Changed direction of project: TV to Arcade Monitor. Help with decisions.

[nnorton00]

Hello, my initial plan was to build my own cabinet and drop in a 27" TV I had around the house.  I ordered all of my controls including an I-pac4 to build the control panel.  After ordering all the controls and while getting my computer setup, I was offered a Captain America and the Avengers cab for 300 bucks (the cab itself has seen better days but is fully functional and someone did a hack job on the conversion/installation of the monitor).  I jumped on it.  I still would like to make my own CP but I've decided that I want to use the Arcade monitor.  It is a WG 25k7401.  My computer is older, it is an AMD 64 3000+ single core and I have an ATI 9800 Pro video card.  After reading around I think I have a couple options and would like some feedback on what would be the simplest/ most straight forward approach to do this.  Also with some questions...

1.  Could I use my I-pac4 to wire my new CP, then buy a J-pac and route it through the J-pac, and use soft15khz to plug into the J-pac?

2.  Return the I-pac4 for credit towards a J-pac and an I-pac2?

3.  Since I have my I-pac4, and I'd be bypassing all of the button options on the J-pac, would it be better to just use soft15khz, use the Ultimarc Video amp and wire directly to the monitor?

Is there another approach I should consider?  Any help here would be appreciated. 

[rCadeGaming]

Not sure on I-pac vs J-pac, but don't use soft15kHz.  CRT_Emudriver is much better, and will work with that video card.

http://mame.3feetunder.com/windows-ati-crt-emudriver/

See the GroovyMAME section here.

Soft15kHz is really not the best option anymore. 

First of all, it's silly to use a real CRT and not use GroovyMAME, and that works hand in hand with CRT_Emudriver.  GM can generate resolutions on the fly to keep everything native res (and native refresh, very important), saving you a lot of work; and it has a lot of other important features for native res even if you don't use the auto-generation. 

Even if not using GM, tweaking your resolutions in Soft15kHz requires editing the text modelines by hand (super tedious), or using Powerstrip.  Powerstrip was not really designed for this application, it's very cumbersome, and does not even fit on the screen in lower resolutions.  CRT_Emudriver includes ArcadeOSD, which was purposely designed for this, is just as powerful if not more so, more flexible, and much easier to use.

Making the change only takes a couple of minutes once you have the right graphics card (which can be dirt cheap).  I started with Soft15kHz, and resisted make the change because I had some GeForce cards on hand (only compatible with Soft15kHz).  When I finally switched over to CRT_Emudriver, I was really kicking myself for not doing it sooner.