Dealing with monitor orientation with multi-JAMMAs

Tornadoboy

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 28, 2009
Messages
9,112
Reaction score
1,411
Location
North Attleboro, Massachusetts
One of these days I'm going to build my mother-of-all cabs from scratch and I've been toying with the idea of making it so I can rotate the monitor in place for different vertical/horizontal orientations between motherboards. Anybody ever try this? Is there an easier solution? I could of course just build it with TWO monitors, one vertical and one horizontal, but that would make the cab a bit wider than I'd like, not deal with the issue of upside down pictures and make the controls off center.

I think I may build it big enough to, at least in theory, support up to 12 PCBS with two JAMMA switches. Yes I am in fact that nutz.:D
 
Last edited:
One of these days I'm going to build my mother-of-all cabs from scratch and I've been toying with the idea of making it so I can rotate the monitor in place for different vertical/horizontal orientations between motherboards. Anybody ever try this? Is there an easier solution? I could of course just build it with TWO monitors, one vertical and one horizontal, but that would make the cab a bit wider than I'd like, not deal with the issue of upside down pictures and make the controls off center.

I think I may build it big enough to, at least in theory, support up to 12 PCBS with two JAMMA switches. Yes I am in fact that nutz.:D

Yes, yes you are. Good luck anyway!

If you google around enough (especially on the byoac forums at arcadecontrols.com) you'll find some others who've attempted to work out this very problem, but few seem to have really succeeded.

I'd say that two monitors is a poor idea. Making cabinet extra wide, with a monitor that's not used (no matter what you're doing, you'll only be using one!) is probably foolish - you're wasting money on a second monitor and building a horrifyingly ugly cabinet. You could put one above the other, but that would be bad because neither one will end up in a good place. Inventive, yes, but I don't think you'd want to play that cab.

You can build the cab with a rotating monitor. You'll need to bolt the monitor to a rotating frame and add some way to move it. Overall this is quite doable. If I were going to do this, I'd have to think long and hard about manual or automatic (electric) controls. If you did electric, you could (in theory) wire the whole mess up so that it rotated properly for the board selected. Otherwise, a simple switch somewhere that selected your desired orientation would do.

I do remember looking at the homepage for a project where the guy actually had the monitor automatically rotate (electric motor), but I can't get it anymore, and I suspect that like much of BYOAC's content it's fallen off the net.

Personally, I wouldn't do either one. I'd build two cabinets. Cabaret sized, perhaps (to keep the space needs under control), but I'd rather split the games across two cabinets than have so much jammed into one cab that it didn't really work out.
 
I simply don't have the room for two cabinets where I want to put this, so that's not really an option. Besides, I like the idea of doing something relatively unique! :D

Making the mount shouldn't be too big of a technical issue, the trouble might be in keeping it so it doesn't become a monstrosity in itself that requires almost as much room as a second monitor would, its going to need to be at least as wide as the monitor is measured corner to corner. Making it so the rotation is automatic for each game sounds like a pretty cool idea, I could probably rig it up with an Arduino to manage that, and a wheelchair motor to handle the mechanics.

I guess no matter how I slice it this is going to be a big mofo! Too bad I can't just switch around the wiring on the coils, but that wouldn't help me with the tube differences in height/width when going between horizontal and vertical.

Yes, yes you are. Good luck anyway!

If you google around enough (especially on the byoac forums at arcadecontrols.com) you'll find some others who've attempted to work out this very problem, but few seem to have really succeeded.

I'd say that two monitors is a poor idea. Making cabinet extra wide, with a monitor that's not used (no matter what you're doing, you'll only be using one!) is probably foolish - you're wasting money on a second monitor and building a horrifyingly ugly cabinet. You could put one above the other, but that would be bad because neither one will end up in a good place. Inventive, yes, but I don't think you'd want to play that cab.

You can build the cab with a rotating monitor. You'll need to bolt the monitor to a rotating frame and add some way to move it. Overall this is quite doable. If I were going to do this, I'd have to think long and hard about manual or automatic (electric) controls. If you did electric, you could (in theory) wire the whole mess up so that it rotated properly for the board selected. Otherwise, a simple switch somewhere that selected your desired orientation would do.

I do remember looking at the homepage for a project where the guy actually had the monitor automatically rotate (electric motor), but I can't get it anymore, and I suspect that like much of BYOAC's content it's fallen off the net.

Personally, I wouldn't do either one. I'd build two cabinets. Cabaret sized, perhaps (to keep the space needs under control), but I'd rather split the games across two cabinets than have so much jammed into one cab that it didn't really work out.
 
Last edited:
I simply don't have the room for two cabinets where I want to put this, so that's not really an option. Besides, I like the idea of doing something relatively unique! :D

Yea, I can sympathize. On the plus side, I don't think you'll have to go too wide to get a rotating monitor - These things are 4:3 (that is to say, not that far off of square), and most cabinets have a fair bit of space around the monitor anyway.

You'll certainly have a unique system. On the subject of controlling the rotation - I don't know how much you need in the way of brains. I can't find the link, but the last one I remember reading about simply used switches at either end of the travel to stop the rotation. You'd use a double-throw switch to decide which way you wanted it, and when it hit that point, it automatically cut out.

Good luck!
 
Two cabs will always be better than one. One vert and one hori, plus if they both have maching bodies you could have a nice art theme/scheme going on. If you have room for one cab then you're most likely to have room for 2.
 
Seems like it would be pretty easy to do in a Punch Out/PC10 cab.

Wait, Did I really just say that...
 
Back
Top Bottom