Updating my cabinet, need advice

[Clavius]

Hi everyone, I hope you're all having a safe and happy holiday so far, and enjoying some classic games with your family and friends. I've been needing advice about a change I'd like to make to my arcade cabinet but haven't had the time to do until recently.  I took a crack at it myself over the last couple of weeks but was unable to make any progress and so I need some info and advice.

I built an arcade cabinet back in 2005 and something I've never been able to get working right is getting MAME games to automatically pick the right display modes.  I've been living with frame timing hiccups due to incorrect refresh rates and have decided I want to eliminate them if at all possible.  When I built it I tried to pick components that, at least I thought, would allow me to get the majority of MAME games to display in their original arcade resolutions and refresh rates:

Intel Pentium 4 @ 3.2GHz
1GB RAM
ArcadeVGA (based on the ATI 9200 I think)
Betson Kortek KT-2914 27" Multisync
Windows XP w/SP2
MaLa + various emulators

I've been able to get other emulated systems such as the TurboGrafx, C64, Gameboy, etc., to display perfectly with no tearing and no frame sync hiccups or sound hiccups, but MAME games have been an enormous pain so I gave up.  I've done a ton of research and experimented with different flavors of MAME, and I've reached the limit of my own abilities.

So my questions/concerns are:

1) With my current setup, is it even possible to have most MAME games display properly without refresh rate related frame hiccups?  I've seen some people say you can only get close, and others saying theirs is 100% perfect for most games.
 
     A) If no, then what hardware needs to be changed? My video card? When I tried AdvanceMAME for instance, it kept hard-locking my computer during the video mode tests. I did some poking around and read somewhere that the AVGA 9200 card is not programmable due to its custom bios and that's why it was crashing. So I tried GroovyMAME last week and couldn't get it to display anything either.  I would even be happy to use the new MAME option that speeds games up or down slightly so that the games speed changes to reflect your video card and monitor refresh rate without causing sound stutters, but no matter what I try that feature doesn't work when I enable it.  I'm not sure if it's a bug or what.

     B) If yes, then which flavor/build of MAME is best suited for accomplishing that with my current hardware?  I also don't mind using an older version, I could go as far back as .89b if I had to because I have a full set for it.

2) If replacing the video card is the right solution, would that cause issues with other things such as bios setup, or getting other emulated systems like the TurboGrafx, C64, etc., to display properly?  I think I remember reading something about that.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.  Have a great holiday!

[fallacy]

My mame and rom set work %100 fine when I was running them on a p4. Maybe if you register for a dropbox account and give me the username and password. I can upload it for you, so you can test to see if it your software or your hardware.

[Clavius]

Hi fallacy, thanks for the reply!  Do you have the same video card and monitor I do?  Just to be clear, I don't have an issue getting MAME to work, only displaying games in the proper refresh rate.

[fallacy]

When you say refresh rate are you talking about resolution? What version of mame are you using.

[paigeoliver]

Refresh rate and resolution are two totally different things.

I run .78 on my cabinet.

Assuming you aren't running bleeding edge mame, I would say your problem is configuration.

Try downloading the .89 version of mame32 (or mameui, whichever it is called in that version), so you can easily mess around with the config quickly without editing text files. Once you get it right in that then you can switch to the command line version.

When you say refresh rate are you talking about resolution? What version of mame are you using.

[Clavius]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.  I think we are getting a bit off track -- if possible I'd like to stick to the specifics I outlined in my original post.  I have no problem getting MAME to run games, what I'm trying to do is get the games to play without frame sync hiccups due to refresh rate mismatches (i.e. 60Hz game running at 59.9Hz means I get one frame skip each second).

Paigeoliver, what video card and monitor are you using? Are you getting perfect sync? No frame skips?

All the details are in the original post.  Apologies if I'm being obtuse, or if my original post isn't clear.  Let me know and I'll reword it!

[paigeoliver]

I am running a Wells Gardner D9200 monitor and an AGP Radeon card that is at least 6 years old.

[Clavius]

Okay, I thought I'd give a quick update.  I've tried both older versions (0.89) and newer versions (0.148), and pretty much every configuration possible in the video settings.  I simply cannot get the games to play without refresh sync issues.

I'm tearing my hair out over here, and I'm getting ready to take a sledgehammer to my cabinet.  I need someone to take a look at my original post and tell me what I need to replace to make this work, as I've done all I can on my own. 

[dgame]

Try CabMAME: http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?9555-ENGLISH-Overview

I used it when I had the ArcadeVGA installed. You have to configure the INIs with a program like Avres found under the Auto-Resolution Utilties section here: http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

I switched to an ATI X600 video card to use GroovyMAME as once configured it gets the resolution correct without using individual INI files.

While they accomplish similar things the ArcadeVGA limits the amount of resolutions available to GroovyMAME compared to using a supported normal ATI video card with the CRT_EmuDriver.

So to answer your question first try CabMAME with your existing hardware.

If you are not satisfied get a video card that is compatible with the CRT_EmuDriver http://mame.3feetunder.com/windows-ati-crt-emudriver/ and
Try GroovyMAME again http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,128879.0.html

[Gray_Area]

.........if this is happening on all games, make sure your video settings are like in the image below. Make sure scanlines are unchecked and set to none, as well as D3D disabled.

If not happening on all games, which ones?  And what video modes are those set for?

[Clavius]

Thanks dgame, a good friend of mine is coming over tonight and we're going to see how far we can get with cabmame, as I think I haven't tried that one yet.  I'll report back with our progress.  I think if cabmame doesn't work, I'll most likely replace my old ArcadeVGA with an ATI card listed in the link you supplied and do the custom drivers.

Thanks gray_area, I'm pretty familiar with all the MAME options at this point... I've spent so much time changing them to every possible combination that I almost know them by heart.    I'm thinking cabmame might do the trick.

[Clavius]

dgame - I've made more progress with cabmame in an hour than I have with other versions of mame over the course of months.  Thank you so much for recommending it. I deleted my previous mame folder and started over from scratch with a fresh install of the latest version of cabmame (0.146).  Seems like a lot of games just work with default settings and adjust the game speed up or down by a few percent, which I'm completely fine with.  In fact, cabmame helped me notice something I hadn't before...

I'm wondering if this is normal and if it's directly related to my difficulties in getting other versions of mame to sync correctly with my monitor: it seems that when I'm in resolutions that are supposed to be a sepcific refresh rate, something like 640x480@60 for example, my monitor is *actually* in 640x480@61.  Almost ALL the video modes my card/monitor combo are doing are slightly off (either slightly above or below) from what the refresh rate is supposed to be according to the manual! I'm guessing that all crt arcade monitors are slightly different in this way?  It would explain why I had such a hard time getting a 60Hz game to not skip frames on a 60Hz display mode... because I was actually displaying 61Hz.  If someone could elaborate on this topic that would be fantastic.

Anyhow, cabmame is a big step in the right direction for me and for the first time in a long time I don't feel like smashing my caninet into kindling and roasting marshmallows.  Some games are going to need some fine tuning, as they don't seem to be defaulting to the best resolutions (mortal kombat and r-type for example both default to 640x480) so AVRes is next on my todo list. Thanks for pointing that out as well.

I'll post back soon with more results.

[Clavius]

Just wanted to post an update - so far I really like cabmame.  The one shortcoming I've found is that there is no hardware stretching or anything, which would be quite handy for vertical games where there isn't a good native resolution on my monitor.  A good friend of mine who is a programmer is going to attempt making a custom version from the source code that will add in that feature (he's not just doing it for me, he also likes cabmame and wants that feature now).  I think he said he's also going to adjust the auto resolution selection logic so that something like AVRes would be unnecessary.  So thanks again, dgame, cabmame has really saved the day, and my sanity.
 

Also, wanted to bump this to see if anyone could maybe expand on the topic in my above post regarding my monitor actually displaying 61Hz instead of 60.  If anyone can explain or point me to relevant info that would be very appreciated!