The monitor was a tricky little devil to figure out. My original idea was to create some kind of rotating monitor. I will briefly touch on that.
I wanted my arcade machine to look as authentic to old 80's machines as I could. I kept this in mind throughout the design process. For vertical games, like Ms. Pacman, I wanted the screen to be vertical. Likewise for horizontal games, such as Pretty American Girls #1 Mahjong Party. The only solution was to create a rotating monitor. This task, I believe, would have been much easier had I decided to use a computer monitor. But I didn't have an extra one to blow, nor did I like how small the screen would be (hey, I can afford the $100 dollars for an extra inch) and I didn't like how precise the graphics look on monitors. So I decided to go with a television set. The only way to make a TV rotatable is to remove its chassis. Otherwise, the diagonal length of the TV would not permit rotation. I basically followed Russ Prince's rotating monitor plans, only with one exception. Russ has his rotating mechanism sticking out the side of his machine. I didn't want mine to do that. By making my mechanism smaller, I was putting more constraints on my TV size.
I successfully removed the chassis from two TV's, but the electromagnetic forces created by my power tools ruined them both.
I decided, however, through the process of mucking with TV sets, that it would be much too dangerous to rotate a huge tv. It might blow up or start a fire, and the rotating process inevitably "gauzes" the TV set and ruins the picture anyway. Plus it was a pain in the butt to rotate the thing.
Two deciding factors played a role in me not trashing a third tv (although I think I may have been able to do it with all my new accumulated knowledge). They were: Ms. Pacman looks just as good on a horizontal screen when you're immersed in the game, and I can always build another "dedicated" vertical game machine (I know a guy with a gutted galaga cabinet in his backyard. hoohaw!).
I'm pretty happy with my tv set. I bought it for $14.00 (US) at a thrift store on George Washington Way, underneath Atomic City Records. I attach it to the computer using my laptop's "TV out" hole. This means I can't play games using a command line MAME emulator, which means I can play Mortal Kombat I, but not Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat III (speed wise, that is).
I did some research as to how to connect the TV to the computer using a converter or a special adapter cable. I found this web site. It seemed pretty informative. Since I read that site, though, I've seen people who just used a hacked up monitor cable. That sounds like the cheapest and easiest way to do it.
Last thing. All TV's need to be turned on, right? And if you have a huge glass bezel blocking the ON button, and no remote control, what do you do? Drill holes in the buttons and attach strings, that's what!
I drilled three holes. One in the "power" button, and one in the "channel 0" and "channel 3" buttons (so I could change to the VCR input channel). Then, as you can see at the bottom, I drilld three holes in that board for the strings to go through. I then tied a bead to each one. Now, with the bezel in place, I can turn the TV on and off.
If you happen to take this route, which I think works really well, make sure you drill the holes by hand. The motor in the drill will surely mess up your television set. If you wiggle a tiny drill bit into the plastic with your fingers, it cuts right through.
Oh, and I masked off the screen and spray painted the TV border green (the color of my would-be bezel), as seen in the picture up top. It was an ugly silver, and now it is unrecognizable
I also made two angle peices of wood and screwed them into my monitor shelf, so that when my TV sat on them, it would be at an arcade-authentic angle, instead of a tv-authentic angle.