Hooking up a Windows 98 Machine to a Neo Geo 25" Arcade Monitor.

[audiomidiman]

I'm in the process of picking up a Two Player neo geo cabinet w/ a 25"
monitor. The cabinet will not power up but he said that the monitor
worked before it stopped working all together. So my plan is to strip
the cabinet of the neo geo mother boards and anything else I can't use
and MAME it. Is it possible to hook up the 25" monitor to a VGA Video
card in the Windows 98 box? Or should I just sell the monitor and get a
larger CRT Monitor. I'm hoping to get a frontend to work on the 98 box
and play both vertical and horizontal games. Originally I was only
going to play vertical games but the fact that I have a 25" monitor I
don't see why I couldn't play both of them.

Anyone do this before? Also, is this cabinet JAMMA?

Oh, and would the ArcadeVGA make life easier? Is there any other solutions? Can I easily Hardwire it? I am using a Riva128 8 MB VGA Card.

Thanks!
Bill

[Thenasty]

keep the monitor. Get yourself and ArcadeVGA card and off you go.

[audiomidiman]

keep the monitor. Get yourself and ArcadeVGA card and off you go.

How do you plug the card into the arcade monitor? Just unplug the wires from the PCB (following them from the neck board) and plug it into the ArcadeVGA? Does anyone have a PDF manual? Also seeing the machine will not power up is there a cheap way to see if the monitor works? Oh and last dump question of the day, how do I power the monitor if the internal power supply doesn't work? Inexpensive switching power supply?

Thanks!
Bill

[BobA]

Neogeo's are a slight variant of jamma.   Look up the pinout and I think the speaker is actual L/R for stereo and I forget what else so I guess I will have to look it up.

Here is the link NG with regular jamma

http://web.njit.edu/~jal0737/Neo-Geo/Neo-HomeMVS.htm

[tetsu96]

Probably the easiest way would be using a JPAC - Plug the AVGA into the VGA port onboard the interface, and then the signal goes thru the JAMMA harness w/o cutting anything.  I don't do that myself so other board members can comment if the AVGA benefits from the video amp or gets over saturated with color.

If you did want to plug the AVGA into the monitor directly, you'd have to hack up a VGA cable to do such.  (assuming std res monitor w/o VGA interface in the MVS).  If you look up the wiring of the JAMMA harness, you can pull your RBG & CSYNC from there.  I pulled the wires from the back of the harness to tie into the cable, probably better than trying to work off the chassis.

[Thenasty]

if you need a Breakout cable, I still have some left. $6.00 shipped in the USA.
But if you gonna order and video card, you can order the breakout cable at the same time to save on shipping. If you want to use a regualr Video Card w/the breakout cable, you need software to drop down to 15khz,  and some FE do this.

[audiomidiman]

Probably the easiest way would be using a JPAC - Plug the AVGA into the VGA port onboard the interface, and then the signal goes thru the JAMMA harness w/o cutting anything.  I don't do that myself so other board members can comment if the AVGA benefits from the video amp or gets over saturated with color.

If you did want to plug the AVGA into the monitor directly, you'd have to hack up a VGA cable to do such.  (assuming std res monitor w/o VGA interface in the MVS).  If you look up the wiring of the JAMMA harness, you can pull your RBG & CSYNC from there.  I pulled the wires from the back of the harness to tie into the cable, probably better than trying to work off the chassis.

So technically, the JPAC might be a good solution for me seeing my cabinet is a JAMMA cabinet? The wiring almost looks identical w/ some minor changes. However, from what I'm seeing w/ this I could practically get the JPAC, plug the JPAC into the JAMMA harness, plug my keyboard into the JPAC, Plug the JPAC into the Serial port on my Windows 98 Box, Plug my Computer/VGA cable into the JPAC, check that the monitor is working (Might need a new Switching Power Supply and Isolator Transformer I'm being told) fire up the cabinet and Windows 98 box and everything "MIGHT" just work with minimal wiring? It appears that the JPAC might work better than a ArcadeVGA card to avoid the whole iPac wiring seeing the jamma harness is already wired to the cabinet.

Will it still resolution stretch?

So, basically if I get this I bought the iPac for nothing huh? Of couse I got two original iPacs for $45 shipped not to mention Paypal gave me a $20 credit for spending $50 through paypal over christmas so technically I only paid $25 for the pair.

Can't wait until my book arrives so I can move forward. Overall I don't think I'm going to hack the Neo Geo control panel too much. 4 Buttons are enough for me and I might see about squeezing in a track ball or a couple of spinners. Will most likely replace the joysticks and buttons to match the theme of my cabinet and CPO but we'll see.

Thanks.
Bill

[tetsu96]

So technically, the JPAC might be a good solution for me seeing my cabinet is a JAMMA cabinet? The wiring almost looks identical w/ some minor changes. However, from what I'm seeing w/ this I could practically get the JPAC, plug the JPAC into the JAMMA harness, plug my keyboard into the JPAC, Plug the JPAC into the Serial port on my Windows 98 Box, Plug my Computer/VGA cable into the JPAC, check that the monitor is working (Might need a new Switching Power Supply and Isolator Transformer I'm being told) fire up the cabinet and Windows 98 box and everything "MIGHT" just work with minimal wiring? It appears that the JPAC might work better than a ArcadeVGA card to avoid the whole iPac wiring seeing the jamma harness is already wired to the cabinet.

Will it still resolution stretch?

So, basically if I get this I bought the iPac for nothing huh? Of couse I got two original iPacs for $45 shipped not to mention Paypal gave me a $20 credit for spending $50 through paypal over christmas so technically I only paid $25 for the pair.

Can't wait until my book arrives so I can move forward. Overall I don't think I'm going to hack the Neo Geo control panel too much. 4 Buttons are enough for me and I might see about squeezing in a track ball or a couple of spinners. Will most likely replace the joysticks and buttons to match the theme of my cabinet and CPO but we'll see.

Thanks.
Bill

Yeah, you got the jist of it.  I can't verify that the AVGA stretched all the video properly that the monitor won't need adjustments for different games, you got it (btw - it's AVGA WITH the JPAC, not ether or).  I'm sure other board members can verify that, and you can ask Andy directly too since he sells the JPACs and the AVGAs.

As far as wasting money goes, the IPAC and JPAC are really for different things.  If you were building a control panel from scratch, then the IPAC would be fine.  If you have an existing JAMMA harness (or built a cab to be JAMMA compatible), then the JPAC is a better solution.  You can disconnect the harness and wire the controls up to the IPAC in your case (and video to the AVGA with a breakout cable), but why would you want to?  That's a lot of extra work that the JPAC lets you skip.

[ardarvin]

A couple things, since I recently converted a NEO GEO cab to MAME, with an ArcadeVGA card:

-Like tetsu says, a JPAC doesn't replace the need for an ArcadeVGA card
-I'm not sure if the JPac works with Jamma+ without some slight mods.
-Checkout www.hardmvs.com for info on NEO GEO, Jamma+, etc.
-Get your monitor working with the NEO GEO boards BEFORE you start switching everything to MAME. This will eliminate a lot of the guesswork.
-To get your NEO GEO boards working...are you sure the power supply doesn't work? You can quite easily use an old PC power supply to do the job if need be. Again...check out hardmvs.com for the wiring
-To power your monitor....you should have a big black transformer in your cab. This is your isolation transformer. The output from this should run to your AC inputs on your monitor AND NOTHING ELSE.


I didn't use a JPac, so I don't know much about it. It isn't too hard to put your IPac to use though.
To hook your ArcadeVGA to your monitor (without a JPAc): ultimarc also sells an VGA signal booster, which acts like a nice breakout, with the added benefit of having +5V, which is what NEO GEO boards output (as opposed to the 1V coming off the ArcadeVGA card). Many people say this isn't necessary, but I'm lazy, and really like the clean screw-down breakout of the amp.