ArcadeVGA and Groovymame

[Sledge]

Ok,
A friend has an ArcadeVGA, and he has set his monitor to Arcade_15
he says it looks ok, but depending on what game he plays, the screen isn't centered.. so it's moving left and right depending on the res..
We tried using ArcadeOSD to get his settings, but because all the resolutions are 'native' he can't get into the geometry menu

I tried to get him to use powerstrip to get monitor settings and set the monitor to custom and use these(from powerstrip)
crt_range0              15450-16050, 50-65, 2.994, 5.240, 6.737, 0.189, 0.189, 1.195, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

But when he uses that, he says the games like galaga are small and stretched horizonally, and simpsons is real 'glitchy' (has a line in the middle or something?)
If he reverts back to his previous ini (arcade_15) then the games look and run ok, just not centered... except for Trog which runs slow (only when refresh_dont_care is 0)

Any ideas?

Screen is from a TV, with a 'Jomac' universal chassis

[Calamity]

First of all, what model of AVGA is it? 3000?

If it is the 3000, you're not going to be able to edit anything with ArcadeOSD. Consider those resolutions read-only.

You may have been reading that thread where an user is combining Powerstrip + GroovyMAME + AVGA 3000. That seems to be a possibility indeed, although unfortunately that user left the thread without confirming or reporting his final results.

You could use Powerstrip to center the modes, then run GM with the arcade_15 settings (no Powerstrip). If a certain game runs slow, create an .ini for it an add 'triplebuffer 1' inside.

If you still want to figure out the GroovyMAME + Powerstrip setup, please post logs and photographs, that's the only way I can see what's happening.

[Sledge]

Yes he has the 3000 model.. And I figured the read-only was why we couldn't get into the geometry.. we were only trying to see if we could get settings to use for 'monitor custom'
We tried to get the screen settings from powerstrip after using power strip to center them, but it didn't seem to work..
I am waiting on him to send me his mame ini  and a log file and pics.. but he's out atm..

I'm encouraging him to use groovymame without powerstrip (we just need to work out his crt_range?)

[Sledge]

OK he has it all setup and running now..
but he says when trying to run GM with ddraw he gets the 'unable to initialize ddraw' error when GM is trying to switch res's..
should this be working ok now with GM? or does this only work if using the CRT drivers?

[Calamity]

Yeah the interlaced/progressive switching workaround in GroovyMAME relies on a patch I had to do for CRT Emudriver/W7 that forces the driver to return the refresh values for interlaced games in a deterministic manner. It wouldn't work otherwise I'm thinking.

[Sledge]

Yeah the interlaced/progressive switching workaround in GroovyMAME relies on a patch I had to do for CRT Emudriver/W7 that forces the driver to return the refresh values for interlaced games in a deterministic manner. It wouldn't work otherwise I'm thinking.

Would it be possible to get in contact with Andy from Ultimarc and incorporate that fix in his drivers?

[cack01]

I am fairly certain that Andy is aware of it and does not believe there is a work around on his end.

[Calamity]

Why doesn't he just use -video d3d?

[cack01]

Why doesn't he just use -video d3d?

I was under the impression there was no way to turn off hardware stretch in d3d. From Andy's website: "Note to Mame devs: This issue does not arise if D3D is selected. But owing to not being able to disable stretching in D3D in Mame this results in a poor quality picture. "

I have never actually checked if this is still the case.

[Calamity]

That's true for MAME, not GroovyMAME. With GroovyMAME integer scaling is done by default for Direct3D too. The only problem in W7 & interlaced modes would be getting 50% speed, but this can be overcome by means of the -frame_delay option.

[Sledge]

Why doesn't he just use -video d3d?

isn't ddraw meant to be better?

[Calamity]

As said, that's true for MAME not GroovyMAME. GroovyMAME + video d3d + frame_delay is as good as using ddraw (in terms of pixel accuracy, and low input lag), but with much better performance when it comes to scaling. Only possible drawback may be tearing on high resolution modes (this is due to frame_delay).

[Sledge]

Why doesn't he just use -video d3d?

BTW.. he is using d3d, but he was interested in comparing that with ddraw..
all good

[Calamity]

Tell your friend to register

[Sledge]

Tell your friend to register

He's trying
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,133883.0.html