Blast! Damn you CRT TV/graphics card!!!

[Gray_Area]

Try 480i, yo. If that works, and you decide you want to get fancy, look up rCadeGaming's threads.

[Yenome]

Try 480i, yo. If that works, and you decide you want to get fancy, look up rCadeGaming's threads.

like gray said try 640x480. once you get that working follow the rest of grays advice. rcade is the most knowledgeable person i know on the forums when it comes to displays, even if i think he is off his rocker sometimes

[LASmith132]

Will do thanks guys, I will post the model type as soon as I can take a look at it tonight when I am off work.

Thanks again guys.

[maiki]

The whole point of Soft15kHz is running native resolutions.  Graphics cards scale everything to 480i on "TV out" ports, so it's not possible.

Read the second link in my signature.

But that does not mean those TV-out chips on graphics cards are not capable of custom resolutions. It is probably just a matter of drivers or (and) video BIOS. They are certainly not limited to 480i. I have an ASUS EN7100GS256/TD 64 with composite TV out hooked up to my CRT to watch DVDs and it has a 60 / 50 Hz switching with couple of resolutions and it shows when I switch between them. True, it does not output non-interlaced picture but that might be just how the Windows XP drivers were written for that particular video encoder (cannot say now which brand it is).

More or less, a TV-out chip is nothing but a processor for outputting 15 kHz video that surely can be instructed which video mode to output. Which brings me to my final point: Instead of that Arcade VGA, it would be really helpful if someone developed a small PCI-E x1 card that would just use some sort of microcontroller (FPGA whatever) that would calculate the required 15 kHz video output modes all arcade enthusiasts are after. A replacement for those TV out encoders in a way. How much power would you need to compute a 15 kHz video output - not that much I suppose. And obviously, the add-on card would not only support composite but RGB and S-video as well (perhaps even component?), so that NTSC users could hook their TVs easily.

Soft 15 kHz is not a solution, it's an emergency. You cannot even display boot process or BIOS onto CRT with that, which you obviously can with TV out chips on cards.

[rCadeGaming]

Whatever hardware is added for TV-out just takes an existing RGB signal and encodes it to composite or s-video, or transcodes it to component.  The encoding/transcoding chips used are likely the simplest thing that will get the job done, and may only work with one (or a select few) set of predefined timing values.  It's true that the tv-out hardware on some graphics cards may actually be able to output 15kHz progressive if enabled in the drivers.  It hasn't technically been proven to be impossible, it's just that no one has confirmed a card that works like this yet.

It might be nice if someone made what you're thinking of, but it's not really worth all that just to keep the transcoding on the card when external transcoding solutions are readily available.  An external transcoder also has the advantage of being able to use to display RGB from your game consoles.

See this post for the current options for RGB to component:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,121491.msg1392896.html#msg1392896

If really want to get into it, you could also make your own transcoder circuit which could be kept inside the computer.  Start here on p.7:

http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/application-note/an57fa.pdf

You can find options for RGB to composite, or s-video, but I personally wouldn't put the time into this and just get the full quality of component, which is basically equivalent in quality to RGB.

As for the BIOS, boot screens, etc., I don't think most people are concerned with that.  You don't need to see it after the initial setup.

Finally, it's important to note that this is a pretty old thread.  I wouldn't recommend Soft15kHz anymore:

As long as you're getting a new card, you should switch to CRT_Emudriver.

Soft15kHz is really not the best option anymore. 

First of all, it's silly to use a real CRT and not use GroovyMAME, and that works hand in hand with CRT_Emudriver.  GM can generate resolutions on the fly to keep everything native res (and native refresh, very important), saving you a lot of work; and it has a lot of other important features for native res even if you don't use the auto-generation. 

Even if not using GM, tweaking your resolutions in Soft15kHz requires editing the text modelines by hand (super tedious), or using Powerstrip.  Powerstrip was not really designed for this application, it's very cumbersome, and does not even fit on the screen in lower resolutions.  CRT_Emudriver includes ArcadeOSD, which was purposely designed for this, is just as powerful if not more so, more flexible, and much easier to use.

Making the change only takes a couple of minutes once you have the right graphics card (which can be dirt cheap).  I started with Soft15kHz, and resisted making the change because I had some GeForce cards on hand (only compatible with Soft15kHz).  When I finally switched over to CRT_Emudriver, I was really kicking myself for not doing it sooner.