Jpac + CRT Emudriver = Big blue screen

[jtb1987]

Hey guys, long time no see 

Ok, so a while ago (about 5 months ago lol) I had my whole machine up and running (arcade monitor + PC + HD Radeon HD 6800 + CRT emudriver 2.0 + groovymame) and it worked great!

Not long after, I idiotically shorted out the monitor chassis board while wiggling the RGB connection because color was going in an out (because the solder was old/cracking) - I didn't have the chassis screwed into the frame and dragged the underside against a screw, causing the short  .

I had to send it to a specialist to repair the chassis board by running jumper wires. It took a long time, but he was able to fix it and showed me the chassis up and running again great on his test machine.

Now, I'm back to trying to get it back up and running on my cabinet but I can't get it to work. I'm wondering if it's just been too long and I don't remember the steps but all I'm getting is a big blue screen.

This is the guide I've followed in the past to get it to work:
http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1055#p1055


1. I have the CRT emudriver installed (2.0)
2. I've generated and installed the modelines in vmmaker
3. I've made sure to select the type arcade 15.7 standard
4. I have it set to "analog_0 - disabled"
5. I've enabled the EDID emulation - my monitor goes "out of range" as soon as I do this
6. When I connect the PC to the JPAC to the monitor - the orange and green lights come on (the jumper on the jpac is also set to 15k)

But I get this big blue screen on my monitor

Can anyone help me with what I may be missing? Thanks for your help guys, ready to see this in action again. I've also attached some pics

[jtb1987]

Just an update -
I tried to uninstall and reinstall the calamity driver but that didn't work.
The monitor just does not seem to recognize any signal coming from the PC, despite me enabling the EDID emulation. The JPAC still shows both lights (sync on, sync in).
I know the monitor works because I can adjust the brightness and turn the whole screen white by turning the knob on the monitor chassis.

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[Calamity]

What happens when you reboot the machine? Do you see anything on the arcade monitor during the boot sequence, even if scrambled?

[jtb1987]

Calamity,
Thank you for the reply!

The arcade monitor does not appear to show anything related to the connection to the PC.
It acts as the same when turning on - whether it's being powered on independently OR if I have it connected to the PC with the JPAC and EDID emulation on.
It simply turns on - and I can adjust the brightness to see that it is indeed coming on full screen (I can adjust the brightness of the full screen from black to blue to white by adjusting the brightness knob on the chassis)

When it is connected to the PC with EDID emulation - I do see that the JPAC lights are coming on as I would expect them to. During the PC boot sequence, the "Sync in" orange light comes on the JPAC. When the computer is fully booted, the "Sync on" green light comes on the JPAC.

BEFORE I had the chassis repaired, the behavior was exactly as you described it - during the PC boot sequence, the arcade monitor would be scrambled, then when the PC fully booted, I would see the windows screen, etc.

It just seems that despite my steps above, the PC and arcade monitor are acting independently of each other - even though the lights on the JPAC seem to indicate otherwise (unless I don't actually understand how the JPAC led lights function).

[Calamity]

Have you seen the monitor actually working since it was repaired, e.g. with an arcade pcb?

[jtb1987]

Yes, but the repair specialist demonstrated it working with an actual arcade pcb, not connecting it to a PC

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[jtb1987]

Hey guys any thoughts on what to try next?

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[buttersoft]

When you connect your LCD to the Jpac at 15kHz, the LCD says out-of-range, right? And it says no-signal when nothing it plugged in? And you're using the same cable to connect to the jpac?

IF the sync light on the Jpac is green, i guess it's working in that regard. Might be that there's no RGB video itself coming through. Does the Jpac need more power from somewhere? You've tried the bias/gain levels on the monitor chassis? And these last make no difference at all, not even to retrace lines or other lines in the background when you turn the brightness up?

Can you get a multimeter onto anything as it comes out of the jpac? The sync should show 15kHz, and the RGB levels anything above 0VDC,  for testing purposes. Anything larger than a few fluctuating mV, really.

Andy from Ultimarc, who makes the Jpac, is legendary for the customer service he gives. You might try him as well, if none of the above makes sense.

[jtb1987]

Hi Buttersoft thank you for the reply -
I haven't had time to look into it anymore besides tonight...I wanted to make sure the  monitor itself was actually working so I hooked the old jamma pcb board up and confirmed the monitor is indeed working (see attached).

The issue is something going on with the jpac, crt emu driver, PC configuration for sure.

To answer one of your questions, my pc LCD monitor never actually went dark completely when I had the setup working before. When I enabled the EDID emulation, it would just go fuzzy and say out of range. That is when I would disconnect it and then connect the jpac to the PC

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[Calamity]

The issue is something going on with the jpac, crt emu driver, PC configuration for sure.

Sure, but even with a wrong Emudriver/PC configuration you *must* see something on the screen. Trust me on this.

It sounds like the JPAC might be fried. In order to confirm this, you may try a direct VGA-RGB connection to your monitor, if you know what you're doing. Or borrow a second JPAC. Or connect your PC to another cabinet/CRT TV, etc.

[keropi]

The J-PAC has an ESD-protection IC , mine lost the green channel and I had to replace the IC. Maybe yours lost the sync channel or something...if you have access to a 2nd jpac borrow it to test and keep in mind it's not a good idea to connect/disconnect it with the pc/monitor powered on, I think that's how the green channel protection fried on mine since I was in the process of setting things up just like you...
do a visual inspection for any abnormalities on the surface of the jpac ics

[jtb1987]

The issue is something going on with the jpac, crt emu driver, PC configuration for sure.

Sure, but even with a wrong Emudriver/PC configuration you *must* see something on the screen. Trust me on this.

It sounds like the JPAC might be fried. In order to confirm this, you may try a direct VGA-RGB connection to your monitor, if you know what you're doing. Or borrow a second JPAC. Or connect your PC to another cabinet/CRT TV, etc.

It was the jpac! Replaced it and now we have lift off! I appreciate everyone's help, thank you.

I am noticing that the screen seems slightly off center (going towards the right) - extending the width doesn't fix the issue, just stretches out the image. I tried to attach a pic to illustrate what I mean.

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[buttersoft]

To adjust the horizontal parameters of any modeline you use ArcadeOSD - it came with the crt_emudriver package. Open it, pick a modeline, then select the horizontal option, then adjust the 3 sync pulse parameters in there. The first does the right side of the screen, the second does centering but ignore it for now, and the third does the left side. Once adjusted, make sure to write down the timings in ms for those three options. And save the modeline if you like - Mame won't care, but other emulators will.

If you push too far and your monitor won't sync to bring up a stable picture within the first second or so, hit esc to go back until you can see the screen.

Then you can either reinstall your resolutions with VMM, inserting those timings. Or simply edit the mame.ini file.

From the monitor presets sticky you have the description of a modeline in VMM's monitor.ini file, or in the mame.ini file:
crt_range 0-9   HfreqMin-HfreqMax, VfreqMin-VfreqMax, HFrontPorch, HSyncPulse, HBackPorch, VfrontPorch, VSyncPulse, VBackPorch, HSyncPol, VSyncPol, ProgressiveLinesMin, ProgressiveLinesMax, InterlacedLinesMin, InterlacedLinesMax

For example, though this may not match what you have installed right now:
crt_range0  15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

You replace the parameters in bold with the three you wrote down, in the same order as above. This will do your main resolution, probably 2560x240p if you followed the guide. You may, or may not, need to repeat this process for a few different resolutions depending on what games you want to look best, but because you can only have one mame.ini file you make a folder called "ini" in that same directory, and under it put more files to the tune of neogeo.ini (for all neogeo machines, of course) or sf2.ini (for streetfighter II alone). Bad examples because those run at 240p, but you get the idea.

Glad to hear you got things working though

[jtb1987]

To adjust the horizontal parameters of any modeline you use ArcadeOSD - it came with the crt_emudriver package. Open it, pick a modeline, then select the horizontal option, then adjust the 3 sync pulse parameters in there. The first does the right side of the screen, the second does centering but ignore it for now, and the third does the left side. Once adjusted, make sure to write down the timings in ms for those three options. And save the modeline if you like - Mame won't care, but other emulators will.

If you push too far and your monitor won't sync to bring up a stable picture within the first second or so, hit esc to go back until you can see the screen.

Then you can either reinstall your resolutions with VMM, inserting those timings. Or simply edit the mame.ini file.

From the monitor presets sticky you have the description of a modeline in VMM's monitor.ini file, or in the mame.ini file:
crt_range 0-9   HfreqMin-HfreqMax, VfreqMin-VfreqMax, HFrontPorch, HSyncPulse, HBackPorch, VfrontPorch, VSyncPulse, VBackPorch, HSyncPol, VSyncPol, ProgressiveLinesMin, ProgressiveLinesMax, InterlacedLinesMin, InterlacedLinesMax

For example, though this may not match what you have installed right now:
crt_range0  15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

You replace the parameters in bold with the three you wrote down, in the same order as above. This will do your main resolution, probably 2560x240p if you followed the guide. You may, or may not, need to repeat this process for a few different resolutions depending on what games you want to look best, but because you can only have one mame.ini file you make a folder called "ini" in that same directory, and under it put more files to the tune of neogeo.ini (for all neogeo machines, of course) or sf2.ini (for streetfighter II alone). Bad examples because those run at 240p, but you get the idea.

Glad to hear you got things working though

buttersoft,
I appreciate the response -
I've noticed now since I've begin using the machine, the resolutions aren't working as well as before. Some games are fine, whereas older games you can't play now because the screen scrambles (ex. Galaga) - this wasn't an issue before.
Do I need to go through the instructions above or would I be best to try to reinstall the driver and go through all the steps again?

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[buttersoft]

Firstly, does your chassis have V-hold and H-hold/H-freq adjustments? If so, try the h- adjustments.

If that doesn't fix it, what resolution is GM picking for Galaga, which you can find out by creating a log - look in Calamity's signature on any post of his for how to do that, then read the log. Then see if that resolution works in ArcadeOSD.

If it does, create a galaga.ini file in the correct place, and copy the horizontal timings from ArcadeOSD for that modeline into the crt_range0 line in the new ini.

If the resolution doesn't work in ArcadeOSD, post up again.

[jtb1987]

Hi buttersoft I was able to reinstall the crt emudrivers and regenerate/install the modelines and that fixed everything, thank you for the help

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