AE-1B Chassis & GroovyMAME!

[lettuce]

Ok have managed to bag myself a SONY KV-X2532U which has the AE-1B chassis. Now i have a Sony which as the FE-1 and another that had a BE-3D chassis, and the AE-1B appears to be the most versatile one of them all and i think is the holy grail when it comes to MAME on a Scart TV.

At the moment im using just the default monitor specs line......."monitor_specs_0 15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.160, 1.056, 0, 0, 288, 448_0 15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.160, 1.056, 0, 0, 288, 448"

and at the moment i have tried a few games...

Elevator Action Returns - Fills the screen with a bit of overscan on the vertical
 R-Type - Has approx 3/4" borders top and bottom and cuts of aprrox 6 lines of pixels at the bottom
Dragon Breed -  has approx 3/4" borders at the top and bottom
TMNT - Fills the screen
Final Fight - Fills the screen
Golden Axe - Fills the screen
1942 - No display...couldnt sync???
Pac-Man - No display...couldnt sync??

Calamity any suggestion on what to change in the monitor spec line to get Dragon Breed to fill the screen without any cut off pixels, and elevator action returns not to has soo much over scan?

[Calamity]

Hi lettuce,

Dragon Breed - Has approx 3/4" borders top and bottom and cuts of aprrox 6 lines of pixels at the bottom

This shouldn't happen 

Having overscan for 224 lines and borders for 256 lines only makes sense if the TV is doing some auto-adjustment depending on the incoming signal. One would expect to see more overscan with 256 lines than with 224. So probably this Sony is also doing some undesired stuff on its own.

My priority would be to get dbreed fit the screen, use Arcade_OSD to check if you can get 256 lines without cut off lines.

For the others your only chance is adjust the potenciometers as overscan cannot get fixed by software.

1942 and pacman will be using the top hfreq allowed by that monitor_specs line (16200) and your TV seems to reject it. Either lower that value to 15900 or something like that, or adjust the hfreq potenciometer on the chassis if exists any (I'm assuming this chassis is potentiometer driven).

[lettuce]

Sorry my mistake, it was R-Type that had about 6 lines of pixels cut off from the bottom not Dragon breed, ill fix that it my first post. Does that make miore sense now?

[Calamity]

Sorry my mistake, it was R-Type that had about 6 lines of pixels cut off from the bottom not Dragon breed, ill fix that it my first post. Does that make miore sense now?

It's the same, both are 256 lines tall.

[lettuce]

Hmmm, so how come ones missing 6 or so lines of pixels and the other isnt....or though Dragon Breed has a very slight glitch on the very last row of pixels??

EDIT: changing the monitor_specs line to 16000, fix 1942 and pac-man, which just has a very slight over scan 

[Calamity]

Hmmm, so how come ones missing 6 or so lines of pixels and the other isnt....or though Dragon Breed has a very slight glitch on the very last row of pixels??

Yeah it doesn't make sense, those two games should use the exact same modeline indeed.

Just thinking... could it be that you manually modified the vertical centering of any of those through MAME's on screen menu and those when you tested with your previous Sony? Make sure you start from a clean MAME folder just in case.

[lettuce]

where are those settings stored...the CFG Folder???

[Calamity]

where are those settings stored...the CFG Folder???

Yes.

[lettuce]

Ok done that and its still the same. Could it be that R-Type has its score right at the very limit of its display area where as Dragon Breed doesnt and has it a few pixels up?, hence thats why it doesnt appear to be cutting anything off but infact it really is im just not seeing it as those row of pixels dont display anything??

[Calamity]

Always use the nag screens with the white frames for doing this stuff, never the game itself.

[lettuce]

Nag screen is over scanned cant see top or bottom.

Have use 384x256 in ArcadeOSD and the grid pattern is overscanned! If i lower the Vertical Geometry from...

V center   [16/17]
VFP         [1 ln][ 0.062ms]
VSP        [3 ln][ 0.187ms]
VBP        [16 ln][ 0.999ms]

to...

V center   [1/17]
VFP         [16 ln][ 0.999ms]
VSP        [3 ln][ 0.187ms]
VBP        [1 ln][ 0.062ms]

then i can see the bottom white border line of the grid patter but not the top

EDIT: Change to the above setting in the monitor_specs line in the mame.ini file and now i can see the bottom line of the nag screen but not the top on R-Type and now the score is fully showing! What do i need to change so i can maybe see the top line of the nag screen for rtype?

Also notice a few other games i have tried (TMNT & Golden Axe) there is now approx an inch border at the bottom of the screen and the top is overscanned/not showing..so i need to shift the display down vertically, what option would that be in the Arcade_OSD?

[Calamity]

VBP can't be 1 line, that will cause some lines on the top to dissapear. Remind that in order to find the lowest value for VBP we had to check that the top of the picture didn't get distorted... and that makes necessary to see the whole raster... so first you have to correct the vertical overscan by hardware so that all lines fit in the screen...

Anyway you said you had borders with dbreed/rtype but at the same time you say you have overcan on top and bottom, how is this?

[lettuce]

Yeah with my current monitor_spec, Rtype & Dragon Breed are bordered (ingame) but only show the bottom nag white border, and other games i tried golden axe and tmnt there is a border at the bottom of the screen but the top of the display is not show, if i move the 'Vertical Position' value down in the mame menu then i can see the top of the screen but obviosuly they its overscanning at the bottom. So the whole display needs to be shifted downwards

Just to confirm whats the difference between overscan and just getting the top of the picture chopped off?

[Calamity]

The change you made adds a huge border on the bottom, that's why the bottom white line is shifted up and you can see it. In order to shift the picture down you need to undo the change you made but that leads you to the initial state (the problem is that the picture doesn't fit).

Overscan is when some lines are hidden from us because their drawn out of the visible part of the tube, but they're still drawn, you can bring them inside the visible area by adjusting v-size physically, and this is something that cannot get fixed by software.

On the other hand the top of the picture gets chopped when the VBP time is too short. So even if you adjust v-sice to get the upper lines inside the visible area some lines are missing.

Overscan means the picture overflows the CRT glass frame, so it implies there are no borders. If you have borders up and down you should see the picture complete. If this is not the case, and your missing lines up and down, then something very odd (and bad) is going on.

[lettuce]

So what i need to do then is select a really low res of say 256x256 in Arcade_OSD and try and get the best possible fit using Arcade_OSD options, and then use the pots of the TV to get it perfect?

[Paradroid]

Woah! You guys have really started the race without me! I saw lettuce's post this morning but you guys got busy quick.

I'll setup my AE-1 chassis Sony this afternoon and try to get on board this thread. I presume that the two chassis types will be pretty similar regarding the capabilities. Hopefully with another set of eyes on this one we can come up with a great result and avoid confusion along the way.

[Calamity]

Yes, basically you need to find it this TV is capable of showing up to 256 lines at different refresh rates. That may involve adjusting pots. Probably there's some factor that triggers the overscanning / underscanning behaviour your seeing for either 224 and 256 lines. It may have to do with PAL/NTSC modes. This could be compensated by wiring the v-size pot for quick adjustment, but the priority is seeing if the TV can deal with 256 lines.

[lettuce]

Well its coming up to almost 12 at night hear now so ill be going to bed in a bit, but tomorrow i guess i better take the back of this TV and see what i can see in regards to pots. Probably by the time i wake up in the morning you guys will have locked down a monitor_spec lol! 

[lettuce]

Just slightly off topic, is GroovyMAME still unable to use ATI cards above the 4 series?

[Paradroid]

Just slightly off topic, is GroovyMAME still unable to use ATI cards above the 4 series?

Haha. Well, this thread didn't stay on track long...

I didn't get a chance to setup my KV-C27 due to Easter socialising. However, I wanted to make the comment that the AE-1 is by for the best I've ever seen for horizontal linearity. Calamity and I spoke about this around the time got the Sharp Image chassis. Well, that thing did all sort of weird stretching, just awful. My modded Blaupunkt is very good but squishes things slightly as they scroll to and from the edges of the screen. However, with the AE-1, I couldn't detect any distortion at the edges of the screen. This effect is really easy to see with something like Legend of Hero Tomna: just watch the size of the bricks in the first level as they scroll past. If they don't compress or expand, your chassis is doing well!

[Calamity]

Just slightly off topic, is GroovyMAME still unable to use ATI cards above the 4 series?

Yes, well actually is the hacked ATI drivers which only support up to HD 4xxxx family.

[carlosboccadoro]

Hello Lettuce, Paradroid & Calamity. 
I am in the process of restoring my machine Game Over.
http://arcadeforever.forumfree.it/?t=64679965
I have a Sony Trinitron TV KV-25X1E with chassis BE-3D.
Now I have access to the Service Mode, and I wonder if any of you have any with the same chassis, which could send the values that have the Picture Adjustment, Geometry and Wide, or if they know how to reset the factory settings.
I have mounted an Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, Sapphire HD 4350 set to 15 kHz with ATOM-15 Calamitysoft.
Thank you very much.
Carlos.-