Computer and monitor setup

 At this point, I've received most of the non-VirtuaPin parts except the solenoids and some other small parts (diodes, paint, cable management tracks, etc.).  From a mechanical standpoint, I'm kind of treading water until the physical cab arrives in early January.  Therefore, it's time to work on what I can:  computer, software and table(s) setup.

You can see in the picture below my monitor setup (with the obligatory working beer):

The components are as follows (my whole parts list is here):

• Computer: HP Victus Gaming PC
• Playfield: Hisense A65H (43" 4k@60Hz)
• Backglass: Samsung UN32EH5000 (32" 1080p)
• DMD LCD: LG Philips 15.4'' 30pin 1280x800 LCD Laptop Screen Glossy LP154WX4-TLC4- TLB4 with controller LP154WX4-TLC8 TV+HDMI+VGA+AV+USB LCD LED screen Driver Board

Once I decided to limit my costs with a 60Hz playfield, finding a relatively cheap gaming PC to drive it was fairly easy.  The Victus has a AMD Ryzen 7 5700G processor, Radeon 6600XT graphics card, 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD.  All should be plenty powerful enough for a 60Hz 3-screen cab.  Grabbed it from Costco for $700 on a Black Friday deal.

The playfield was also a Costco BF deal for 200 bucks.  (Aside: Never ceases to amaze me how quickly TVs drop in price.  A year ago, this TV would have been $1k easy.)  Got the Samsung for $65 off of Craigslist just a couple hours after I started looking for one.  It's old, but a nice 1080p screen.  DMD panel (eBay) and controller (AliExpress) totaled $30.  All told, I got all the monitors for less than $300.  If I decide to go to 120Hz later, I should only need to upgrade the playfield and graphics card.

Ok, on to the setup.  First thing is to set up the monitors WITHOUT being attached to the computer.  YMMV on this part based on the monitors you have.  For the playfield, I set HDMI1 to gaming mode.  Then, for all the monitors, I set to wake on power up, never sleep and use last input upon wake (only HDMI1 will be connected on each).

Next, the computer setup.  After some trial and error, this procedure seemed to work best for a fresh Windows 11 install:

• Upon power up, create initial account (“admin”) w/pw "admin" and 1 screen (playfield) attached. Do NOT use a Microsoft account.  We want as little on-line activity as possible.  Plus I don't think there's a way to do automatic login with a MS account.
• Get screen to look right (right-click desktop, Display Settings).  You want the scale to be 100% and resolution to be the recommended one.  Also NO HDR.
• Press Windows+I
• Select Power
• Set screen and sleep to Never
• Set power mode to best performance
• Select Accounts
• Sign-In options
• Set up a PIN (temporary)
• Turn off Windows Hello
• Windows require to sign in again -> Never
• Remove PIN
• Select Family & Other Users
• Add account (standard user; I used VirtualPinball w/easy-to-remember password)
• Go back to Display settings and add screen #2 (backglass) and #3 (DMD), getting each one to look right (2 before 3).  Once screen #2 is hooked up, select the playfield screen and under Multiple Displays, select Extend these displays (default) and check Make this my main display.
• Set up screens as instructed by NailBuster/Terry near the bottom of this page
• At this point turn OFF anti-virus (Windows, McAfee, whatever)
• Reboot to make sure screens come back as expected
• Unhook screens #2 and #3
• Change user to VirtualPinball
• Repeat the Display Settings and Power sections above and add screens 2&3 as above
• Set up for auto-login
• Press Windows+R
• Type netplwiz
• Enter admin password
• Uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer"
• Reboot and should automatically log into VirtualPinball account with all screens visible.  As you move the mouse from left to right, it should move from the playfield to the backglass to the DMD.

Another step was to use a smart power strip (sorry for the lousy pic):

Plug the computer into the "control" outlet and the 3 monitors into the "switched" or "slave" outlets.  You need a strip with a sensitivity adjustment so that the monitors turn off when the computer is set to sleep (for my PC, a tap of the front panel power switch) and turn on when the PC is either powered up or wake from sleep.  My cab power supplies will also be hooked up to switched outlet(s) so that the whole cab wakes up when the PC comes to life.  At some point, I'll wire the PC switch to a button on the bottom of the cab near the front for easy off-on.  This can be kind of tricky, but it's a ways down the road so I'm not worrying about it for now.

That's it for today.  Next up will be the software installs.