Good Setup or Waste of Money?

[Jakedakat]

Here is what I am currently planning on using in my mame cabinet...

Pentranic Dual Mode CGA/EGA Monitor, and an ArcadeVGA Card from Ultimarc. The Monitor is going for $239.00+shipping till the end of May.

So will this setup be good enough to play most or all of mame games? Also would a cga/ega monitor be able to display Laserdisc games? From what I read so far from Ultimarc's site is that with their card I will be able to display windows on an arcade monitor.  So any help would be great I am little confused  as to what exactly I am looking for. Here is a link to the monitors page if anyone wants to check it out...

http://www.happcontrols.com/monitors/49305500.htm

Rob

[Lance]

You will only really be using the CGA with an ArcadeVGA, I'm pretty certain it doesn't output a 25khz signal for EGA.

That being said it will work fine for laser disc games.  I have a 25" CGA (an 8liners chassis) and an ArcadeVGA and Daphne works fine on it.

[Jakedakat]

Now do you have any problems playing any of the newer mame games on the cga monitor? I am just a little confused by the cga/ega/vga thing. I understand computer monitors, and how today its all svga for pc games. I remember the days of cga/ega/vga for pc games and how crappy the graphics were. Mabey thats what problem is that I am thinking in pc terms. My orginal plan was to a buy a vga 27" that happ has on sale for $399.

Rob

[mattv]

The CGA / EGA / VGA thing on your PC back in the eartly nintes is not really related to arcade graphics.

CGS and EGA  on your PC looked crap because they were only 4 (CGA) and 16(EGA) color colors on the screen at one time.

Your arcade monitor running in CGA (15khz) mode can dispaly as many colors as your hardware will push to it, so the graphics look great.

To the best of my knowledge there are about 50 games in MAME that require a medium res monitor and about 3 that require a "VGA" high res monitor and those are all fishing games anyway.

So yeah, a CGA (15khz) monitor with an ArcadeVGA card is by far the easiest way to go - that will have you running 95% of all mame games looking great.

If you have your heart set on that medium res monitor there are a few things you should know
1) arcadeVGA doesn't support the 25Khz modes directly
2) most dual mode monitors are not auto sensing, you need to switch em off and remove a jumper to switch between the two modes.

Of course there is nothing to stop you buying the dual mode monitor now and running it in low res mode. It seems like a pretty sweet price - it will do everything a standard res monitor will do, and with a bit of work maybe even more some of the more recent 3d righters like teken 3, VOOT, rival schools are medium res but since mame renders 3d in software for emulation accuracy they might be a bit slow anyway.

That VGA monitor from Happ would also be a good choice for ease of setup

But the thing to remember is that a medium/vgs creen will not make your standard res games look any better than they do in standard res.

[Jakedakat]

OK thanks for the info, things make much more sense. One last question The VGA monitor from Happ is basically just a 27'' computer monitor? It will be able to display all games, they just will look like they do on my 19" computer monitor? Not exactly authentic, but thats fine with me. I know it takes just a regular 15 pin input. So I will be able to just use a regular video card with it? Here is a link to it's specs...

http://www.happcontrols.com/monitors/49615700.htm

Once again thanks for the help!

Rob

[Wade]

FWIW, I have that same monitor used in EGA mode in my Virtua Racing twin.  I bought it from ALS Marketing for $235 (Happs says $279?)  It is the 1425 Model (ALS bought Pentranic's designs).

It is undoubtably one of the cheapest new monitors in that size.  I would think that monitor in CGA res with ArcadeVGA would be a pretty nice setup for the money.

Wade

[mattv]

 The VGA monitor from Happ is basically just a 27'' computer monitor?


Well yes and no,

Yes it is, but no it's not a very good one.

I have never actually seen one myself but from the specs it looks like they are 800x600 mzx resolution and have rotten dot pitch values.

Would probably look pretty good for arcade stuff but if you are buying it in the hope of getting a huge PC monitor very cheap you will be disappointed

[Buddabing]

Here is what I am currently planning on using in my mame cabinet...

Pentranic Dual Mode CGA/EGA Monitor, and an ArcadeVGA Card from Ultimarc. The Monitor is going for $239.00+shipping till the end of May.

So will this setup be good enough to play most or all of mame games? Also would a cga/ega monitor be able to display Laserdisc games? From what I read so far from Ultimarc's site is that with their card I will be able to display windows on an arcade monitor.  So any help would be great I am little confused  as to what exactly I am looking for. Here is a link to the monitors page if anyone wants to check it out...

http://www.happcontrols.com/monitors/49305500.htm

Rob

I own a Pentranic 1425. What operating system are you planning on using? My cabinet currently runs DOS, but this weekend I'm going to experiment with Windows XP.