Stage 20: Monitoring the Situation

Saturday was indeed an eventful day around Halifax - I managed to actually get up and to PC Medic before the huge crush of Rolling Stones fans swarmed the Halifax Common and its surrounding neighborhoods which include my secret lair on Allan Street withiin its ranks.

After waiting a spell for some attention from the gabby clerk on the phone, I got to peek at the used 19" CRT monitor I had asked to be put aside for me. It was indeed a huge beast, but didn't seem to have as much screen size as I had imagined in my head. Maybe it was all the other used CRT monitors on the shelves around it, but I was definitely having second thoughts about laying out $100 for this thing.

After dutifully measuring the monitor and stroking my non-existent beard for a while, I finally agreed to take it. After explaining what I was using it for, some of the tech guys overheard me and hauled me into their office to check out their friend's arcade project website. I never got the URL, but this guy had clearly out a lot of work into his machine. He appeared to have functional coin-doors as well - I made a mental note to contact these dudes once I was at that stage. Muah ha ha.

Hailing a cab, I wrestled this monster monitor home and with some time to spare before I rocked out at the concert down the road, I hauled the TV out of the cabinet and took some comparison photos:

Here's a shot of my old 17" monitor on the left and the new 19" monitor on the right. You can definitely see the difference when these things are side by side.

Here's a shot of the cheap-ass TV that was in the cabinet on the left and the 19" monitor on the right. The monitor is clearly much smaller than the TV in screen size (approx. 1.5" smaller diagonal), but I was hoping the monitor's much clearer picture would make up for it. Presuming that this thing even fit into the cabinet at all.

Lucky for me, it did indeed fit like a glove, although I had pry off the rotational stand on the bottom of the monitor and unmount the joysticks in order to cram this thing into place. The flatter front surface area and rear VGA input will defintely make crafting the bezel an easier affair down the road. Of course, now I have a spare, almost new 19" TV kicking around. Hrm.

Firing up the cab and loading in some games, the resolution difference was amazing. The Maximus Arcade menu was crystal clear, and the details surrounding some of the figures in Street Fighter Turbo 2: Hyper Fighting, 1942 and Donkey Kong Jr. were great. Having seen this transformation from the functional but somewhat muddied figures the TV provided, I immediately felt 100x better about this investment. Yay!

So now I move onto my next task: Getting the new PC gear from that slacker Mike Ward.