Windows 10?

[Sledge]

Dare i ask it?
Has anyone tried Calamitys' drivers with it? Does it work?

If not.. i wonder how long it will take to get them going...
reason i ask is i want to try it on the new PC i bought for my new cabinet, but if i do the upgrade, then i MAY not be able to go back to win7 (this is still an unknown if our old keys will still be valid or not if we choose to go back in 6 months time etc)

[Calamity]

I'd expect the drivers to work with W10, but can't guarantee it. Actually my hope is future versions will be based on native W10 drivers backported to W8/W7.

[Dalba]

any hints about what "surprise" we can expect after summer regarding CRT_Emudriver and moderns dx11 cards (and therefore W10) ? 

[Sledge]

And when is 'after summer' for you?
I'm thinking a couple of weeks..

[Slippyblade]

Come to Phoenix, we trick-or-treat in 95+ degrees.  Summer doesn't "end" here till mid to late October.

[yotsuya]

Come to Phoenix, we trick-or-treat in 95+ degrees.  Summer doesn't "end" here till mid to late October.

I actually think it's been a pretty mild summer.

[CanadianRyGuy]

I too am curious about this as I'm just looking at getting a compatible Radeon HD Card and would like to not have to purchase it now only to have to buy something better again in a few weeks.

[jamesm801]

So.... someone try and install it.

Although I was under the impression you couldn't turn on that Test Mode in Windows 10.

[yotsuya]

Like I stated in the OTHER Windows 10 thread, I already did.

[jamesm801]

Like I stated in the OTHER Windows 10 thread, I already did.

Link?

[Sledge]

Like I stated in the OTHER Windows 10 thread, I already did.

Link?

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,146597.msg1525794.html#msg1525794

Like I stated in the OTHER Windows 10 thread, I already did.

Though i can't find ANY mention of anyone testing Calamity's drivers... which THIS thread is about...

[Dr.Venom]

Like I stated in the OTHER Windows 10 thread, I already did.

Though i can't find ANY mention of anyone testing Calamity's drivers... which THIS thread is about...

+ 1

With regards to turning on testsigning in Windows 10 (which is needed for the Calamity drivers), apparently it works the same. Haven't tried it myself so don't know if there's any caveats.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff553484%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

The best thing would be when the upgrade will leave both the Calamity driver and the testmode intact.

Also, does anyone know whether W10 has changed things "under the hood" that would make it a more efficient platform than W7?

[Calamity]

I too am curious about this as I'm just looking at getting a compatible Radeon HD Card and would like to not have to purchase it now only to have to buy something better again in a few weeks.

Yeah that's the bad thing about anticipating stuff.

I can't say whether it's going to be a matter of weeks or months. I'd get the cheapest HD 4xxx you can find by now, then upgrade when things are ready. What I wouldn't do is search for a high end HD 4xxx now as you'd be wasting your money.

[Calamity]

The best thing would be when the upgrade will leave both the Calamity driver and the testmode intact.

Also, does anyone know whether W10 has changed things "under the hood" that would make it a more efficient platform than W7?

The test mode won't be a problem as I'm planning to purchase a certificate as soon as I have everything ready. Not a day before because it only lasts for a year and I'd I like to be able to update the driver as long as possible.

I still haven't researched the W10 system but at least there's a new WDDM model: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn894184(v=vs.85).aspx

Hopefully the change is not so radical as it was from XP(XPDM) to W7 (WDDM).

If W10 insists on updating the display drivers automatically, then it'll be a problem, but I believe it'll be possible to disable it at some point.

In my experience, the infamous W8/8.1 turns out to be a great operating system, once you get rid of the start screen and metro crap. In many aspects it's better than W7, and it performs surprisingly well even on modest computers.

[Dr.Venom]

The test mode won't be a problem as I'm planning to purchase a certificate as soon as I have everything ready. Not a day before because it only lasts for a year and I'd I like to be able to update the driver as long as possible.

That sounds great.

If W10 insists on updating the display drivers automatically, then it'll be a problem, but I believe it'll be possible to disable it at some point.

I thought I'd take the plunge and updated one of my machines to W10. Unfortunately it removes the Calamity driver. A newer video driver (8.970.100.9001, dated 13-1-2015) is installed and it seems it cannot be replaced. Where in W7 you could use the trick to remove the newer driver from hardware devices, and install the Calamity driver instead, this doesn't work anymore. Everytime W10 is quick te re-install the newer driver. I even got W10 to crash by disabling the device, remove the driver, scan for new devices, quickly try and install the Calamity driver, only to get a blue screen (lol) and reboot.  Note that the W10 upgrade left the Testmode untouched.

Unless there are any other tricks we could try, CRT Emudriver currently isn't compatible with W10.

In my experience, the infamous W8/8.1 turns out to be a great operating system, once you get rid of the start screen and metro crap. In many aspects it's better than W7, and it performs surprisingly well even on modest computers.

True it feels quite light.

[Calamity]

Thanks for trying this Dr.Venom.

A newer video driver (8.970.100.9001, dated 13-1-2015) is installed and it seems it cannot be replaced.

Yeah this is normal and happens with W7 and 8 too, when the date in the inf is older than the one included with Windows. It should work if we modify the date, but you need to sign the inf after modifying it.

Let's see if I can create a modified version in a while.

EDIT, here is an modified version
www.aburamushi.net\calamity\crt_emudriver_13.1_1.2b_w7-8-10_64.exe

[niall]

Good stuff, I've been putting off moving from XP/ArcadeVGA -> Win7/8/10/4xxx  Hoping to get a cheap copy of Win10 and give it a try soon.

Calamity let us know when your hat is out to collect $ for the certificate - I'm sure we could keep a fund going 24x7 to make sure you can renew the certificate forevermore.  BitCoin might make it easy for all of us, as anyone will be able to see the current balance and know that it needs topping up.

[keilmillerjr]

 Anyone see how well the UI can be hidden on windows 10? Interested in performance increase and using calamity drivers.

[jamesm801]

I'm assuming as far as performance goes, one must use direct3d and use the framedelay 1 option since Window 8+ borked directdraw?

Is there any scaling or other issues using direct3d?

[keilmillerjr]

I meant performance relating to boot speed. My mvs loads a game almost instant with no bs. Its one thing I would like a mame machine to try to come close to matching.

[jamesm801]

I meant performance relating to boot speed. My mvs loads a game almost instant with no bs. Its one thing I would like a mame machine to try to come close to matching.

SSD?  Mine's pretty quick.

However, GameEx takes it's sweet ass time starting up, even on a Devils Canyon.  I have no idea what it could possibly be doing for 10 seconds.

[Dr.Venom]

Thanks for trying this Dr.Venom.

A newer video driver (8.970.100.9001, dated 13-1-2015) is installed and it seems it cannot be replaced.

Yeah this is normal and happens with W7 and 8 too, when the date in the inf is older than the one included with Windows. It should work if we modify the date, but you need to sign the inf after modifying it.

Let's see if I can create a modified version in a while.

EDIT, here is an modified version
www.aburamushi.net\calamity\crt_emudriver_13.1_1.2b_w7-8-10_64.exe

Thanks, this works!

The install does not go completely without issues however, but it does work.

For some reason when CRT emudriver setup.exe is run the first time, it will start the installation process but reboot the machine halfway through. After reboot there is no Calamity driver, but the the default W10 one. Running the installer again makes it work with two small issues.
1. It ends the installer with the relevant device installed but also one failed.
2. Related to 1 I think, the last message says 1 driver package was succesfully installed", and "65536 driver packages could not be installed". That are many driver packages not installed

I've attached the images such that you can see what failed (image for issue 1 is in two parts as the window isn't resizable and needs to be scrolled). Not sure what device failed, but from testing I can confirm that CRT_emudriver is now working as it should.

The important part is that we now have W10 running with a working CRT_Emudriver and GM+ASIO setup! Cool!

P.S. I tried the procedure again with the Calamity driver already installed, but it does exactly the same. First time reboot halfway through, after reboot the default W10 driver is back. Install again and it is OK, apart from the same small issues as described above.

[Calamity]

Hi Dr. Venom,

Thanks a lot for testing this. It's not too strange to see those issues, probably the devinst.exe tool that is used by the installer is outdated and returns bogus results, or the installer itself is buggy. For the new drivers I've written a new installer from scratch that uses system calls without any devinst helper tool, hopefully it'll make installation simpler.

[Dr.Venom]

Thanks a lot for testing this. It's not too strange to see those issues, probably the devinst.exe tool that is used by the installer is outdated and returns bogus results, or the installer itself is buggy. For the new drivers I've written a new installer from scratch that uses system calls without any devinst helper tool, hopefully it'll make installation simpler.

My pleasure. The new installer sounds great. If and when there's testing to do just let me know.

With regards to the new drivers, if I may ask, which version are you targeting and what cards will we be able to run with?

I've also been looking at the newer ATI cards, and I'm noticing that most of them only have -one- DVI-I out. This is a bit of a pity as I have both my normal and a rotated monitor to attach. I guess two cards in one system will be the only solution for attaching two monitors with these new cards?

Looking at the -very- high-end cards they don't even have DVI-I anymore, it's all DVI-D. Do you have an idea about the future of this? Will we be doomed to active DVI->VGA converters (delays?) or are there other options open?

With regards to the W10 topic, there's only one (obvious) minus as far as I can see now, which is that there's no way to disable desktop composition anymore. This basicly means bsnes/higan's scrolling is broken. The W8/8.1 workarounds also don't work anymore in W10.

I wish MAME's snes emulation was as good, but unfortunately it suffers from slowdown issues for some games that is unrelated to PC power. I posted about that on the mess emu board, see here. The slowdowns are seemingly the result of some cycle exact compatibility fixes that were put in for some games. It's just really too bad it lowers the accuracy of two of my favourites :/ 

For me this means that either Higan needs to update its emulator to use fullscreen mode (instead of full-window mode) or MAME's SNES driver needs these slowdowns fixed, but until that happens I think I'm keeping W7 on my main GM machine...

[Calamity]

Hi Dr. Venom,

The driver versions I'll be using are the ones that are shipped with Windows installation disks. The reason for this is only these versions have debugging symbols available from Microsoft servers, and these symbols make kernel debugging possible for human beings. Thus, in order to keep the most up-to-date drivers, it makes sense to backport W10 drivers to W7, for instance. The bad thing about Windows native drivers is they're stripped-down versions of the official packages, so things like DXVA may be missing.

Starting from HD 6xxx it seems that usually only one analog output exists. This limits the possibilities of multi-head builds, so we'll need to choose the more expensive multi-pci-e motherboards for that.

Analog outputs will be extinct soon. I will consider my mission complete if I can provide support for the last generation of cards with analog outputs. I'm surprised that analog still exists on modern hardware, it has lasted longer than I expected. My understanding is that manufacturers still support this because they need to provide an x86 bios and an vga enabled output as Windows still relies on it during boot. Not sure if latest versions of Windows do, but definitely XP and 7 do, and there are MANY of these systems out there still. But supporting analog must be nothing but a nuisance for manufacturers, the need to keep in staff some guys who can write x86 assembly must be annoying for some.

[Calamity]

With regards to Higan you can use RetroArch anyway.

I guess at some point we should consider contributing to the actual emulation in MAME instead of just assuming emulation will get better in the short run.

[jamesm801]

With regards to Higan you can use RetroArch anyway.

I guess at some point we should consider contributing to the actual emulation in MAME instead of just assuming emulation will get better in the short run.

I haven't read anything good about RetroArch.  I've been trying to figure out how to get it to use some "aux" resolutions but I can find no resolution option for any cores,

And, if I'm not wrong, it won't work for sytems that switch resolutions dynamically, and you may need to switch resolutions on the core if say, one SNES game uses a different resolution than another....

I was just recently playing with it... great emulator, not CRT love.  It's a shame not everyone can appreciate the historic significance of a CRT signal, zero motion resolution issues, great color (assuming a gret monitor) and zero lag.  LCD's still suck for all these things, not that I have anything against them.  I use a Framemister with a lot of RGB systems, but CRT still provides the most original picture.

People like old cars, old games, why not old CRT's???  That's my opinion on the so called scarey dev at RetroArch.

[Calamity]

I wouldn't like to go off-topic but bringing the name of RA has that effect. It does have options to enable the use of any resolution available in the system. It is your job to define the proper resolution/refresh for any game. It won't switch resolutions dynamically while in game so you need to use super resolutions for that case (this won't be of use if it is the vertical resolution what changes e.g. 240/480i).

I believe it's a generational issue, RA devs are probably too young to consider CRTs anything but a relic. Think the use of the 'retro' prefix says it all. I wouldn't consider this stuff 'retro' because I was around when it happened. Don't blame them.

Flat screens, just like Ikea, are a byproduct of the housing bubble.

[Dr.Venom]

Hi Calamity,

Perfect, thanks for the anwers.

I'm contemplating whether it would be useful for me to upgrade to a newer AMD card at some point. Hopefully you can guide with a few answers.

- Do you think using a very new card may benefit the high framedelay cases?  Or would that gain be negligible when compared to say a HD4850? Any insight in this would be helpful. 
- Could a new driver co-exist with the 9.3 driver in one system? I.e. that the system would have a new HD6XXX+ card and a HD 4XXX card combined in one system, or would the different driver versions interfere with each other?

I currently have a NVidia GTX in the first slot and a HD4850 in the second, which works very nice as the NVidia has my LCD attached, and the second slot doesn't have an output signal during boot, i.e. both CRT's on the HD4850 don't get a 31khz signal during boot. If and when I would change the system to two newer AMD cards, would I still be able to protect the CRT's from receiving the 31Khz signal (via ATOM?), while retaining the 31Khz signal for the attached LCD during boot?

With regards to Higan you can use RetroArch anyway.

I thought I could, but I find retroarch for PC a totally cluttered and frustrating experience and decided to not spend more time with it.

I guess at some point we should consider contributing to the actual emulation in MAME instead of just assuming emulation will get better in the short run.

Definitely, there's a lot of room for improvement there still for many drivers.

[Dr.Venom]

I believe it's a generational issue, RA devs are probably too young to consider CRTs anything but a relic. Think the use of the 'retro' prefix says it all. I wouldn't consider this stuff 'retro' because I was around when it happened. Don't blame them.

That's an interesting point. I recently visited a retro games/hardware exhibition, which always used to be about arcade machines, commodore, sega, colecovision, nes, etc., only to find that a lot of stuff offered was XBOX, PS2, PS3.

Flat screens, just like Ikea, are a byproduct of the housing bubble.

If that is the case, given that housing prices have imploded by 20%, I expect a return of CRT's in the home. They will be marketed as "real" 3D televisions.