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Author Topic: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)  (Read 36505 times)

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Paradroid

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #120 on: May 02, 2012, 07:33:25 pm »
By the way I am not that familiar with MESS and I remind I read it was a somewhat promising project but required too much resources compared to specific emulators, so it was in a too early stage as to consider it a valid substitute for the myriad of emulators out there.

Ah... To be honest, although I always read the change logs, I've never actually tried using MESS myself. I just figured it was the most likely emulator to include this kind of CRT support. However, as you say, not much use if the actual system emulation isn't up to scratch... :(
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Paradroid

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #121 on: May 02, 2012, 07:44:46 pm »
I live in Norway, so guess it is the same dilemma as you and Apfelannie have been discussing :)

I have no qualm paying for postage or a courier. Even if the original TV that housed the chassis only costs 1 Euro to acquire, chances are the huge postage costs from the Northern to Southern hemisphere are still going to work out cheaper than buying an actual arcade chassis locally. Plus, from everything I've seen in people's collections and local arcades, many of these SCART units have a superior image.

I'd still love to establish some kind of transcontinental trade in vintage European TV chassis with a fellow SCART hunter from the upper part of the world. Obviously I occasionally find some gems here but most of the upper middle class types that bought these TVs originally aren't going to bother advertising their old Euro TV on eBay.com.au for the sake of a couple bucks. They'll just throw it in the gutter instead. :(
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Paradroid

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #122 on: May 03, 2012, 04:04:20 am »
here are some useful docs and links

Thanks heaps, Apple Annie! :) There are a few treats in there that will save me a lot of Google time in the future. Cheers!
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Mopsta

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #123 on: May 03, 2012, 04:29:24 am »
Quote
Thanks man! I haven't been up that way for years now. I love the warm weather... plus, I have have great memories of the awesome arcades (and Grundys!) on the Gold Coast back in the late '80s and early '90s.

Yep, spent a good deal of my youth in Grundy's  :D I remember that place being packed wall to wall with arcades at one stage - It's actually a Timezone now, I still take my daughter up there a fair bit but it's nothing like the old days.

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Also, you've got a Battlestation II!!! How cool are they?! I gutted mine and put the innards of some USB gamepads in there. Works great! I actually picked it up in a Cash Converters on the Sunshine Coast for $25 back in 2000. :)

 :D Can't believe you spotted that, I'm planning on popping some sanwa joysticks in mine and doing the same thing.

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Let's see some pics of your E3001 problems and I'll let you know what I think is possible... If your cab was loaded with an EAK tube instead of the ESF I would have offered to send you the guts of a Siemens I have here (Grundig CUC 6360 chassis from memory...) that is far more compatible than the Loewes (but with a small sacrifice in image focus and stability).

Okay on with the pics, I've done my best to capture the irregularities. It's really difficult as It's behind glass and I have the insides sprayed black so you can't really see the edges of the CRT as a reference.

Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

Looks a lot more curved in the pic than what it actually is.

Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

Is there any particular resolution that i should be making adjustments too?

Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

Tried to capture the skewed effect here, you can just faintly make out the edge of the crt and notice how it's not parallel to the edge.  The whole image is basically skewed from bottom right to top left.

I don't really have any problems swapping it out with another one but damn they are getting harder and harder to find! BTW the tube is A66EAK

I turned on the contur 770 last night and tried to access the service menu with the profil remote, seems I can use the menu button but the navigation controls don't seem to work, tried with an all in one remote too, damn!

Cheers!

Mopsta

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #124 on: May 03, 2012, 05:04:34 am »
Just on a side note - I managed to sort out my c64 emulation issue's by switching to an emulator called Hoxs64. It's regularly updated and boasts 100% cycle exact c64 emulation, it's pretty cool. I set the refresh to the original 64 50.12hz and set 384x288@50.100hz in Arcade_OSD and I have to say it's spot on! Silky smooth scrolling in Uridium and feels just like a real c64  :applaud:

Also, Paradriod - I'm looking to pick this up - http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/300703212044?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1431.l2649#ht_500wt_1413
not many details in the listing, any idea's of what model it might be and what to expect with groovymame etc from it?


Paradroid

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #125 on: May 03, 2012, 08:23:07 am »
Yep, spent a good deal of my youth in Grundy's  :D I remember that place being packed wall to wall with arcades at one stage

Hellz yeah! :) I remember going in there as a kid and having my mind blown by a brand new Ghouls'n Ghosts machine. Then there was Operation Wolf, 3 screen Ninja Warriors... wow. Very cool. Just jam packed with games...

Tried to capture the skewed effect here, you can just faintly make out the edge of the crt and notice how it's not parallel to the edge.  The whole image is basically skewed from bottom right to top left.

Right. I see what you're saying. I assume you've fiddled with the E/W and Trapezium values in the Service Menu? The Loewes have two values for each. The service manual describes them as "reciprocal"  ??? ... in practise this means you fiddle with Trapezium 1 and Trapezium 2 and observed the combined effect. All four values interact and you have to experiment to find the best combination.

Do the top and bottom edges line up perfectly? It looks as if they do in the picture... I've seen heaps of Philips tubes where the picture was tilted and the geometry wasn't perfect because of this. I've only recently worked out how to correct this by rotating the yoke. Actually very easy if you're brave enough to do it. :)

If neither of those approaches works out you're probably stuck with those niggles. :(

Since you're running an A66EAK you could certainly hook up the C9003 chassis in your Contur or one of the boards I have here. Most chassis actually fit neatly in a box that Australia Post sells for $3. I could send you a great Grundig chassis for what I paid for it plus postage. Plugs straight into an A66EAK. I'd say the geometry is better than your Loewe and you certainly won't have the same issues with 256 line games. PM me if you're interested. Not trying to make any money, just helping out. :)

I turned on the contur 770 last night and tried to access the service menu with the profil remote

You need the older black remote with the slide down section. There are yellow and blue arrows along with plus and minus buttons. You need those for the Service Menu. Last year, before I got hold of one of them (I have a few now ;) ), I spend a whole morning juggling two universal remotes before I discovered all the key codes I needed to tweak the Contur 1470 I recently sold.

Just on a side note - I managed to sort out my c64 emulation issue's by switching to an emulator called Hoxs64.

Sweet as! :) I'll definitely check that out on the weekend! Do you have a copy of the modeline you used? Can copy and paste from Winmodelines...

Oh, and that Grundig you linked to... of course I already saw that on my radar. ;D Get the model number from the seller and Apple Annie or myself will tell you what you can expect. I've tried some similar looking Grundigs (CUC 2030 and CUC 2050) and they were both far more flexible than the Loewes. Some have Philips tubes and others have Video Color tubes (made in Italy).
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Tusten

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #126 on: May 03, 2012, 02:38:10 pm »
philips a59eak...x01and a66eak..x01 have the same yoke and are 100 % compatible . they work with loewe , grundig , metz , blaupunkt and even with some sharp tv chassis ....these kind of tubes also work well with hantarex polostar multisync chassis 15-38 khz and valvo ( philips ) 93-10 , 93-11 .

Now that's interesting. So far I have been looking for 25" only, but now I have to start looking for larger sets with compatible chassis as well. Oh dear, my house is to small for this hobby...

What about A59EAK...X02, ...X03 etc. - is it possible to generalize about these in terms of competability (yoke inductance)? Would a A59EAK...X02 and A66EAK...X02 be compatible as well?

Quote
here are some useful docs and links : https://rapidshare.com/files/3565851615/chassis.rar

Thanks a lot. Really useful reference documents.

Tusten

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #127 on: May 03, 2012, 05:00:34 pm »

I have no qualm paying for postage or a courier. Even if the original TV that housed the chassis only costs 1 Euro to acquire, chances are the huge postage costs from the Northern to Southern hemisphere are still going to work out cheaper than buying an actual arcade chassis locally. Plus, from everything I've seen in people's collections and local arcades, many of these SCART units have a superior image. I'd still love to establish some kind of transcontinental trade in vintage European TV chassis with a fellow SCART hunter from the upper part of the world.

I will look around for analog chassis. However, shipping in Norway is very expensive even for domestic postage, so expect it to be costly. You definitely have a point when comparing the shipping cost of a good TV chassis to the cost of an arcade chassis though.

Quote
Obviously I occasionally find some gems here but most of the upper middle class types that bought these TVs originally aren't going to bother advertising their old Euro TV on eBay.com.au for the sake of a couple bucks. They'll just throw it in the gutter instead. :(

I can confirm that the situation is the same in Norway. Lots of more recent TVs are given away for free. TVs from early 90s and late 80s are more difficult to come by as people just hand them in for disposal/recycling. The best place to find old TVs are outside shops selling modern TVs as these shops are legally required to accept old TVs for disposal/recycling.

My complements to your blog, Paradroid. Lots of interesting reading. I find your method of pairing an old analog chassis with a more recent tube to be compelling. For me this also adds the dimension of tube size as I want 25" (A59) tubes for cabinet use. Tube/chassis/yoke swap business here I come! I was particularly impressed with your yoke swaps with bonded yokes. I thought this was impossible. I guess I have to find a disposable tube and start practicing.

Thanks!



Paradroid

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #128 on: May 05, 2012, 07:41:34 am »
I will look around for analog chassis. However, shipping in Norway is very expensive even for domestic postage, so expect it to be costly.

Yeah, well, I guess you can't get much further from Australia than Norway. ;) I appreciate the fact that you're even considering this. If you happen to find an analogue beauty, we can look into the postage then. Some of the CUC 5/6xxx series Grundig chassis are probably lighter than the archaic CUC 4635 Apple Annie found for me. I have a CUC 6360 (with some image stability issues) that looks extremely promising if it were to be repaired...

I was particularly impressed with your yoke swaps with bonded yokes. I thought this was impossible. I guess I have to find a disposable tube and start practising.

It's actually very easy once you know how. :) The hardest part was building up the courage to give it a go. I quite like being alive so I didn't want to electrocute myself or create some kind of X-ray gun. ;)

Basically, you just need to slide a knife under the silicon blobs and carefully slice by pressing against the tube. Once all four blobs have been sliced, you loosen the neck clamp using a hex key. The yoke slides clean off after that! I took the opportunity to clean the neck and dust off the replacement yoke before transplanting. You can easily rotate the yoke while the TV is running in order to get the image properly aligned. Then, you just tighten the bracket to hold it in place. Once I was satisfied with the geometry, I lay the TV face down and hot glued the yoke into place (at the same points that the original glue blobs were in).

You don't really need to sacrifice a tube to try this operation. If you work carefully I'm sure you could reverse all the steps and end up back where you started without having damaged anything. The main risk I can see is accidentally cutting some of the yoke windings when slicing through the chunks of glue.
My MAME/SCART/CRT blog: SCART Hunter

mazinger-z

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #129 on: May 08, 2012, 11:03:18 am »
Dear Mopsta, would you please share the details of the modeline you are using with Hoxs64? Or at least, how did you manage to have it starting directly in full-screen, as there doesn't seem to be any command line parameter or configuration options for doing so? Thank you!

Paradroid

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Return of the Loewe E3000 chassis
« Reply #130 on: July 20, 2013, 12:17:15 pm »
Hi Calamity,

A while ago the flyback on my favorite Blaupunkt burnt out. I've ordered a new one and hopefully the TV can be revived. Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I came across another rare and very nice Loewe Calida 5072. As this thread documents, the E3000 chassis has amazing picture quality but it's not the most compatible board.

I have done some further tests with E3000 and have discovered the following:

In PAL mode, 285 lines is maximum possible before the TV starts to crop lines. 52 Hz is about the upper limit before the picture rolls.

In NTSC mode, only a measly 233 lines can be shown before the image is cropped! 57 Hz is the lowest refresh rate possible before the picture rolls. I've had the refresh up to 63 Hz but the geometry starts to distort a little.

So, there's a big gap in the middle where the TV won't sync. Also, to get 240 and 256 lines games to show, they need to be pushed down into the PAL mode.

The 285 and 233 lines limits I'm confident about. The vertical frequency ranges may have a little more play in them, but not much.

My question is: how do I define a set of monitor specs that force 233+ line games to always run in PAL mode (with a lower refresh).

Also, how do I get the games to run smoothly (albeit with a lower refresh than usual) instead of with tripple buffer?

Basically, I want to make sure all lines are showing at the expense of original refresh rate.

It would be nice to finally get a working solution for the E3000 after so much effort has gone into it... :)
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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #131 on: July 21, 2013, 09:54:27 am »
Hi Paradroid,

Try this in mame.ini:

monitor custom
crt_range0 15625-16200, 49.50-52.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 285, 448, 570
crt_range1 15625-16200, 57.00-63.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 233, 448, 466
synrefresh_tolerance 10.0
syncrefresh 1

You don't need to change anything in vmmaker.ini, just use the modelines available.

This should send each resolution through the right range, so the refresh rates keep within the expected ones for the Calida and the gap is not used. The -syncrefresh part is to force all games to synchronize despite the wrong refresh.

A shame about the Blaupunkt  :-[ Hopefully you can fix it with the new flyback.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2013, 09:56:39 am by Calamity »
Important note: posts reporting GM issues without a log will be IGNORED.
Steps to create a log:
 - From command line, run: groovymame.exe -v romname >romname.txt
 - Attach resulting romname.txt file to your post, instead of pasting it.

CRT Emudriver, VMMaker & Arcade OSD downloads, documentation and discussion:  Eiusdemmodi

Paradise

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #132 on: February 13, 2020, 08:38:37 am »
Old thread but i guess it's the best place to ask.

Since two days i have a Loewe Calida 72 52460 and i need to sort the collection and decide what i keep.

Is there somewhere something where you can see what tube is what? With google i find nothing.
There is: Blackline D, Blackline S, Blackline S Ultra Flat...

The Calida has a tube i never saw before. It's a KSM (A68KSM696X01)
My Concept Plus 52431 (Concept 7000) has a A66EAK252X01 and on the back of the TV it says BlackLine S

Then i have two A59EAK071X01 and one A59EAK71X01 < whats the difference?
I have three A66EAK71X01 but i know there is also A66EAK071X11.

What i like to do is use the CUC5360 (all have A66EAK) with the A59EAK tubes.
If i look into the service manuals the CRT Base has different IC, resistors and capacitors for different tubes.

@Paradroid, if i look at your block you just swap stuff around like there is nothing to look at or worry about?

Paradroid

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Re: GroovyMAME and SCART TVs? (Answer = Yes! They work well together!)
« Reply #133 on: February 25, 2020, 08:41:29 pm »
@Paradroid, if i look at your block you just swap stuff around like there is nothing to look at or worry about?

I swapped the yokes to be sure the impedance was the same. That way you don't need to worry about changing anything on the chassis.

As for the questions about the tubes, man, I would just keep all of those. ;)

We only get rubbish in New Zealand compared with what you're sitting on.
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