Native Resolutions, Nvidia card, GroovyMAME, Other options?

[CaptainAfro]

Hello all, I figured this might be a good place to ask this. I currently have a computer set up to a WICO SUM-20C monitor, using a Geforce FX 5900 XT. I bought one of these (www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-TO-CGA-CVBS-S-VIDEO-CONVERTER-PC-to-VGA-GBS-8100-video-game-converter-/400635702172?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d47bfab9c) to replace my current method of shoving the RGB wires into the VGA holes on the card.

I know GroovyMAME requires an ATI card for the majority of it's advantages, so I'm not sure if it can help me or not. Currently I'm using Soft15khz at 800x600. The only other resolution that works is 640x480, anything else I can't adjust V-HOLD enough to get it to work. I'd like to be able to get native resolutions on MAME, or as close as I can anyway, and still have at least 800x600, maybe a bit higher for some of the PC games I have on there, like DJ Max Trilogy. What are my options here to getting better resolutions, and not having to adjust the monitor on every res change?

[Calamity]

Hi CaptainAfro,

First of all, I'd say that converter is going to spoil whatever effort to you do to output custom 15 kHz video, as it is actually a video processor. You need to feed your monitor with raw video signals directly from your video card.

[CaptainAfro]

Hmm, alright, in that case I'll splice the RGB wires onto a VGA cable. Software wise, what would be my best bet? So far I'm using Soft15khz and vanilla MAME .149 with a few patches for CAVE SH3, NoNag and HiScore. I wasn't sure if GroovyMAME could help because it's made for ATI cards. CRT_Emudriver is also for ATI cards if I'm not mistaken. What can I do with this Nvidia card then?

[Calamity]

If you use Soft-15kHz then GroovyMAME can pick the best resolution for you from the ones available. It's more ore less like using an ArcadeVGA with GroovyMAME, where all resolutions are read-only. This setup may be acceptable enough for many people.

If your card is supported by Powerstrip, then you can apply tweaks to the resolutions provided by Soft-15kHz, in order to achieve hundreds of different refresh rates for the different games. You can use GroovyMAME to apply these settings for each game, this works great but it's a lot of work. You can also use GroovyMAME to automatically create the custom timings through Powertrip, this works better for certain cards than others, depending on how good they are supported by Powerstrip. To be honest, this is possible to achieve with GroovyMAME, the support is there for you, but just few people in this forum know how to do this. It's not about lack of tutorials, you really need to understand how video timing works, etc.

So this depends on how worth your time is and how picky you are. My advice: get a 20$ ATI card.

[Sledge]

So this depends on how worth your time is and how picky you are. My advice: get a 20$ ATI card.

^This +1
Much easier..

[CaptainAfro]

Alright so, Nvidia card means lots of work, which I'm not really in the mood for. An ATI card would make this a lot easier is what you're saying right?

[Sledge]

Alright so, Nvidia card means lots of work, which I'm not really in the mood for. An ATI card would make this a lot easier is what you're saying right?

Definitely!
http://mame.3feetunder.com/windows-ati-crt-emudriver/

[Calamity]

Alright so, Nvidia card means lots of work, which I'm not really in the mood for. An ATI card would make this a lot easier is what you're saying right?

Yes. But you can still try your Nvidia + Soft-15kHz + GroovyMAME and judge if it's good enough for you (once you figure out how to connect the card directly to your monitor without the converter).

What involves a lot of work is to make it near as good as it is with an ATI card just out of the box (ok, here "out of the box" is just a way of speaking: nothing in this hobby works right away even if you follow the supposedly easy path).

[CaptainAfro]

Running GroovyMAME as of right now gives me an error message: "SwitchRes: could not find a video mode that meets your specs"

I'd like to see if I can get GroovyMAME running, but it's not a big deal. This MAME computer I'm building for a friend, I'm going to be building one for myself soon with an ATI Radeon x300, so that should be a lot easier to work with.

[Calamity]

Running GroovyMAME as of right now gives me an error message: "SwitchRes: could not find a video mode that meets your specs"

If you already created mame.ini by running: groovymame.exe -cc

... now edit this options in mame.ini:

lock_system_modes         0
refresh_dont_care         1

[yotsuya]

Hi CaptainAfro,

First of all, I'd say that converter is going to spoil whatever effort to you do to output custom 15 kHz video, as it is actually a video processor. You need to feed your monitor with raw video signals directly from your video card.

Yeah, I got one of those converters. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much lag.

[CaptainAfro]

Yeah, I got one of those converters. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much lag.

Yea I noticed that. Serious lag, and the screen was much lower quality too. Gonna stick with the hacked VGA cable.

If you already created mame.ini by running: groovymame.exe -cc

... now edit this options in mame.ini:

lock_system_modes         0
refresh_dont_care         1

This worked, but the sync rates are all over the place. Defender has 8 smaller versions of the game onscreen, all scrolling. Need to figure out how to configure Powerstrip.

[yotsuya]

Yeah, I got one of those converters. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much lag.

Yea I noticed that. Serious lag, and the screen was much lower quality too. Gonna stick with the hacked VGA cable.

Yeah- wish I would have done some research myself. Oh well. 

[CaptainAfro]

Is there some way I can adjust Powerstrip to be able to switch between resolutions without adjusting the viceo control pots? I'm trying to get it to switch between 640x480 and 800x600 without needing to open up the control panel. Also the monitor starts to whine at 640x480, how can I get that to stop?

[Calamity]

Hi CaptainAfro,

I am not sure if I understand what's your current setting, specifically if you're using Powerstrip at all. The last time we talked you were going to test GroovyMAME + Soft-15kHz (IIRC). What I need to know is if that 8x + scrolling issue happens with the stock Soft-15kHz modes or is a consequence of putting Powerstrip into the equation.

[CaptainAfro]

Hi CaptainAfro,

I am not sure if I understand what's your current setting, specifically if you're using Powerstrip at all. The last time we talked you were going to test GroovyMAME + Soft-15kHz (IIRC). What I need to know is if that 8x + scrolling issue happens with the stock Soft-15kHz modes or is a consequence of putting Powerstrip into the equation.

I apologize, I didn't quite elaborate. The tiling scrolling issue was the result of modifying the INI as you described. It removed the Switchres error message but caused the scrolling problem. This was BEFORE I installed Powerstrip. My previous post was just a question after trying to mess around with Real-Time Adjustments in Powerstrip to get resolutions stable without needing to adjust the video control board pots.

[Calamity]

Hi CaptainAfro,

Let's see. Before you install Powerstrip, you need to check if all Soft-15khz modes work properly. The change I suggested only allowed GroovyMAME to pick from the various resolutions Soft-15khz had made available, exposing the failure of some of them. So my advice is, use ArcadeOSD or any other means to test each resolution individually. If many of them don't work, then definitely that's not a suitable card for GroovyMAME. GroovyMAME assumes that all the resolutions available are in working order, there's no way it can anticipate one of the not working.

Powerstrip would only get into scene after this, to allow specific tweaks to each resolution in order to reproduce the original refresh rates of the different games, which are not all covered by the defaut resolutions installed by Soft-15kHz.

Regarding the problems you're seeing switching from 800x600 to 640x480, bear in mind 800x600 is a rather extreme resolution for an arcade monitor, it can only be possible by lowering the refresh to 49-50 Hz, which is quite different from the usual 60 Hz. Besides, if you adjust v-size for 600i lines, you'll see huge black bars when you switch to 480i, this is how things are with CRT devices.

[CaptainAfro]

Alright, I think I understand what you mean. 800x600 isn't important, I have everything running on 640x480 and it's working just fine. As for all the other resolutions, nearly all of them don't work, so as you said, I don't think this card is going to work well for GroovyMAME. I'm pretty much content with just running MAME at 640x480. When I build the other cabinet with my Radeon x1300, I'll probably try for native resolutions again. I appreciate your help Calamity, I have a better understanding of how these monitors work now.