The guys at work went through an security surveillance upgrade gave me an old Dell 20"
widescreen LCD monitor that has some security camera burn-in on the right hand side of it.
(Not even noticeable by the way...lol )
I took off all the plastic casing and crap so all I was left was the LCD screen and the
OSD buttons that are connected/harnessed with a thin, flat cable.
(I taped the OSD buttons to the back top side of the monitor.)
When all the plastic garbage decorative covering is removed, the 20" widescreen
fits perfectly into a 9" topbox (9" Flat top).
Tomorrow, I will cut a nice new piece of 3/16" plexi, add some black trim
around the edges (about 3/4" wide only)
and install it into the topbox in front of the LCD.
It will make a nice finish...I though about adding two strips of LEDs to the
sides of the LCD to go off in the event of a Jackpot or handpay mode.
I may still do that later as I detest the way-too-loud-bell.
I've been using a cheap computer located under the dropbox for connecting to the Test App and Sim.
All I did was run the monitor cable up through the drop box hole to the topbox along with the LCD power cable.
I plugged in some desktop PC speakers into the monitor jack and they reside in the top box behind the widescreen.
The sound is really loud so I just lowered it using the XP volume controls.
I am typing this post from my slot machine! lol
Hitting the 'ESC' button turns off the PowerPoint slideshow program and I can jump right
onto my XP desktop from sitting in front of the machine or from my lazy boy chair!
Utilizing a wireless keyboard & wireless optical mouse makes this a breeze.
The Powerpoint program allows you to flip through photographs of any game kit you want
and there's never any need for me to ever change my top glass anymore.
There's pictures of just about every game kit there is on the world wide web.
Just copy them off the web, stretch them to full-screen on the PowerPoint "slideshow" mode,
adjusting the slide time-lengths, transitions, and sounds of every slide and
you have a really nice working award glass!
It's way better than seeing the same boring static award glass...
Using your mind and creativity, you can come up with some really neat slides.
I would like to learn how to make animations too...using various game themes.
I'll save that learning curve-ball for next winter...lol