GroovyMame and Vision Pro LCD

[jrose78]

I was hijacking another thread and felt bad so I moved to this new thread:

I ordered the 19" Vision Pro LCD (318) and got it in a couple days ago and the picture in gorgeous, but a couple things I noticed where that it seems to wash out at extreme angles, not horrible, and no color distortion, but its there. I not sure if I can get a better monitor with these angles but just to be sure I ordered the Dell 2007fp (118.00) . I plan on doing a side by side comparison and then pick a winner and sell the other one. I have no doubt that the Vision Pro would look good in an upright but I am not so sure it is the best in a cocktail table. Vision Pro has a 160 viewing angle and the dell 178. The other thing is I guess the Dell is a 4:3 and the Vision is 5:4 (correct me if I am wrong).  This monitor runs mk at 54 or is it 53 without a problem. I checked the monitor menu and mame F11  100%. Any questions or if you guys want pics of the monitor .. Just ask. 

Calamity - do you know the optimal settings for mame.ini for this type of monitor? Also its says 1024x768 is the native res but I can set it to 1280x1024 and it looks better than 1024x768.

Here is the Monitor Info

onitor
  Model name............... TOVISSTG19D15
  Windows description...... Generic PnP Monitor TOVISSTG19D15
  Manufacturer............. TOV
  Plug and Play ID......... TOV0013
  Serial number............ n/a
  Manufacture date......... 2009, ISO week 52
  Filter driver............ Monitor
  -------------------------
  EDID revision............ 1.3
  Input signal type........ Analog 0.700,0.000 (0.7V p-p)
  Sync input support....... Separate, Sync-on-green
  Display type............. RGB color
  Screen size.............. 380 x 300 mm (19.1 in)
  Power management......... Active off/sleep
  Extension blocs.......... None
  -------------------------
  DDC/CI................... n/a

Color characteristics
  Default color space...... Non-sRGB
  Display gamma............ 2.20
  Red chromaticity......... Rx 0.640 - Ry 0.344
  Green chromaticity....... Gx 0.299 - Gy 0.608
  Blue chromaticity........ Bx 0.145 - By 0.074
  White point (default).... Wx 0.313 - Wy 0.329
  Additional descriptors... None

Timing characteristics
  Horizontal scan range.... 13-80kHz
  Vertical scan range...... 50-80Hz
  Video bandwidth.......... 130MHz
  CVT standard............. Not supported
  GTF standard............. Not supported
  Additional descriptors... None
  Preferred timing......... Yes
  Native/preferred timing.. 1024x768p at 60Hz (5:4)
    Modeline............... "1024x768" 65.000 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
  Detailed timing #1....... 720x400p at 70Hz (5:4)
    Modeline............... "720x400" 28.300 720 738 846 900 400 412 414 449 +hsync +vsync

Standard timings supported
     720 x  400p at  70Hz - IBM VGA
     640 x  480p at  60Hz - IBM VGA
     640 x  480p at  72Hz - VESA
     640 x  480p at  75Hz - VESA
     800 x  600p at  56Hz - VESA
     800 x  600p at  60Hz - VESA
     800 x  600p at  72Hz - VESA
     800 x  600p at  75Hz - VESA
    1024 x  768p at  60Hz - VESA
    1024 x  768p at  70Hz - VESA
    1024 x  768p at  75Hz - VESA
    1280 x 1024p at  75Hz - VESA
    1280 x 1024p at  60Hz - VESA STD
    1152 x  864p at  75Hz - VESA STD

Report information
  Date generated........... 3/31/2012
  Software revision........ 2.60.0.972
  Data source.............. Registry-Active
  Operating system......... 6.1.7601.2.Service Pack 1

[Calamity]

Yes I remind having set this up for bent98's machine and it supported up to 1280x1024, so just use a line like this:

monitor_specs0    13000-80000, 50-80, 0.636, 3.813, 1.906, 0.318, 0.064, 1.048, 0, 1, 1024, 1024

I've used the frequency ranges reported by your monitor's EDID, and the porch values are dummy ones (from the VGA default setting) as they won't be used anyway. The 1024 values account for the total lines that will be used.

Remind to set your desktop to 1280x1024 and these options in mame.ini:

-video d3d
-monitor lcd
-powertrip 1

(I'm assuming you've already installed Powerstrip)

Good luck!

[jrose78]

Thanks Calamity! That is what I had setup so I guess I did everything right.  One more thing if I could. I get an error everytime I launch mame that i have to ok. It has something to do with permission and reg.  From what I understand this error doesn't matter because it uses powerstrip for the info it can't get or set but is there a way to turn it off. Thanks again. 

[lettuce]

So what is so speical about these Vision Pro LCD monitors over a normal monitor?, can they do really low resolutions or refresh rates?

[jrose78]

So the refresh can be adjusted on these monitor but the resolution should stay 1280x1024. The downside is that it is 5:4 not 3:4. I think I may have made a mistake on this one paying 318.00 but I will know more when I get the dell in sometime next week.  Then I can do a comparison. 

lettuce - what do you have for a lcd and what are your thoughts on it?

If the dell is better I will try and sell this so if anyone here is interested pm me or something. Remember its a good monitor just not sure about the extreme viewing angles.

[lettuce]

Im just using a bog Standard 40" Samsung LCD TV

[Calamity]

Thanks Calamity! That is what I had setup so I guess I did everything right.  One more thing if I could. I get an error everytime I launch mame that i have to ok.

It's W7 isn't it? Yes I'm afraid that needs to get fixed. How are you launching MAME, from a frontend?

[jrose78]

From Hyperspin it doesn't show the error but from Groovymame it kicks the error.  Yes W7 . Not a big deal I guess, but its there. 

[jrose78]

I decided to put my Vision Pro 19" LCD on EBay.  http://www.ebay.com/itm/230772228259 . I still haven't got the Dell 2007fp in yet but I am sure the bigger size 3:4 and 178 degree viewing angles are going to win. 

[lettuce]

Just be aware of the response time of the panel. I know i had a Dell monitor (cant remember which), but the response time on it wasnt the greatest and on fast movinf sprites it used to leave a trail behind....sort of like a blur effect

[jrose78]

 .

[jrose78]

Just be aware of the response time of the panel. I know i had a Dell monitor (cant remember which), but the response time on it wasnt the greatest and on fast movinf sprites it used to leave a trail behind....sort of like a blur effect

The response time is 16ms average on the Dell 2007fp.
I'll keep an eye out for that when I get it in which should be Monday.

[Calamity]

Hi jrose78

I've got one 20" Dell 2007WFPb, probably not the same one you ordered but anyway, here are some tests I did, and It didn't seem to be able to refresh at custom refresh rates.:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=97200.msg1195793#msg1195793

[jrose78]

Hi jrose78

I've got one 20" Dell 2007WFPb, probably not the same one you ordered but anyway, here are some tests I did, and It didn't seem to be able to refresh at custom refresh rates.:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=97200.msg1195793#msg1195793

When you say custom do you mean like MK where it need to be set @ 54? I figured that would be the trade off. Is there something else I am missing? Will most of the games still be ok? My other options are hp lp2065 or the NEC MultiSync LCD2090UXI , but they all use the same panel. I just started this cocktail project and already I am stuck on the LCD  .

Dell 2007FP:
Resolution 
Horizontal scan range 30 kHz to 81 kHz (automatic)
Vertical scan range 56 Hz to 76 Hz, exception 1600 x 1200 at 60 Hz only
Optimal preset resolution 1600 x 1200 at 60 Hz
 
Highest preset resolution 1600 x 1200 at 60 Hz


NEC MultiSync LCD2090UXI :

Synchronization Range

Horizontal: 31.5 kHz to 91.2 kHz, 99.4 kHz*2

 Vertical:  50 Hz to 85 Hz

[lettuce]

Jrose78, where are you based? Does it defo have to be a LCD you will use? If your in Europe or Austrilia then a 21" Scart CRT TV would be your best bet

[jrose78]

I am in the US.  I am willing to accept some issues with LCD for the trade off of convenience. I just want to minimize as much as possible the problems with LCD and these old games.

[Calamity]

When you say custom do you mean like MK where it need to be set @ 54? I figured that would be the trade off. Is there something else I am missing? Will most of the games still be ok? My other options are hp lp2065 or the NEC MultiSync LCD2090UXI , but they all use the same panel. I just started this cocktail project and already I am stuck on the LCD  .

Yes by 'custom' I mean anything that's not in the range of 60 Hz, which involves a vast amount of games in MAME. You can still force things to run 60 Hz to get smooth animation but for some games that's too much, i.e. donpachi will run at 104% etc. There will always be a range, rather than an exact refresh value, where things will work fluently, the wider this range the better the monitor for MAME.

Those monitor specs you pasted are input values. The fact that a monitor accepts 56 Hz as input doesn't always mean that the panel is actually refreshed at 56 Hz.  What we're interested in is 'output' ranges and these are never advertised. You need to feed the thing with custom refresh rates and sit in front of it to judge scroll smoothness, that's all we can do I'm afraid.

The panel should not be a problem, it's the circuitry in the chasis what makes a difference. In my experience, ancient LCDs proved to be better showing a wide range of refresh rates than my recent ones.

[jrose78]

Thanks for the explanation. That explains a lot. I know in MK you could tell on the first screen where it scrolls and on the Vision Pro it was smooth as butter with powerstrip on. I guess its just a wait and see with the Dell although I think the Dell you mentioned is really the same one except wide screen.   There are still the other Screens I mentioned if the Dell is a problem (NEC, HP). To bad there wasn't some master list. If anyone is looking to build a cocktail table and running mame it would seem they would want a s-ips with custom refresh and nobody knows which one has those properties for certain.

[jrose78]

I got the Dell 2007fp in and it is the s-ips version. The angles are awesome with no real fading like before. Perfect from up, down, left, right.  Looks great and no ghosting from my initial test. The bad news is that Powerstrip doesn't really like it and if I launch Groovymame with it enabled it freezes and the monitor goes into power save mode. So I guess custom refresh is out.  If anyone on this board has the hp LP2065 it would be cool if you could let us know if Groovymame with powerstrip enabled give you custom refresh.  That monitor is dirt cheap and also s-ips.

[Calamity]

Just to make sure, did you try this line?

monitor_specs0    30000-81000, 56-76, 0.636, 3.813, 1.906, 0.318, 0.064, 1.048, 0, 0, 1200, 1200

[jrose78]

Just to make sure, did you try this line?

monitor_specs0    30000-81000, 56-76, 0.636, 3.813, 1.906, 0.318, 0.064, 1.048, 0, 0, 1200, 1200

I kept the setting the same as the vision pro other than updating the monitor_specs0 line.  Rebooted a couple times too.

[Calamity]

By updating the monitor_specs0 you mean you used a line like the one I posted today? (I made this one specific for the Dell)

[jrose78]

By updating the monitor_specs0 you mean you used a line like the one I posted today? (I made this one specific for the Dell)

Yes that exact line. The monitor just shoots into powersave mode.

[Calamity]

Ok but that shouldn't happen if you run a 60 Hz game, like goldnaxe, if it goes into powersafe too then something odd is going on.

[jrose78]

Ok but that shouldn't happen if you run a 60 Hz game, like goldnaxe, if it goes into powersafe too then something odd is going on.

I reinstalled Powerstrip. Just starting Powerstrip caused the monitor to go into powersave. Only after unplugging the dvi cable and plugging it back in could I see the desktop again.  Next I tried using a VGA instead of a DVI cable and suddenly everything works.  I tried MK and it showed 56 so I went back in and changed the spec line to 54 from 56 and launched it again and now the monitor says 55. I then checked the scolling in MK and noticed that it does in fact have jitters/jumping when moving. The skipping or jitter is slight and not bad at all. So my next question is what advantage do I have using GroovyMame over regular Mame with my setup?  Do you think the monitor is fixed at 60 internally?

[kalars123]

The monitor more than likely normalizes whatever signal you input to ~60hz, thus it is not suitable for use with groovy mame.  Since it will not display anything other than ~60hz you will gain no benefit from using groovy mame. Groovy mame is programmed to be used exclusively with arcade CRT's. If you still want to try and play mame at the correct refresh rates I have found both of these models to be suitable for use with Groovymame+powerstrip.  Viewsonic Va2223wm  and Asus VH222h you can get either one starting at around $160.

[jrose78]

Thanks for the info but the 2 monitors you suggest are both widescreen which takes me even further away from original. 

[jrose78]

I have figured out a little more on the trouble I had earlier.  my monitor (dell 2007fp) can only do 60-61 hz max when the resolution is set to 1600x1200. When I ran a game that pushed it above that my screen turned off and when I launched powerstrip it would go off again because it was remembering what the last game had set it to.  To fix this problem I lowered the res, ran powerstrip, and removed the custom resolution in there. Last I edited the mame.ini monitor spec to max at 61 and put the resolution back to 1600x1200 and now I think I am ok.  I think the lcd can do between 56 and 61 from my testing although it might be normalizing it to 60hz. 

[Justin Z]

I have the HP LP2065 so I will run similar tests once I get it going.  Its specs claim 48-85Hz vertical (but only if the pixel clock is <162 MHz when connected via DVI) with 75Hz at 1600x1200 (if connected via VGA--through DVI it's 60Hz).  Of course, it might normalize--we will see.

[jrose78]

I have the HP LP2065 so I will run similar tests once I get it going.  Its specs claim 48-85Hz vertical (but only if the pixel clock is <162 MHz when connected via DVI) with 75Hz at 1600x1200 (if connected via VGA--through DVI it's 60Hz).  Of course, it might normalize--we will see.

Great. I look forward to that info! 

[Calamity]

Hi jrose78,

That makes a lot of sense now. It means that unfortunately you're going to see some stuttering when the refresh is somewhat far from 60 Hz, but it's up to you to judge if you can live with it or not. On the other hand, small differences like 59.70 Hz should be included in the "smooth" range.

[jrose78]

Well I could not resist and got a used HP LP2065 off ebay for around 80.00 and I have great news. It works!  Mk reports 100% on Mame .. Monitor reports 55hz on vertical and the most important thing is that it scrolls smooth. So I think we have a winner. Couple things to note was once again I had to unistall and reinstall powerstrip because it was not changing the res like it was suppose to when I switched from the Dell to the HP and also to note is that I had to use a DVI-A (a as in analog as in VGA) Because the monitor only has two DVI ports and only the analog signal can go up to 75hz.  The HP I got on ebay had a small scratch/puncture in the LCD so I thought I would see if the DELL panel would fit in the HP and it did. Same harness and everything.  I also tested qbert and that ran at 61. 

[Paradroid]

Success! Well done.

I know you've stated the model number but perhaps you can take a picture of the sticker on the back of the monitor so that all the details are here for future reference? Might save someone else having to go through trials you went through...

[lettuce]

Spec sheet for the HP LP2065 here....

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/en/sm/WF06b/12142134-12142136-12142136-12142136-12142200-12326632-67478465.html?dnr=1

Notice the diffrence in hz its capable of depending on if your using VGA or DVI

I take it this wont do resolutions lower than 640x480??

[jrose78]

Windows reports the lowest resolution as 800x600 if that helps. I don't plan on changing the resolution per say just the refresh. I will be keeping it at 1600x1200 and changing the refresh only to what the game is. Here are some pics of the HP panel after I took it out and swaped the dell for it. Also pics of the back of the HP that allowed custom refresh rates and the back of the panel itself.

[Justin Z]

Really glad to hear that, jrose!  I've experienced some technical difficulties which is why I haven't gotten around to plugging the monitor in yet.  But this is fantastic news and I thank you for taking the plunge!

[jrose78]

On kind of a side note Burger Time runs @ 99% while every other game runs @ 100% (pac-man, qbert, mk)  . The monitor changes to the correct res (its a whole number res ). Its really weird but it doesn't effect anything just my sense of perfection ;-).  I'll have to generate a log file on that game.

[Calamity]

On kind of a side note Burger Time runs @ 99% while every other game runs @ 100% (pac-man, qbert, mk)  . The monitor changes to the correct res (its a whole number res ). Its really weird but it doesn't effect anything just my sense of perfection ;-).  I'll have to generate a log file on that game.

Check the log, it could be 99 point something... Anyway with this method you can only get an aproximation for the requested dotclock, sometimes a very good one but not always, some cards give you more precision (more variety of possible stable dotclock values) than others.

[jrose78]

No offense but you way over my head at this point. You lost me at dotclock

Here is some of the log:

Raw limits (57.4449Hz)-> YresMin= 479p, YresMax= 1502p(3004i)
SwitchRes: Logical limit YresMin (1200/2) = 600p
SwitchRes: Setup monitor limits min=184x600 max=0x3004
SwitchRes: Resolution scaled x3 to meet monitor specs
SwitchRes: Starting with Horizontal freq of 45.062 and Vertical refresh of 57.44
SwitchRes: # 30.000Khz -> 94.000Khz: ( | Doubleres | )
SwitchRes: # btime [3] 1296x720@57.44 45.0368Khz
SwitchRes: ModeLine          "1296x720x57.44" 79.264705 1296 1336 1624 1760 720 734 737 784 -HSync -VSync

SwitchRes v0.013f: [btime] (1) vertical (240x240@57.44)->(432x240@57.44)->(1296x720@57.44)
SwitchRes: # btime 1296x720@57.44 45.0368Khz
SwitchRes:    ModeLine          "1296x720x57.44" 79.264705 1296 1336 1624 1760 720 734 737 784 -HSync -VSync
PStrip: ps_set_refresh(0) 57.444852 Hz, getting stable dotclocks for 155101...
PStrip: ps_set_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155051,528
PStrip: ps_get_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,153514,528
PStrip: ps_set_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155076,528
PStrip: ps_get_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155057,528
PStrip: ps_set_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155101,528
PStrip: ps_get_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155202,528
PStrip: ps_set_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155126,528
PStrip: ps_get_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,154736,528
PStrip: ps_set_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155151,528
PStrip: ps_get_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,46,155202,528
PStrip: ps_set_refresh(0), new dotclock: 155057
PStrip: ps_set_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,45,155057,528
PStrip: ps_get_monitor_timing(0): 1600,64,192,304,1200,1,3,45,153514,528
SwitchRes: Found -1 custom of 44 active modelines

[lettuce]

Can across these LCD panels today from Gremlinsolutions (an arcade supplier here in the UK)

http://www.gremlinsolutions.co.uk/products/monitor19inch.htm

Says it can do CGA/EGA and VGA resolutions!!!