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 Post subject: Monitor choice for Daphne/MAME cab..
PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2005 2:54 am 
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Location: Rome, Italy
My idea is to build a Daphne/MAME machine from scratch, using a DL repro cab. I'm thinking about which monitor to put in it. Daphne MPEGs seem to look much better on a TV than on a PC monitor. I read that an arcade VGA/SVGA monitor is easiest to use, but it's basically a standard PC CRT monitor. A CGA monitor instead needs some sort of converter to be hooked to the PC VGA card, but should work close to a TV, which should be better for Daphne.
Any suggestion?


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 9:08 am 
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I use a wells gardner 3100. It is a real arcade monitor that plugs directly into your PC. You don't need any specialized video card for it and, to me, it looks just like the origional. If you order one from Wells Gardner make sure you ask for a refurbished one, it is way cheaper.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 4:12 pm 
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Location: Rome, Italy
Interesting.. Wells Gardner monitors are not easy to find and mantain in Italy (I live in Rome). But maybe I can buy a Hantarex Polo/2 SVGA 19", which is technically similar to the U3100..
Thanks for your help..


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 10:54 pm 
DAPHNE Creator
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if you are going to use a TV, be sure to use an S-Video cable and not a composite cable!


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 11:15 am 
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Hi Matt, I'm using a TV just for testing my Daphne/MAME configurations. It feels really more "arcade" than my LCD display. It is connected via s-video to my ATI Radeon 9200 s-video output, but on the TV side i'm using a composite input, because the TV does not have an s-video in.


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 4:03 pm 
DAPHNE Creator
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Composite works, I am just saying it looks a lot nicer with s-video :)


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 9:17 pm 
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As you're a Euro resident you should be able to get a nice SCART set. Look into wiring VGA to SCART. It bypasses the TV's decoder rubbish that degrades the picture.
I've just done an ArcadeVGA to De-Cased SCART TV and there is no difference in quality to my Arcade monitor on an ArcadeVGA.


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:15 pm 
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Just a side note... in general stay away from the hybrid arcade monitors (ones that are vga compatable.)

Sometimes you can get a deal on them, but in general they offer the square pixels and way too crisp picture of a vga monitor combined with a arcade monitors low refresh rate and limited modes of resolution. In essence you are getting the worst of both worlds. If you are going to get a hybrid monitor you might as well just get a computer monitor as at least it'll be capable of higher resolutions and refresh rates for pc games.


An arcade monitor's dot pitch (the shape of the pixels) is almost identical to that of a tv. So if you aren't going to get an arcade monitor, then a tv is the next best thing. Of course down-sampling will occur from the conversion process. Scart tv's, obviously don't have this problem.

Also lnote that daphne is a special case emulator. While the sprite graphics generally were transferred to the rgb monitor directly, the laserdisc signal was good old ntsc, and had to go though a converter, similar to how your computer converts the rgb signal into svid for tv-out. (Though your computer won't do as good a job.)

I bring this up because many people complain about crispness and color bleed when using tv out for mame. It's different for daphne as these games were essentially films designed to be shown through broadcast television-like displays.

Hope that helps.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 5:47 pm 
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Thank you HowardC,

I finally bought an arcade low-res monitor, a Hantarex POLO/3 15KHz 20". To convert the 31,5 KHz video signal from the PC, I bought an Ultracade Universal Video Converter card. I didn't test the stuff yet, but teorically it should work properly. I'll test it once the wiring of the cab is completed (I'm scared of electrical shocks). Bruno (DarthNuno) is hosting a topic about the work I'm doing on the cab:

http://www.dragonslairfans.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=84

:)


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