Advice setting up GM on my 31khz monitor

[edslp]

I'm trying to set up GM for use on my Samsung 997mb.
I'd been using MameUI in conjunction with CRU to create custom modes which was fine, but I'd love to take advantage of GM's frame_delay & extended custom mode support etc. I have radeon HD6xxx series card running under win10x64.

I followed the emudriver install guide and it seemed to work ok (after 1 bsod). During VMM conifiguration I begin to wonder whether using my 31khz monitor was even valid since it all seems heavily focused on 15khz.. but I went with "PC CRT 31/120" as monitor type, import the super resolutions list etc.. and generate/install modes.

Basically, running GM  I kept getting "Unable to find suitable mode" errors and the like, at which point felt I was in way over my head
I also tried adding a custom resolution with CRU (720x576@50) for use with winuae, but winuae now crashes at launch with emudriver installed.

At this point I rolled back to standard catalyst driver, thinking perhaps i could go back to using CRU for custom modes and somehow still take advantage of GM's frame_delay option... so I created a mode for galaga but could not get GM to force this resolution (unable to find suitable mode..)

So yes I am very confused and probably doing everything wrong lol.. would greatly appreciate some advice

[Calamity]

GM by default uses the "generic_15" preset, which is meant for 15 kHz. Thus you need to match the preset used in VMMaker with the preset in mame.ini. VMMaker does this for you as long as you select the option to export settings to GM. Otherwise, you need to do it manually.

In other words, when GM reports "Unable to find any mode that meets your specs" it's because there's a mismatch between GM's monitor configuration and the modes available in the system.

The way to learn how GM "thinks" is to read its logs rather than random documentation.

[edslp]

Ok thanks! What would be the correct preset to use with my monitor? PC CRT 31/120, or maybe one of the VESA options? Its ranges are 50-160 vertical and 30-96 horizontal

[edslp]

ok I appear to be getting somewhere now.. though I still dont know what I'm doing
Using emulated EDID was causing issues for me, gm not launching / winuae crashing etc.. also the VESA presets didn't work as the modes would seem to get added properly.
So now with emudriver & standard EDID + CRT 31/120 monitor; games are launching fine, and switchres is working.
I've tried 3 games so far;
-1942; looks perfect but runs at 99% speed (2560x512p@59.623hz)
-galaga; perfect hertz rate but scaling is not 1:1 (2560x496p@60.606hz)
-sf2; some extreme filtering is applied, looks like heavy scanline effect + doubled hz rate? (2560x240p@119.275Hz)

How do I fix such issues? Perhaps crt 31/120 is still the wrong preset?
Also what's the correct way to manually add more usable modes.. just add "720x576@50.000000" etc to the list and run it through vmmaker again?
Lastly is there i way I can change the mame UI to run @ 1280x1024 instead of 640x480?

[edslp]

Well I'll update my situation for those with similar monitor / situation to me.
I spent the entire weekend trying to learn as much as possible and read the official guides many times.. I know my way around vmmaker, arcadeosd and gm settings much better now. Also I found QMC2 frontend to be a really great gm-friendly alternative to MameUI

At first I did create my own monitor profile which seemed to work ok.. I got hold of the service manual and cobbled together a configuration based on the timings table.. though it had three completely different sets of timings based on 3 different resolutions, so I had no idea which set to use.. but somehow it still worked.

I set the ranges to avoid really low resolutions as they were not playing nice.
I was using super resolutions/mode generation to set up about 30 or so games, but I soon found that too many modes were over-riding my monitors internal geometry memory.. I'd align the screen for one game and it would throw out the settings for others etc. It wasn't limited to vertical amplitude either, horizontal shifting & amplitude also affected, sometimes extreme. A temporary fix was to add new doubled modes but I soon ran into same issue.  Then I tried forcing tweaked modelines which worked for a few games, though most were too geometrically different to fix this way. Then finally when attempting add another new mode I got an overlapping label error and couldn't load the list into ram with vmmaker. I also could not delete the culprit mode because winmodelines doesn't work properly with windows 10

So basically I started from scratch, using standard crt 70/120 monitor config in case my custom one was bad.. and will try static modes only. I'll use CRU to add detailed resolutions and extended EDID modes, as for some reason the geometry settings are remembered for all of them doing it this way. When no slots are left I'll add more static modes with vmmaker. All is working well so far.

I think the super-resolutions approach is more suited to 15khz monitors and 31/96khz are better to stick with static modes for geometry memory reasons?
Anyway loving GM.. especially the frame_delay option

[edslp]

Having a problem with defender not scaling correctly to resolutions that are exact multiples of the original, uneven pixels and blurry filter applied. Have tried with 1168x960 and 584x480, both produce same result. (works fine in regular mame).

[Calamity]

Instead of 1168, use 1184.

Explanation: GM (and your video card) internally works only with resolutions that are multiples of 8. So, 292 will be promoted to 296, which can't fit in 1168 when scaled x4.

[Calamity]

I think the super-resolutions approach is more suited to 15khz monitors and 31/96khz are better to stick with static modes for geometry memory reasons?

No way. Using static resolutions (i.e. fixed refresh rates) missing the possibility of matching the refresh on-the-fly to any random value your game is demanding is like travelling back in time to 2007.

However, PC monitors can be a bit tricky to configure, each model behaves different with regards to automatic geometry adjustments and you need to learn how to surf their quirks.

Using three different programs at the same time to deal with custom video won't make things easier IMO.

[edslp]

Thanks for the explanation with defender, and I've since given up on using static resolutions again
It's an absolute nightmare to manage and avoid clashing refresh rates etc.. I really want to get the full advantage of dynamic method.. I know my monitor is capable.

I think my main problem is the lack of an accurate monitor config that closely resembles my 997mb. I thought the PC CRT or VESA ones would do but they are quite far off and produce modelines that I cant even stretch to full size with my monitors osd for example. I tried for a long time today to attempt another custom monitor type based on my timings chart but it never produces results I expect. I feel proper ranges will play important part here but can't get my head around how to implement them! Also polarity... I know this important because low range is --, but higher ranges on my screen it needs to be ++.. otherwise the display is very tiny. I guess ranges come into play here to.
In the vmmaker guide, there is an example monitor spec for the LG 57M multisync.. I even tried to find a timing chart for this to determine why those settings were applied, but couldn't find one 

Basically it's beyond me.. If I could get help with this custom monitor config I'd really appreciate it