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I've been collecting parts to convert an old broken arcade cabinet into a home for Mame/Snes9x/DGen. I've got buttons and joysticks and a machine, and even wrote a really nice GTK Perl menu system to select games, but now I have to decide if I want to replace the (small very burned out) arcade monitor. I could throw in a 19" SVGA monitor, or I could try to get an arcade monitor and figure out a way to make it run nicely under X. I'm leaning towards the SVGA monitor simply so that I have more resolution options, but there's a part of me that would love to use either the existing arcade screen (despite the burn in) or replace it with a different one. Does anyone have advice for making such a monitor work under XFree?

Oh, and yes, I'll get the menu system up for download eventually if anyone is interested in it. Its fully functional, but it has a few significant shortcomings yet. It currently is super pimp since it allows arbitrary parameters to be added on a per-system or per-game level. It also displays nice screenshots and pictures and plays MP3s in the background ;)

If anyone else is looking into trying this, check out Happ Controls. They're not shipping right now because of the holidays, but you can get arcade buttons for less then 2 bucks, and a joystick for like 15. I've got enough parts for 2 players. Now I just need to wire them up. (I have to figure out if I should solder them or come up with some sort of clips. I'm more of a software guy then a hardware guy so I'm kinda stumped).