Posted by Tom61 on October 07, 1999 at 15:52:07:
In Reply to: Mirror - Mounted - Monitor posted by Shawn P. Maloy on October 07, 1999 at 01:30:20:
: I have not heard this topic discussed yet so here it goes.....
I think there's mention of one (by me) in the first archive
: My idea is to mount the monitor pointed straight up and use a mirror for viewing it. I seem to remember some arcade game cabinets designed in this way.
: This would make the rotation setup very easy because the weight of the display would not be "hanging". It would be "resting".
Problem, while "resting" the electron beam would have have more power to get up to the screen, meaning more current draw and more problems. This also causes some of the same troubles as turning it sideways.
: Using a mirror to display the image might allow me to magnify the image or make it seem closer (convex / concave mirrors).
Not without distortion.
Also, you don't need a real mirror, just a piece of glass and have the insides dark. Alot of the early vector games used glass, but instead having it dark inside, they had a picture and a light behind the glass. This is how backdrops work.
This idea is what got me thinking about making a cabinet in the first place. (though I haven't yet)
: If I only reflect the image once, everything outside of MAME is a mirror image and nearly impossible to read. I would imagine a utility exists to flip the display or even a generic video driver that has this feature.
As mentioned before, you would need a front end for this, I wrote one in QBasic and if you decide to do it anyway (despite the probable problems), I'll send it to you.