Posted by Tom61 on September 10, 1999 at 16:15:20:
In Reply to: Ultra mini MAME cabinet posted by powerjaw on September 10, 1999 at 01:04:48:
: A long time ago I wrote a little doc on how to convert a 5" CGA monitor to work with arcade machines. (The article can be seen at http://www.spies.com/arcade/conversion/SamtronCGAtoArcade )
Cool :0 That doc helped alot when I was seeing if I could use my old CGA mon with arcade boards easilly.
: After seeing that counter-top MAME cabinet on the Arcade@Home site, I got to thinking that I could probably one-up that by using this 5" monitor and maybe the guts of a laptop. The 5" monitor uses a 12v DC power supply, so I wouldn't even need a bulky supply and isolation transformer (ack!). Has anyone used a laptop for their cabinet? Pros and cons?? I could probably pick one up cheap that had a bad LCD display, since I'd be connecting it to a monitor anyway. Do most laptops have regular VGA ports?
Instead of buying a laptop to gut, A micro-ATX motherboard is about the same size a laptop Mobo.
You'll need to get a mobo with video and sound, and whatever else you need, integrated on the mobo.
You can get a socket 7 board with video and sound for about $55.
The motherboard will be less than 2" tall with the proc. and ram installed, a regular AT PS (most micro-ATX have AT and ATX power connector) is 2"x4"x4" (hieghtxwidthxdepth).
One thing about laptops, is that they usually have an external PS that gets hotter than a desktop PS.