. for use in an arcade cab? Gotta pay a tax on that too?

Yes it's a stupid tax to have, it's done on a per household basis ie. you only need 1 tv licence even if you have more than one tv. Stupidly if you do buy a new tv you always get a reminder in to buy a tv licence even though one is already at the same address.

How hard can it be ? Just a couple of wires.

Like I said, all the pinout's I have seen are different, some with all grounds linked up, without all grounds linked up only a few, resistors in line, it really all got a bit confusing and after wasting 2 scart plugs and wire I decided not to bother. I have another thread about the jamma board smoking and in that I posted some pic's of the black&white result's but because this was going into an lcd and not a crt tv maybe it did'nt like the rgb signal it was getting??? I gave up anyway's and will go back to it at a later date.

Regards.

[SavannahLion]

I the UK people pay for the BBC I guess, the system is quite different from ours.....I think it's country specific. Anyway, I guess you don't pay an a per TV basis, more per household....The UK price is very high by the way !

Yeah, I was reading about it. It's downright ---smurfing--- nuts. Especially considering an article I just read where the BBC made a deal with a for-profit organization for exclusive broadcasting of their materials not too long ago?

The closest thing Americans have to a TV tax is a recycling fee. I haven't bought a TV since it was implemented so I'm not sure if it's strictly for monitors or includes TV's. I'm also not sure if it's region specific.

The fee is a ---smurfing--- joke really.

[ChadTower]

The closest thing Americans have to a TV tax is a recycling fee.

You may want to look at your cable/satellite service bill.  Your TV tax is located there.

[polaris]

just to clear up savannah as your perceiving the tv licence wrong.
you pay it for the right to recieve bbc tv and radio, having this system allows us in the uk to experience news without the bias of the owners, and has over the years provided programming of a world leading class, the natural history department is probably the best tv production company of any type anywhere.
for £2.50 a week there are about 8 tv channels and many more radio stations , so its not bad value when you look ar it like that. in my opinion the quality is slipping badly of recent years, but i wouldnt want to watch news made by corporate businesses.
its not compulsory so its not a tax, i believe people can opt for satellite packages with no way of receiving the bbc so they dont have to pay it, but in the last 20 years ive heard of one person doing that

[Level42]

About the license:
BBC=quality TV programs without commercials every 5 minutes.

I won't bore you with the complex system we have here in tiny Holland, but we have 3 public channels and a range of commercial stations. You pay tax for the public channels. Wether you watch them or you don't.
I don't watch a lot of TV at all, but since this is all included into our (I think !) Income tax, I pay anyway. Th upside is that if everybody pays, the amount per person is relatively low. However, there's "only" 16 million people living here so it's pretty hard to service 3 national TV stations plus a range of radio stations and local TV stations with that money.

Still, public TV has no commercials through the programs, only between them (unlike the commercial stations here) and they make the better quality programs IMHO.

About the SCART: first thing to remember is that not all scart connectors support RGB. F.I. on my main TV-set, I have 2 SCART connectors. Only the first supports RGB input.

The most important thing to remember is to put some voltages on 2 pins of the SCART to have the TV act as a monitor. That way it will automatically switch to the SCART RGB input signal and select the correct screen size (4:3).

I've used this schematic with succes on my Galaxian. However I DID add some resistors in series with the R,G and B lines. Arcade boards normaly output 5V signals. SCART expects 1V. But I did run the TV for quite some time without the resistors. It was OK because there is so much black in a game like Galaxian that the total signal is relatively low, and also by turning down the brightness I could compensate. Putting the resistors in was more a safety precaution.

I used Darth Nuno's schematic succesfully:


 Where you see all the gnd's, I just picked one and connected the gnd wire from the galaxian cab there and presto. All those gnd's, are connected internaly. No need to wire each one.

[SavannahLion]

The closest thing Americans have to a TV tax is a recycling fee.

You may want to look at your cable/satellite service bill.  Your TV tax is located there.

I don't believe that's technically a TV set tax though. My understanding is that's a tax on the service itself. Similar to the tax on the phone line that we, up until recently, have been paying since the Spanish-American war. IOW, if I opt to use an antennae, I pay zero in taxes. Buying a TV in the U.S. doesn't necessitate that you continually pay a tax for the TV itself.

From what I've Googled around, the UK requires that you pay a license fee every year for your TV irregardless of how the broadcast signal is received or if any signal at all is received. They got some pretty screwed up rules regarding the license. If you're blind, you still have to pay at least 50% of the TV license fee yet using a set top box without a TV means you don't have to pay? Sites like Turn off your TV and Duncan Benett have very interesting takes on the TV licensing. I haven't really found any sites yet that put the TV license in a very positive note. 

[polaris]

i cant find anything about this but i remember when satellite tv came in here a guy went to court to not pay and won the case as he proved he couldnt recieve the terrestrial channels as theyre known.
if you look into the hutton enquiry , it shows how an independent news broadcaster was able to make a strong stance and not bow to political power , not that the outcome was great .
anyway , way off topic.
nice tv whatcha gonna make the driver?

[TheDriver]

About the SCART: first thing to remember is that not all scart connectors support RGB. F.I. on my main TV-set, I have 2 SCART connectors. Only the first supports RGB input.

The most important thing to remember is to put some voltages on 2 pins of the SCART to have the TV act as a monitor. That way it will automatically switch to the SCART RGB input signal and select the correct screen size (4:3).

I've used this schematic with succes on my Galaxian. However I DID add some resistors in series with the R,G and B lines. Arcade boards normaly output 5V signals. SCART expects 1V. But I did run the TV for quite some time without the resistors. It was OK because there is so much black in a game like Galaxian that the total signal is relatively low, and also by turning down the brightness I could compensate. Putting the resistors in was more a safety precaution.

I used Darth Nuno's schematic succesfully:


 Where you see all the gnd's, I just picked one and connected the gnd wire from the galaxian cab there and presto. All those gnd's, are connected internaly. No need to wire each one.

Another diagram for the collection!!!! I will try this out after the project is finished, I would still like to make a supergun of some sort in the future, thanks. 

anyway , way off topic.
nice tv whatcha gonna make the driver?

Going way off topic but it is intresting to see what happens in other countries. Don't want to reveal too much about it until the project announcement but im going for a slimline upright with an 80's look to it, sofar I have three design's which is what is stopping me from actually cutting any wood, I keep going back and changing thing's but I want to be really sure of how it will look, after all I need to look at it when it's done!!!!

Regards.

[Jess--]

Tv license in the uk is for equipment CAPABLE of receiving BBC programs

This includes VCR's, DVR's, Set Top Boxes, Sat receivers and tv cards for pc's.

AFAIK the only exceptions are Battery powered portable equipment (casio lcd tv for example)

Quite a few years ago a friend of mine used to use a TV set on his amiga (remember them)
but did not want to watch tv or pay a license, his solution was to remove the entire tuner from the set (making it incapable of receiving bbc programs) tv licensing took him to court over the tv set and his refusal to purchase a license, apparently they werent to pleased when the case got thrown out when it was pointed out there was no tuner.