Acquired a machine - need Monitor Advice.

[KabuKi]

Hello Gents,

I'm mighty confused.

About a year ago I bought a full arcade-at-home machine off my boss.  It was a Ninja-Gaiden box he converted.  It has a PII 400 inside on a special timer.  When you turn the system on, the computer boots, and 2 minutes later a separate timer turns on the monitor, and by that time ArcadeOS is running.  This is so the video modes of DOS don't mess up the monitor.

About the only fooling around I've done is adding some old PC games to the box, Quake, Duke3D, and some other FPS are quite fun to play on the full size arcade, and work perfectly inside of ArcadeOS.

Now I'm looking at running Mame32, and basically upgrading this machine to a windows box.  It appears to do this, I will need to upgrade or change the 19" monitor in there.

I looked up the WG u3100 Monitor, and this seems to do what I want, it will run 640x480 VGA on a D-Sub connector pin, as well as run all the arcade game modes.  I could remove my Boss' homemade VGA to Jamma connector he has in there and simply plug the monitor directly into the computer video card, which is an older ATi video card.  I would also be removing ArcadeOS and having the machine boot to windows and pick out my games via a PS/2 trackball, so I could install even more old PC games on an arcade type cabinet

So, is my thinking off here? Is there a better monitor to buy? A cheaper one?  Should I just buy a PC monitor and mount it in there?  I really would like to just slide a arcade monitor in there because it looks better and there a lot less work involved.  I am also kind of looking for the cheapest solution here, I'm on a college student budget and don't have a lot of extra money.
 
Any advice is appreciated, even if you want to tell me I'm a fool for doing this or that  And if you need more specific information please ask it so I can look at the machine and get it--I know for example it might help to know what monitor is in there but I have no clue posting here from work.

Thanks in advance,
-KabuKi

[BobA]

The timer protecting the monitor is a Good Thing. You mention replacing the monitor with an arcade vga monitor.  Yes you can just hook it up with a normal cable at that point.  If you are poor then a VGA type arcade monitor is probably not going to be cheap. A used PC monitor would probably be the cheapest.

You also mention doing this because you want to run Windows and some better PC games. If you go to windows your MAME will probably not run as quickly as you had it running under dos on a PII 400.  Your machine is probably setup optimally for your particular processor and to run  MAME under windows you will probably need an upgrade of your Mother Board to maintain performance.

IMHO  it is going to cost you quite a bit more than you expect to upgrade your cabinet to run windows games.

BobA

[KabuKi]

Thanks for your reply.

I am mostly playing Vintage pre-win98 games on there now, like the original QUAKE, and Duke3D.  These are games that would be smokin fast on a PII 400 and thats what I'm aiming for anyhow, vintage games, not state of the art stuff.

I realize the timer is a good thing, and you confirmed my thought earlier about being able to remove it if I get a monitor upgrade.

Right now I'm looking at a games grade Wells Gardner u3100, and I think that just might be what I want, for around $300.  Luckily both Happ Controls and WG are close enought to me I can get a will call order in, so I will see what I can do.

If anyone else has any input, I'm open to hear it!

-KabuKi