Just wondering-has anyone built (or seen) a MAME cab built with a rotating display?  I was thinking that if you were willing to build a cabinet around a flatscreen (rather than a CRT), then you could probably ditch the upper enclosure and do something interesting.  My thought was that you could basically build the bottom half of a regular cabinet with the control panel, but then mount the monitor on an armeture coming up the back.  This would mean that your monitor would be sort of "floating" above your controls.  The advantage would be that it'd then be possible to make a swivel mount for the monitor so that it could be rotated to either a vertical or horizontal position for different games.  The only thing you'd really lose is the cabinet feel that you have with the full enclosure, since you'd still have the full arcade panel to control things.  I've also never used an LCD for any serious MAME time, so I have no idea how well it'd work for older games (which look great on a CRT).  

The BYOAC forums are great for these (and tonnes of other awesome projects and restos)

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=92591.0

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=90769.0

I planned on installing a 28" Hanns-G monitor in a slim cab. The vert height is close to 19". My favorite project: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=92156.0

I have built a few. As for liking it or not, it depends on who owns it. Purists insist on using an arcade monitor. Some don't care and use an LCD. Some want an original arcade cab look, some don't.

Everything looks better on an LCD, but many say... it's not the same. Looks too clean.

I had a rotating 19" arcade monitor in my first cab..  Blahhh...  Pain in the a** and it doesn't really make things that much more enjoyable..  It did have a "cool" factor though..  Get a 25" horizontal monitor.  Big enough to play vertical games on a horizontal screen.

You can't be worried about authenticity if you're only going with a half-cab...  So why worry about having a vertical screen for vertical games...

Mike

Having a vertical screen would just be cool for more screen real estate.  I have a 27" CRT in my cab now, and some vertical stuff is a little cramped (DoDonPachi is a good example).  Not unplayable by any stretch, but it got me thinking about how I'd design a cabinet differently if I didn't have to house the big a** monitor.  

I haven't been to byoac in ages-going through everyone else's projects just got to be too much of a time suck.  That slim project looks pretty good though-the panel looks like it's angled a little too steeply, but that's just my preference.  Still, it's always impressive to see what people with actual artistic skills can do with a cabinet.  Mine's functional, but definitely not winning any beauty contests.

Well, initially, I thought I would build two mame cabs: one for vert games and the other for horizontal. Now I just want a big, 28" widescreen lcd for a 'fighter mame' to play old SF as well as the newest version without worrying too much about the vert games. I'll have a 60-in-1 cab for that. And (hopefully) a jrok multi-Williams cab and neo-geo w/ the XXX-in-1 cart. That'll cover most of the bases ... I hope.

BYOAC is a time suck but there are lots of great projects. Here are a few I bookmarked:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=71848.0;all
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=55789.0;all
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=77634.0 - Cab is overdone but check out the videos
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=99144 - Behemoth 4-player

Woodrail mini: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=91235.0

And this piece 'o junk: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=98252.0