CRT EMUDRIVER - Windows 7- 4800 series ATI - D3D - any info on how to fix?

[Psicosis]

Calamity have you or anyone else figured out how to fix this big problem with the drivers?  If I were only going to be running mame on my cabinet I could live with forcing mame to run in ddraw as it seems to be working ok right now, but with starting to setup all the other emulators I can see I am going to be running into big problems and limited choices.

[Sledge]

What big problem are you referring to?
It's working fine for me...

[cools]

The big problem is other emulators not caring about accuracy.

[Psicosis]

Sledge, I thought you and capitaineflam25 reported on the very same problem. Do you have mame working properly without forcing ddraw?  Do you have all the other emulators that use D3D working?

[Calamity]

Hi Psicosis,

The only "perfect" solution at the moment is to force the monitor detection by adding 75 ohms resistors to your VGA cable. You need 3 resistors, one for each R, G, B line, connecting the color line to its respective ground.

I know this is not the most appealing thing but it's the only one that works. Maybe the drivers could be short-circuited at some point to force the detection by software, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

The detection fails with arcade monitors, specially if they're connected through a JPAC but not sure if this is a determining factor. An arcade monitor with native VGA input should be detected fine (mine is). By the way, the problem is not limited to 4800 cards, I'd say all models are affected.

When the detection fails, you'll notice 2 issues:

- Interlaced modes are missing.
- Anything above 1600x1200 (either height or width) is missing. This affects 2560x super resolutions. However you can use 1600x super resolutions succesfully.

In this situation, you can still use an interlaced mode for the desktop if and only if you uncheck the "Hide modes that this monitor cannot display" option. But games trying to use them will only be able to do so if they're based on DirectDraw. In the case of GM, apart from using DirectDraw you need disable the "lock_unsupported_modes" option.

By adding the resistors, all the above tricks are not required, and the driver just works as it is supposed to, with D3D and everything.

[Calamity]

BTW I wish someone would build and sell an VGA passthrough dongle with the resistors already installed to force monitor detection.

[Sledge]

Sledge, I thought you and capitaineflam25 reported on the very same problem. Do you have mame working properly without forcing ddraw?  Do you have all the other emulators that use D3D working?

I am forcing DDRAW, but only because i prefer it to D3D
D3D also works where possible, but some games are forced to DDRAW by GM anyway...
interlaced vertical games is it?

I don't run any other emulators on my machine..

[Psicosis]

I am using a jpac, Yes I would definately buy a modified cord if someone sold one to at least try it out. Are there any videos or posts with pictures showing how to do this mod to the the monitor cable?  Also I thought I read that it cuts the brightness down? My crt is already not all that bright to begin with. I'am thinking I may just have to go back to winXP on another hard drive and jus leave this hard drive the way it is for now and maybe some day the drivers or something can be hacked to work.

[krick]

BTW I wish someone would build and sell an VGA passthrough dongle with the resistors already installed to force monitor detection.

If you're handy with a soldering iron, it shouldn't be too hard to add 75 Ohm resistors to a JPAC or an Ultimarc video amplifier...
http://www.ultimarc.com/vidamp.html

Just do a google image search for "vga dummy plug" for info on which pins get the resistors.

I think you could also just take a VGA splitter cable that has 1 VGA male on one end, and 2 VGA female on the other ends (you can find the splitter cables on Ebay for under $5) and then jam the resistors in the correct holes on one of the plugs, something like this...

[Psicosis]

Ok perfect, thank you

[bulbousbeard]

MAME/UME/MESS really is the only option for emulation that doesn't suck. I can't believe how awful programs like BSNES are in terms of smoothness, resolution options, and so on.

It's pretty sad.