Radeon HD 2400 - Multiple resolutions in game ini?

[retrorepair]

I've come across an issue with my setup, ST-V games use at least 3 different resolutions. While it's interlaced resolution of 704x448 works fine, both 320x224 and 352x224 are a garbled mess.

I had a similar issue with Mortal Kombat though one resolution was enough in the ini. What do I do when I need to replace one or more resolutions while leaving the others?

I thought of adjusting them with arcade_osd but 320x224 doesn't appear since my dotclock won't do lower than 7.3 (Radeon HD 2400) and 352x224, while a mess in groovymame just bluescreens in arcade_osd.

Any ideas?

[retrorepair]

I've actually just noticed when I go through the test menu (by memory, I can't see a thing) and select CRT test, it comes up and looks great, but according the switchres' output, it's the same 320x224@59.76 resolution that shows up as a scrambled mess when it first loads  

Interestingly enough, when I force it to 320x224 in the game ini like so:

Code: [Select]

mode          1
resolution    320x224

the first screen comes up ok (albeit slightly squashed in the middle) and the CRT test screen looks great again

I guess switchres is doing something it's not telling me about?

[Calamity]

Hi retrorepair,

There's definitely something odd with your setup there, you shouldn't need to use inis at all if everything works as it's supposed to, even with games that switch resolutions.

I'd like to see some logs in order to find the issue. That will show us the list of available modes installed in your system.

Just run some of the problematic games like this:

groovymame romname -v -md 4 >romname.txt

and attach the file here, that will help us to see what's happening.

[retrorepair]

Oh that's odd then. Nearly all games work great aside from those attached (they represent the drivers whos resolutions are screwing things up).

So even with a Radeon HD 2400 I should get all resolutions? I thought that due to the high dotclock it wasn't possible?

[Calamity]

Thanks for the logs!

I think I know what's happening. However the fact that mk resolution doesn't work would mean that you probably should set the dotclockmin value to a higher safe value like 8.0

Follow these steps:

- Recalculate modelines with VMMaker, dotclockmin = 8.0, monitor GENERIC (wasn't it?)
- Restart
- Edit mame.ini and set the same values for the dotclockmin and monitor type options used in vmmaker.ini (8.0 and GENERIC, this is what probably was missing before).

[retrorepair]

Ah yeah I didn't configure the mame ini.

Ok so I tried what you said and everything now works just as it should EXCEPT Mortal Kombat and the Y/T/Wolf Unit games.

So higher dotclock to fix those do you think?

Thanks for the help btw, I finally think I know what I'm doing with this  

[Calamity]

Just test the 400x256 resolution with Arcade_OSD to see if it works.

[retrorepair]

Hmm, 400x256@56.996 works fine in Arcade_OSD 

[Calamity]

Interesting. So what's exactly wrong with mk? Still the same as before or something changed?

[retrorepair]

Same as before, sync out of range.

[Calamity]

You may need to tweak your vertical frequency potenciometer a little bit. mk runs at 54 Hz, so it may be too low for your monitor settings. On the other hand, the modeline you're testing in Arcade_OSD works at 57 Hz, which may fall within your settings.

[retrorepair]

I have a real NBA Jam PCB and that works on this monitor fine, though again is a mess in groovymame. In fact I've never had a board not sync on this monitor (Nanao MS9).

Also World Rally was doing this before I upped the dotclock.

[retrorepair]

There's no vertical hold on an MS9 btw

[Calamity]

Ok so it must be something else.

So better try setting a higher minimal dotclock. Don't be afraid to use 8.0 or even higher. Most lower resolutions will disappear and be scaled by 2. Hopefully that should fix it.

[retrorepair]

8.5 did it 

Thanks Calamity!

[retrorepair]

Rather than start a new thread I figured I'd just bump this one.

So I'm now trying to set up groovymame on a different PC but with the exact same gfx card and all the same files that were on my previous PC, just a new install of windows.

I had the PC connected to a PC monitor running a very high res then started groovymame as normal with ms pacman. Obviously out of the PC monitors range so connected to my cab and it looked fine.

Then I reset the PC with just the cab plugged in and as expected windows detected the low res monitor and displayed it all correctly. However now EVERY game in MAME is just squashed up in the middle!

I tried adjusting the dot clock (though not should why I'd need to) to 8.7, same thing. Then I checked arcade OSD and all resolutions there display normally. So what's going on? Nothing has changed in any of the configs, I just restarted the PC! The desktop resolution changed but why would that affect anything else??  

*EDIT* Dodonpachi DaiOuJou is displayed correctly 

[Calamity]

Not sure what the issue can be. Just post one log of a game that's squashed.

[retrorepair]

Ok here's mk2

*EDIT* Another interesting thing I found is games are not switching resolution after booting like Radient Silvergun, it picks one (interlaced) res and sticks with it. So the title screen looks correct but the other screens and the game are squashed in the middle but interlaced this time.

[Calamity]

Thanks for the log. I think I know what the issue is. Seems like the monitor_dotclock value in mame.ini needs to be specified in Hz instead of MHz (as in vmmaker.ini).

So using monitor_dotclock 8700000 should work.

It's been a long time since I tested this option, I think I should fix it so that VMMaker and GroovyMAME use the same format.

[retrorepair]

Only thing now is I have another build of MAME (non-groovymame) which is doing what the others did before changing that. Does this mean I should change the dotclock to the format you described above in the vmmaker.ini too?

As it goes, how odd that all I did was copy EVERYTHING from the other PC and used the same GFX card yet something changed?

[Calamity]

Oh sorry I edited your post when trying to reply, it happens to me all the time... 

Only thing now is I have another build of MAME (non-groovymame) which is doing what the others did before changing that. Does this mean I should change the dotclock to the format you described above in the vmmaker.ini too?

Non-groovymame builds don't use the dotclock option at all, that's for sure.

As it goes, how odd that all I did was copy EVERYTHING from the other PC and used the same GFX card yet something changed?

There must be something we're not considering, that's for sure too. Maybe you created .inis with VMMaker for MAME in your previous setup and GroovyMAME was using them, and for some reason they weren't copied to the new one. You won't happen to preserve some logs from your previous setup, do you?

[retrorepair]

Yeah those posted above 

If you mean fully WORKING logs though then no but I can get them since I still have the other set up, I'm just borrowing the GFX card until I can get another one.

All the files are there though, I just copied all the directories from the first PC minus windows and program files and just bunged them all on the clean install. I just don't get why it changed and why changing the dot clock fixed it. I guess it's overriding a global that's giving me the issue with the other mame build and I assume other 15k emulators.

[Calamity]

Yes I meant fully working logs from your other system, it's no important anyway, just out of curiosity

I bet the other MAME build just doesn't know what to do with your double-wide resolutions, and it's defaulting to interlaced modes.

What's surprising indeed is that your other system worked at all.

[retrorepair]

I bet the other MAME build just doesn't know what to do with your double-wide resolutions, and it's defaulting to interlaced modes.

Question is, how do I get it to do what I want?

It's only for one system anyway so I guess the answer is tell mame what resolution to use.

[retrorepair]

Out of interest, will many MAME games use 1280x240? I had to modify the h front porch and h back porch from 7 and 16 to 1 and 1 to get it wide enough to use for 320x240 in this other build of MAME!

This is posted as much out of curiosity on my part as it is to remind me what I changed when it all goes wrong later on