GroovyMame - Do I have this right?

[gjm777]

First off, I just wanted to say thank you for all the work that's gone into GroovyMame, it's truly awesome stuff and running it on a dedicated CRT has been such a sight to behold.
I really appreciate the time spent to all of those involved.

If I understand correctly, Groovymame essentially will look at the supported modes of your monitor, whether you add these values manually or use presets within your vmmaker/mame ini files.
Groovy will best try and match a similar resolution the game runs at natively, and fill your screen on the horizontal accordingly, it will not do vertical adjustments.

I'm currently using a 32" Sony Trinitron TV (NTSC) and for me the best preset seems to be using NTSC in both vmmaker and mame ini. I've tried to use arcadeOSD many times to adjust any custom modes but adjustments of the porches does nothing realtime for me, even if i hit test the screen flashes for a second but nothing is happening in the way of adjustments. This happens whether i use the NTSC preset, leave it as default, or use an arcade_15 preset so I'm a bit confused.

As I understood it, AracdeOSD will show me the supported custom modes that can work with my graphics adapter & TV, and I can tweak them to get acceptable values to plug into my modes within the mame ini (if needed)

At this point everything is pretty much centered going with the NTSC preset so I'm happy, I was just curious if I had the concept of groovymame correct, and if I was doing anything wrong when it came to adjusting geometry.

Again,
Thanks very much for this fantastic project!
 

[Calamity]

Hi gjm777,

Check your Modelines.txt file inside vmmaker's folder. Make sure it contains more than 17 modelines. Otherwise dynamic modelines won't work. This would explain why ArcadeOSD is not updating the geometry adjustments on the fly, but it'd also affect GroovyMAME in the same way so you wouldn't be seeing its potential.

[gjm777]

Hi Calamity,
Thanks in advance,

I've attached some INI files for you to see, but I do appear to have more than 17 modelines. If I'm not seeing it's potential now, I can't wait to see it when it's working properly!
I will say that switchres appears to be changing the games to other resolutions in order to fit, some cps2 games come to mind using a 752x240 I believe. I believe I've enabled ddraw, and that the frameskips etc are in order, but I could be wrong on that as well.

Thanks for looking, and for the help.

[Calamity]

The other possibility is that you were trying to modify the current desktop resolution. That can't be done, it is a resource in use and so it's read only.

[gjm777]

That makes sense, but I've also tried other custom resolutions, they do pop up to be edited with the pattern etc, but nothing happens.
I'm wondering if it's just because I'm using the svideo out on the card and not the DVI outs, maybe it doesn't respect it.
Having said that the OSD does seem to bind with my card on monitor 1.

Odd, but like I said it appears to be switching resolutions for games so I'm assuming it's all working.

[Calamity]

I'm wondering if it's just because I'm using the svideo out

OMG, I thought you were aware that s-video can't do custom modes. Anything you throw through that output will be resampled. You need a genuine RGB output in order to do custom timings.

[gjm777]

Well that explains it!
Supposedly the ATI card i have HD3XXX does component over that output, but ive tried two 7 pin dongles to no avail, I've also tried a dvi to component adapter for ATI cards , and still cant get that to work either.

At this point I'm probably going to have to find a way to do DVI>Scart as I have a scart to component converter.
*edit actually if it needs to be pure RGB then I'm not sure even the above would matter.
So is there any reason to use this build i.e is it hurting me performance wise by using groovy instead of an official build for example?

Im not sure why the 7 pin version of my dongle didnt work for me (was missing all blue color)


Bummer 

[gjm777]

Just a bit of an update,
I was able to figure out my missing blue issue (ended up being the switchbox I was using. After using one of these on the DVI output
http://www.ebay.com/itm/231273833306?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

I'm going right into the tv's 480i component input.
The drivers seem to be working as im displaying 640x480 at 15Khz according to acrade OSD, the only thing is I cannot adjust anything within any custom resolution.
I've tried reinstalling the drivers as well, but I can't seem to figure out why the test image will not change real time on the screen.

Adjustments aside, is it safe to presume that if I'm going from DVI to component I'm seeing what groovymame provides? I guess I'm just trying to figure out if its "working" at this point or not.

If I load up a game, I can go to game information see the native video line, and then see the switchres resolution running at 15.704 KHz for example.


Thanks again,

[Calamity]

Hi gjm777,

Adjustments aside, is it safe to presume that if I'm going from DVI to component I'm seeing what groovymame provides? I guess I'm just trying to figure out if its "working" at this point or not.

That connector you're using is a custom ATI plug. I ignore the details about its operation but I guess the card detects it and then uses the RGB lines in the DVI to output component video. It is a cool gadget for watching movies on the TV, but not useful for this task. All our custom timings are bypassed when you use that thing. Instead, the card uses some predefined HDTV presets (matching the switch I guess).

If you want to have custom video you need to use RGB, period. There are no shortcuts. Then if your TV doesn't have a SCART, you need a transcoder for RGB->component conversion. Have a look at the posts by the user rCadeGaming, lots of useful information on this.
 

If I load up a game, I can go to game information see the native video line, and then see the switchres resolution running at 15.704 KHz for example.

When GM detects custom video modes installed, it just assumes they work, and does its calculations based on this assumption.

[gjm777]

Thanks Calamity,
Well, the good news is I already have a scart to component transcoder for my consoles, so i should be able to go from the cards DVI output to VGA (with the supplied adapter) then use a VGA to Scart cable going to the transcoder.

[Calamity]

Thanks Calamity,
Well, the good news is I already have a scart to component transcoder for my consoles, so i should be able to go from the cards DVI output to VGA (with the supplied adapter) then use a VGA to Scart cable going to the transcoder.

That sounds like a good option, provided the scart to component transcoder is a real transcoder, it should do the job.