AVGA 3000 status

[mattr69]

Hi,

I'm using AVGA 3000 with Win7 (and GroovyMame of course!) I've seen a few posts that mention the limitations with AVGA 3000 and Windows and comments regarding Linux to enable full potential of the AVGA 3000 card. Before I bother mucking around I really want to know if it's going to be _that_ much better or if I should invest in an older ATI card that will give better results. Can anyone explain/confirm?

Cheers,
Matt

[lettuce]

I know if you use a AVGA card you are limited to the resolutions that the card suports. GroovyMAME, Win XP and a ATI (4000 series or lower) will give you a much wider selection of resolutions and refresh rates, basically it's just more customisable.

You can get a ATI X600 card for under £20 on eBay and is said to be one of the best suited cards for groovyMAME

[Calamity]

Before I bother mucking around I really want to know if it's going to be _that_ much better or if I should invest in an older ATI card that will give better results. Can anyone explain/confirm?

Well that depends on how picky you are. Accurate video emulation is not just about enabling a bunch of low resolutions, you also need to deal with custom refresh rates to get the games running at their native speed without video artifacts.

Fortunately, if you have a spare 4-8 GB usb pendrive you can try Groovy Arcade Linux without modifying your current working system, and decide for yourself. Just follow the guide on my signature.

[mattr69]

Thanks. I have GroovyArcade installed and working and I'm hacking away at AdvMenu+ layouts. It works well with AVGA 3000. The modes generated automatically without my input. Is this using best fit for the Ultimarc modes or is it generating new modes as required? I've read conflicting statements. I presume the modes are all locked and that's why people prefer the ATI X600 or similar as many more modes can be generated. Is that correct?

Are there any plans to support other cards? Newer cards?

Cheers,
Matt

[Calamity]

Thanks. I have GroovyArcade installed and working and I'm hacking away at AdvMenu+ layouts. It works well with AVGA 3000. The modes generated automatically without my input. Is this using best fit for the Ultimarc modes or is it generating new modes as required? I've read conflicting statements. I presume the modes are all locked and that's why people prefer the ATI X600 or similar as many more modes can be generated. Is that correct?

Are there any plans to support other cards? Newer cards?

Cheers,
Matt

Good to hear that. Under GroovyArcade Linux, the ArcadeVGA 3000 behaves like any other ATI card in terms of flexibility, so new modes are created on the fly as GroovyMAME demands. With the added benefit of  the ArcadeVGA's 15-kHz boot.

[wesbrown18]

Howdy mattr69,

So with Calamity's help, I got the ArcadeVGA working with my tri-sync monitor.  I wouldn't say that the ArcadeVGA gives 'better' results than a cheap old ATI, but there are certain advantages that are nice to have:

* BIOS boot screen visible
* GRUB screen visible

It took a little bit of finagling -- see my thread 'ArcadeVGA 3000, UEFI, and Nanao 2931' -- but now it works beautifully.  It appears to behave just like another ATI card once we get the right parameters passed in via GRUB.  ArcadeVGA does make the entire setup process painless, and you have less risk of blowing your monitor because of the bootup sequence driving it at 31.5khz or above.

There's some other caveats that should be fixed in the next release of GroovyArcade like that splash screen being disabled.

[mattr69]

I did run into a few issues but I can't blame the AVGA. :-)

Grub didn't configure properly. My boot partition is sda2 (Windows is sda1) so root(hd0,0) needed to be changed to root (hd0,1). I think this also broke the swap setup. I didn't have any free space on the disk so I configured the swapfile manually and this solved the annoying boot delay.

The AVGA specific boot string I used is:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-label/GA quiet vga=785 video=VGA-1:640x480ec

I picked up a second hand X600 today and will try that for comparison next week. i hope it will be fairly simple rip and replace test.

Cheers,
Matt

[wesbrown18]

You can remove the swap space if you have enough RAM that you really don't need it.  Edit /etc/fstab and comment out the SwapSpace label line.

That boot string you used is interesting, as I had to use DVI-I.  Could you show us your `dmesg` output, specifically the [drm] lines?

[mattr69]

dmesg | grep drm

[    1.893007] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[    1.906648] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
[    1.906788] fb: conflicting fb hw usage radeondrmfb vs VESA VGA - removing generic driver
[    1.907285] [drm] initializing kernel modesetting (RV630 0x1002:0x958F 0x1002:0x0502).
[    1.907313] [drm] register mmio base: 0xF7E20000
[    1.907314] [drm] register mmio size: 65536
[    1.907359] [drm] Detected VRAM RAM=512M, BAR=256M
[    1.907360] [drm] RAM width 128bits DDR
[    1.907445] [drm] radeon: 512M of VRAM memory ready
[    1.907447] [drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready.
[    1.907456] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 1 (10.10.2010).
[    1.907457] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[    1.907521] [drm] radeon: irq initialized.
[    1.907524] [drm] GART: num cpu pages 131072, num gpu pages 131072
[    1.907865] [drm] probing gen 2 caps for device 8086:151 = 2/6
[    1.907869] [drm] enabling PCIE gen 2 link speeds, disable with radeon.pcie_gen2=0
[    1.908027] [drm] Loading RV630 Microcode
[    2.016705] [drm] PCIE GART of 512M enabled (table at 0x0000000000040000).
[    2.048207] [drm] ring test on 0 succeeded in 1 usecs
[    2.048399] [drm] ib test on ring 0 succeeded in 0 usecs
[    2.048756] [drm] Radeon Display Connectors
[    2.048758] [drm] Connector 0:
[    2.048759] [drm]   DVI-I-1
[    2.048759] [drm]   HPD1
[    2.048761] [drm]   DDC: 0x7e50 0x7e50 0x7e54 0x7e54 0x7e58 0x7e58 0x7e5c 0x7e5c
[    2.048761] [drm]   Encoders:
[    2.048762] [drm]     DFP1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_TMDS1
[    2.048763] [drm]     CRT2: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC2
[    2.048764] [drm] Connector 1:
[    2.048764] [drm]   DIN-1
[    2.048765] [drm]   Encoders:
[    2.048766] [drm]     TV1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC2
[    2.048766] [drm] Connector 2:
[    2.048767] [drm]   VGA-1
[    2.048768] [drm]   DDC: 0x7e40 0x7e40 0x7e44 0x7e44 0x7e48 0x7e48 0x7e4c 0x7e4c
[    2.048768] [drm]   Encoders:
[    2.048769] [drm]     CRT1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC1
[    2.048770] [drm]     DFP2: INTERNAL_LVTM1
[    2.048776] [drm] Internal thermal controller with fan control
[    2.048796] [drm] radeon: power management initialized
[    2.048837] [drm] forcing VGA-1 connector ON
[    2.068110] [drm] fb mappable at 0xE0142000
[    2.068112] [drm] vram apper at 0xE0000000
[    2.068112] [drm] size 1228800
[    2.068113] [drm] fb depth is 24
[    2.068114] [drm]    pitch is 2560
[    2.068742] fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[    2.282672] fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device
[    2.282674] drm: registered panic notifier
[    2.282682] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.24.0 20080528 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0

[wesbrown18]

mattr69,

That's really weird.  Are you running the latest release of GroovyArcade?

[    3.161958] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[    3.194602] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
[    3.195689] [drm] initializing kernel modesetting (RV630 0x1002:0x958F 0x1002:0x0503).
[    3.195730] [drm] register mmio base: 0xFEA20000
[    3.195731] [drm] register mmio size: 65536
[    3.196484] [drm] Detected VRAM RAM=512M, BAR=256M
[    3.196488] [drm] RAM width 128bits DDR
[    3.196593] [drm] radeon: 512M of VRAM memory ready
[    3.196594] [drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready.
[    3.196618] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 1 (10.10.2010).
[    3.196619] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[    3.196701] [drm] radeon: irq initialized.
[    3.196706] [drm] GART: num cpu pages 131072, num gpu pages 131072
[    3.197578] [drm] probing gen 2 caps for device 1022:1707 = 2/0
[    3.197583] [drm] enabling PCIE gen 2 link speeds, disable with radeon.pcie_gen2=0
[    3.197726] [drm] Loading RV630 Microcode
[    3.201794] [drm] PCIE GART of 512M enabled (table at 0x0000000000040000).
[    3.233525] [drm] ring test on 0 succeeded in 1 usecs
[    3.233839] [drm] ib test on ring 0 succeeded in 0 usecs
[    3.234037] [drm] Radeon Display Connectors
[    3.234039] [drm] Connector 0:
[    3.234040] [drm]   DVI-I-1
[    3.234041] [drm]   HPD1
[    3.234042] [drm]   DDC: 0x7e50 0x7e50 0x7e54 0x7e54 0x7e58 0x7e58 0x7e5c 0x7e5c
[    3.234043] [drm]   Encoders:
[    3.234044] [drm]     DFP1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_TMDS1
[    3.234045] [drm]     CRT2: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC2
[    3.234046] [drm] Connector 1:
[    3.234047] [drm]   DIN-1
[    3.234048] [drm]   Encoders:
[    3.234049] [drm]     TV1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC2
[    3.234050] [drm] Connector 2:
[    3.234051] [drm]   DVI-I-2
[    3.234051] [drm]   HPD2
[    3.234053] [drm]   DDC: 0x7e40 0x7e40 0x7e44 0x7e44 0x7e48 0x7e48 0x7e4c 0x7e4c
[    3.234054] [drm]   Encoders:
[    3.234054] [drm]     CRT1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC1
[    3.234055] [drm]     DFP2: INTERNAL_LVTM1
[    3.234065] [drm] Internal thermal controller with fan control
[    3.234093] [drm] radeon: power management initialized
[    3.234164] [drm] forcing DVI-I-1 connector ON
[    3.234166] [drm] forcing DIN-1 connector OFF
[    3.234167] [drm] forcing DVI-I-2 connector OFF
[    3.234519] [drm] fb mappable at 0xC0142000
[    3.234520] [drm] vram apper at 0xC0000000
[    3.234521] [drm] size 1024000
[    3.234522] [drm] fb depth is 24
[    3.234523] [drm]    pitch is 2560
[    3.234594] fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[    3.449236] fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device
[    3.449238] drm: registered panic notifier
[    3.449248] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.24.0 20080528 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0

Looks like our radeon drm driver is exactly the same, and everything is the same except for the DVI-I interface.  When did you purchase your ArcadeVGA card?  I'm wondering if we have a different revision of the ArcadeVGA card.

[mattr69]

Yeah I noticed the difference while following your thread. I purchased 20th Oct 2012.

[wesbrown18]

I'll send the guy over at Ultimarc an email inquiring about this.  This makes me wonder if we might need to adjust the GroovyArcade boot menu to explicitly ask for DVI-I as an option.  A large part of my initial setup trouble had to do with my ArcadeVGA 3000 not actually having a straight up VGA port -- and instead having a DVI-I port with pins mapped to a D-Sub.

I wonder if there's a difference between specifying a DVI port vs a DVI-I port, because it may help ease the boot process if we instead have the GRUB menu options specify DVI-I.

[wesbrown18]

So, I sent Andy an inquiry, and I got a response -- turns out that there *is* a new revision of the card.

Wes,
 
Yes there has been a change, from the black heatsink version to blue, and the ports are reversed.
 
The older one has this PCI ID:
 
PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_958F&SUBSYS_05021002
 
And newer:
 
PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_958F&SUBSYS_05031002

[omitted]

Regards,
 
Andy

We can probably identify which revision ArcadeVGA from the install process by looking at PCI IDs.