vga to rgb its Soft-15kHz all i need?

[Denverlatino]

Im planing into making this old pc into a mame dedicated machine for pacman games only, i have the cab with everything on and just wondering if i make a vga to rgb cable and use Soft-15kHz , its probably all i need, the video card integrated to the pc its a dell gx1 with p3 500 mhz and and ati agp 2 integrated video card, could it be posibble that no special hardware i will need? 

[Minwah]

Assuming Soft 15khz is compatible with your video hardware then you should be OK.

However I don't know if integrated graphics works or not...some can be picky with custom modes from what I can gather.  I think there is a list of supported video cards in the Soft 15khz part of the BYOAC wiki.

[Denverlatino]

Mine its not suported, but i think i can get a cheap one, by the way, what FE can i use for 15 khz monitors under windows xp_?

[Minwah]

Mine its not suported, but i think i can get a cheap one, by the way, what FE can i use for 15 khz monitors under windows xp_?

I am pretty sure most of the popular FE's which allow you to set screen resolution should work.

I use Mamewah (of course), but with an ArcadeVGA. I have not used Soft-15khz but I believe it uses custom video modes so in theory should work just the same.

[youki]

Warning , if you use a simple cable.

You have to be aware that when you PC is booting it will ouput a 31khz signal until the driver Soft15khz is loaded.  During this time you screen will take 31khz instead of 15kz and could damage it  (on more or less long term , it really depend of your screen).

However if you use a JPAC for instance , the JPAC protect you screen while the output is superior to 15khz bu dividing the frequency by 2 . But if you don't have this hardware or similar , it can be dangerous.

Concerning Front end ,  I have users of mine (AtomicFE)  that use it with Soft15khz and it works. As said Minwah almost all popular front end should work with it, that's not a issue.

[Denverlatino]

Most screens i see here that use this kind of japanese jamma pc too jamma connection dont get damage, and they run pretty cheap here, i might try one of those with 15khz software to try not to avoid my screen, thanks for the advise. 

[youki]

Yes , most of the time it works... but for how long..

If the screen is a little bit old , it could be damaged at the first try.  One of my friend had this problem and he was using a PC2JAMMA device too .  In fact he wasn't using Soft15khz , but ARCMON.SYS under dos , that does the some thing for DOS.

The problem was that at boot , the PC init screen (BIOS info etc...) was not at 15khz until the driver was loaded... and the screen didn't liked at all..

But i also know guys that don't have problems for now. I think it really depend of your screen  and if your are lucky or not!.

[Denverlatino]

Ill post results too see if i didnt got screw.