Question about arcade monitors and video cards

[kjbalto]

Do you need an arcadevga card with an arcade monitor, or can you just hook up a Wells Gardner monitor to a standard video card? 

[atomikbohm]

Need ... that depends largly on the monitor and to a lesser extend your DIY skills / attitude. 

1st Do you know what model WG monitor you have?

[kjbalto]

The Wells Gardner 27" that X-Arcade sells.  I believe it's the 9800?

[DillonFoulds]

I'm new to this whole hobby as well.

The best i could tell you is first and foremost, make sure your video card is compatible with soft-15khz.
Install the 15KHz option, and also find a program called quickres, and get both these running.

Wire up your monitor to a vga cable/harness.

Hook up the monitor to your pc, boot in to windows. Do the 15KHz install and open quickres. Click the new galaga(?) icon by your clock and click 640x480. Swap cables to your arcade monitor and fire up the monitor.

At this point you'll either have clear picture, very faint picture or no picture.

If you've got clear picture, you're laughing. If you've got faint picture, consider a video amplifier. If you've got no picture, switch back to the PC monitor (if there's still no video on the PC monitor, or it says out of range, try hitting escape on your keyboard).

This is the stuff i wish i knew 2 weeks ago