Need help overcoming analysis paralysis, re: everything.

[zebidia]

Hi all.

So I've spent the last several weeks reading and re-reading everything I can on this site about how to build a CRT-based MAME cabinet, and find that I'm still not able to put the final pieces together WRT the hardware. I'm hoping you more experienced people can shed some light on some things for me. Let me start by saying where I'm at so far:

- Built a new Core i5 PC with an ATI HD 4650 GPU, running Windows 7/64.
- Aquired a free Sony KV20-FS100 Trinitron TV that has component inputs.
- Built a VGA-to-SCARTcable using a wiring diagram found elsewhere on this site, and purchased a SCART-to-Component converter.
- Flashed custom ATOM-15 BIOS to the HD 4650.
- Installed latest version of CRTEmuDriver, Arcade OSD and SwitchRes.

And now... So many questions. I'll just some out, in no particular order. Note that I have had some success getting the TV display working, but it was completely by trial and error and random chance, and the results were less than stellar:

1. The CRTEmu instructions state that Win7 does not automatically start up in 15khz mode, and that I have to manually set it using Arcade OSD. What setting would be the 'correct' one for my TV, and what information would I need to make this choice?
2. What is the relationship, if any, between Arcade OSD and the Windows display settings dialog? If I check on 'show all modes' in the Windoes dialog, the frequency drop-down lists 12, 14, 50 and 60 Hz settings...what's the skinny here, and should I select 14? Note also that the resolution list contains so many items that I can't see them all; scrolling up/down doesn't bring other items into view... the cursor just disappears off screen.
3. Once I've selected a resolution/frequency with either Arcade OSD or the windows display dialog (which?), is the expectation that I will disconnect my LCD and plug in the TV, and then leave the LCD unplugged forever?
4. I've read in several places that I'm required to use the 'first' connector on my video card ('first' being undefined), but I found that I get a display on my TV, crappy as it is, from either the VGA or DVI-I (with DVI to VGA adapter) port. So is the claim that I need to use the first connector true, or not?
5. I tried 3 different 'monitor' settings in mame.ini, and got different results from each, so I'm not sure which one is correct, or if a correct one even exists. I used the following games for testing: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Ms Pacman and Galaga. Results:
 A) generic_15: Mame menu is readable, but DK, Ms Pacman and Galaga all heavy have vertical roll. DKjr was OK.
 B) arcade_15ex: same as A.
 C) ntsc: all 4 games displayed semi-OK (see nxt question), but the mame menu's left-most column (the rom name) is scrambled, all letters over top of each other.
6. In the game tests, when they worked, I rotated all the games such that they dislayed in their original portrait modes. But all 4 had geometry problems of some sort, usually parts of the playfield clipped at the top or bottom. Donkey Kong, for example, was so clipped at the bottom that the entire bottom girder was gone. The only way to fix it was use the slider controls to scale the picture, which made the whole thing look like shait. So, is it possible to make adjustments somehow for ALL games so that they will fit on the screen without scaling, or will I juat have to live with this deficiency? If all can be fixed, is there a tutorial somewhere that outlines all the tricks needed to fix any game anomaly?
7. There is a single, white horizontal line at the very top of the display that is there no matter what else is onscreen. I have no idea what it is or how to get rid of it. Is this normal?

I have more questions, but I feel like the above may already be pushing my luck with help requests.

Thanks form reading... If you do

[Sledge]

Don't quote me on this, but i don't think the Sony TV's are very suitable... but i could be wrong..

[adder]

groovymame can be set up so that (assuming here the tv is in normal position and not rotated on its side), the gfx on the horizontal fit on the screen correctly without anything cut off/missing.
this is not possible on the vertical though. so, if you wanted each game to fit the screen perfectly (vertically), you would need to adjust the vertical size for each game you play using eg. the vertical size option in your tv service menu, or an adjustable potentiometer found on the tv/arcade monitor board (this is usually not found on tv's. with tv's it's almost always the service menu).

the white line you speak of.. this seems to happen on some tv's and not on others. in the past i have had some tv's with the white line present, and also i had some tv's where, instead of a single white line, there are 3 lines going along the top of the screen (red, green and blue).

to hide the line, i had to adjust the vertical size controls (found in the tv service menu) to move the line off the screen, however then i found that gfx were missing from the top and bottom of the screen, so i ended up setting groovymame to use a rather high scan rate which allowed for more lines to be displayed on the screen (see the link below).

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,140183

i have since then replaced the tv as it felt unsuitable and not flexible enough for my needs. my current tv i am using (JVC) has no such white line/issues, regardless of scan rate or vertical size settings. i cant comment on how suitable/flexible your sony tv is, i havnt used one of those. i did have a 'modern' flat sony tv in the past but didnt really get on with it so got rid of it, but then you get this member (link below) using one and no doubt it is excellent for his needs. i dont know how similar your tv is to the one he is using...

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,129501.0.html

[Doozer]

I can help you to understand some of your experienced symptoms.

The three lines (red,green and blue) at the top are used for alignment adjustment when performing changes on the yoke ring or using magnets. As you mention, they are discracious and have to be hidden using the vertical position/size option. They are mainly used for convergence calibration.

The horizontal white line (horizontal centered) is in the majority of the case due to a dry soldering around the vertical voltage boost circuit. Simply do the soldering around the chip (with TV/Monitor switched OFF, !!! do not do anything around the high voltage side !!!, TV diagram help here to identify where to look and what component to re-solder).

For TV like Sony's, there is a tweak I have experimented in the past to play with the vertical size adjustment when no potentiometer exists. In the TV you have a chip controlling the TV aspect ratio with other parameters (same or more as exposed by the service menu). Normally (most common case) they use the I2C protocol to receive the different parameter values. By doing a I2C packet injection or acting as a proxy between the master and the slave component, you can control it with a micro controller and use any kind of physical input to control the vertical (have a potentiometer with ADC to pilot it, use LCD + switches, or use serial line + soft to automatically update it based on the played game).

[zebidia]

Thanks for the responses, all. It seems I'm in over my head with this stuff, so I'm going to do just a little more fooling around with it before completely abandoning the whole idea and moving to LCD (and perhaps build/purchase a RetroVGA 2).

[Calamity]

Thanks for the responses, all. It seems I'm in over my head with this stuff, so I'm going to do just a little more fooling around with it before completely abandoning the whole idea and moving to LCD (and perhaps build/purchase a RetroVGA 2).

Please do yourself a favour and don't do that. It looks like you're almost there. You have a 15 kHz signal on your TV already. The problem is you are trying to get everything in your head in a couple of weeks and that is not possible. Bear in mind most of us got into this very progressively. We first onwed a cabinet with PCBs, then plugged in a MAME pc, ArcadeVGA, J-PAC, then mess with the config for a couple of years, believe you got it perfect, realize it was not so perfect, argue with wife about the hobby, etc. During those steps you gain an understanding of the whole thing. At the beginning all is confusion. Then you get familiar with each of the parts involved.

First of all, you should post some pictures of your issues. Probably most of it is simple overscan which can get fixed either from the service menu or creating custom specs in GM (first option better). Overscan happens to 100% of TV owners and is fixable.

Now, regarding to your game selection, it is probably the worst imaginable for testing purposes, because they're all vertical games that can't be displayed on an horizontal TV without serious compromises. The vertical rolling you're getting is because GM needs to lower the refresh rate of those games in order to fit the excessive amount of lines when these games are rotated. The resulting frequencies are closer to PAL than NTSC. Maybe yours is NTSC only and can't handle those frequencies. Just force GM to not use so many lines:

monitor custom
crt_range0  15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 256, 448, 512

Regarding Arcade OSD vs Display manager, they're basically aimed for the same thing (mode selection), but Arcade OSD is much more convenient for this specific use. So better use Arcade OSD and pick your desktop resolution from there. And yes, in a properly configured setup you don't need to boot with the LCD monitor, you only use it during the installation.

Bear in mind that Sony TVs are a bit picky with adjustments when compared to standard arcade monitors, you'll probably need specific adjustmetns for different resolutions (vertical shift, etc.). Despite that and provided they're in good condition, they give a much better picture than the average arcade monitor.

[zebidia]

Thanks for the responses, all. It seems I'm in over my head with this stuff, so I'm going to do just a little more fooling around with it before completely abandoning the whole idea and moving to LCD (and perhaps build/purchase a RetroVGA 2).

Please do yourself a favour and don't do that. It looks like you're almost there. You have a 15 kHz signal on your TV already. The problem is you are trying to get everything in your head in a couple of weeks and that is not possible. Bear in mind most of us got into this very progressively. We first onwed a cabinet with PCBs, then plugged in a MAME pc, ArcadeVGA, J-PAC, then mess with the config for a couple of years, believe you got it perfect, realize it was not so perfect, argue with wife about the hobby, etc. During those steps you gain an understanding of the whole thing. At the beginning all is confusion. Then you get familiar with each of the parts involved.

First of all, you should post some pictures of your issues. Probably most of it is simple overscan which can get fixed either from the service menu or creating custom specs in GM (first option better). Overscan happens to 100% of TV owners and is fixable.

Now, regarding to your game selection, it is probably the worst imaginable for testing purposes, because they're all vertical games that can't be displayed on an horizontal TV without serious compromises. The vertical rolling you're getting is because GM needs to lower the refresh rate of those games in order to fit the excessive amount of lines when these games are rotated. The resulting frequencies are closer to PAL than NTSC. Maybe yours is NTSC only and can't handle those frequencies. Just force GM to not use so many lines:

monitor custom
crt_range0  15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 256, 448, 512

Regarding Arcade OSD vs Display manager, they're basically aimed for the same thing (mode selection), but Arcade OSD is much more convenient for this specific use. So better use Arcade OSD and pick your desktop resolution from there. And yes, in a properly configured setup you don't need to boot with the LCD monitor, you only use it during the installation.

Bear in mind that Sony TVs are a bit picky with adjustments when compared to standard arcade monitors, you'll probably need specific adjustmetns for different resolutions (vertical shift, etc.). Despite that and provided they're in good condition, they give a much better picture than the average arcade monitor.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, Calamity. I will stick with it for a bit longer.

I will try to get some photos of the issues, and perhaps even some videos (if a picture's worth a thousand words, then a video's worth a million).

The games I chose were quite deliberate, as I want to have a vertical cab. Does this fact diminish my prospects for producing something usable? I have the TV sitting horizontally, and I've just been rotating the games in the MAME 'tab menu' once they're loaded (and just looking at them sideways while I try to figure out geometry problems), but perhaps this is the wrong approach?

Also, I certainly don't want to have to enter the service menu every time I switch games (and more importantly, neither would guests), so this has to be a factor in how I move forward. I have, however, figured out how to get into the service menu, and other than the basic H/VSIZE/POS settings, there's a plethora of stuff I don't understand in there... not surprisingly. If it's of interest, here's a link to the service menu items:

Sony WEGA Trinitron CRT TV service menu Tips Tricks and settings suggestions

My trouble is that the whole modeline thing is a mind-boggler. It's all well and good to just start tweaking numbers, but the message I've received from all the reading I've done is that you just need to 'adjust the numbers to suit your specific monitor' (paraphrased). I have not found, however, any instructions that tell me what numbers to adjust based on the visual anomalies I'm seeing. Does such a tutorial exist on your site?

I did spend some time messing around with Arcade OSD, manually adjusting settings for a somewhat randomly picked modeline setting, but again, I had no idea what I was doing or why. And I assume the only reason I would use Arcade OSD is to find a 'comfortable' setting for my Windows desktop, ya? GroovyMame does its own thing with modelines, independent of Arcade OSD, I assumed.

Anyway, I'll persevere for a while and see where it takes me. I do have a different, larger (24") Trinitron I can try (also obtained for free...lots of give-aways in my city) to see if I get better results, but I don't really want that large of a monitor in my cab.

Thanks again.

Edit: typos, grammar.

[Calamity]

The games I chose were quite deliberate, as I want to have a vertical cab. Does this fact diminish my prospects for producing something usable? I have the TV sitting horizontally, and I've just been rotating the games in the MAME 'tab menu' once they're loaded (and just looking at them sideways while I try to figure out geometry problems), but perhaps this is the wrong approach?

Ok, I had missed that you wanted a vertical cab, it's fine then. Instead of rotating games from MAME's ui, launch games already with the proper orientation:

groovymame.exe galaga -monitor arcade_15 -orientation rotate_r

(or rotate_l)

Also, I certainly don't want to have to enter the service menu every time I switch games (and more importantly, neither would guests)

Usually people need to enter the service menu when they switch to horizontal to vertical games (on horizontal monitor), so all lines fit in the screen. If yours is going to be a vertical only cab, then this won't be an issue. Most games will range from 224p-240p, with a few at 256p, so you may find that adjusting v-size for 240p is acceptable. Make sure to check this thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=134915.0

My trouble is that the whole modeline thing is a mind-boggler. It's all well and good to just start tweaking numbers, but the message I've received from all the reading I've done is that you just need to 'adjust the numbers to suit your specific monitor' (paraphrased). I have not found, however, any instructions that tell me what numbers to adjust based on the visual anomalies I'm seeing. Does such a tutorial exist on your site?

I'm afraid there are not shorcuts but to understand how the CRT timings work, which is very rewarding once you figure it out and see how everything makes sense.

There is not a written tutorial (I'm bad writing docs and people who knows the stuff don't seem to write the docs either). But believe me that all the information required is in this very forum, with several levels of redundancy.

By now, play with these values, that represent the right and left borders, respectively:

crt_range0  15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 256, 448, 512

With those you can fix the horizontal overscan. Increase the values for bigger borders->narrower picture. Modify their relative size for centering.

Arcade OSD won't affect GM but you can use it to infer the values for you custom crt_range, which will apply to all your games in turn.

If you can't still get a generic crt_range that fits all modes fine it's still possible with recent GM versions to just enter one raw modeline in the game's .ini (Remind modelines and crt_ranges are different things!)

[zebidia]

OK, I've made some great progress today, and I'm really excited about the results. Let me start by saying that I'm not sure why the four games I mentioned gave me trouble yesterday, and that today has been a completely different story. Here's what I did:

1. I used Arcade OSD to set the TV resolution to 320x240p, and this made all the difference in desktop usability. I had previously set it at 640x480i... flickery mess. The desktop still does not take up the full monitor, width-wise, and I suppose that's something I can tweak in AOSD later (no idea what numbers to tweak at this point... will do more reading/re-reading).
2. I used the command line to load up Donkey Kong with the args provided by Calamity. Note that I first manually edited the game's CFG file and reset all custom settings I made yesterday. I chose DK because it was the worst offender as far as playfield clipping was concerned... good place to start, I reasoned. But lo and behold, the playfield was no longer clipped, and I have no idea why. Not complaining, though. ☺
3. The single white line that runs along the top of the monitor (with the monitor sitting horizontally) was still present, so I opened up the TV's service menu and adjusted the vertical position such that the white line is off the top of the visible area of the screen. This action resulted in DK's playing field being too close to the top of the screen, so I opened up MAME's slider controls and adjusted the vertical position down. The playfield now fits perfectly in the screen, without any slider scaling at all.
4. I fired up the other three games and only had to make minor adjustments using just the positional sliders. Too easy.

I didn't have to do any fooling around with custom modelines, which is too bad, as it would have been a good learning experience. Perhaps as I add more games, I'll be forced (privileged?) to go down that road.

I'm really stoked about this now. The games look so good on this TV as compared to and LCD/HLSL test I did last night. I am now fully convinced of the CRT's MAMEing superiority.

Again, thanks for the help, all, and a general thanks to Calamity (and others?) for making all this great software available.

[Calamity]

Happy to see the progress. Try getting familiar with the modes being picked by Switchres (shown in the initial text box). Also use logs to see the details of the full modelines being used (groovymame.exe galaga -v >galaga.txt).