CRT_Emudriver creating phantom displays

[rewrite]

I'm beating my head against the wall on this one... I went out and bought a HD6770 for use with CRT_Emudriver and GrooveMAME. Figured I have MAME on the Vewlix, let's try putting it in a CRT cab as well.

I installed the newest version for my card, run VMMaker following the guide on the official forums, and it creates displays that don't even exist. I currently have 4 Displays according to Windows 7, and only two of them physically exist.

Also any time I enable EDID Emulation it changes all of the \\.\DISPLAY#'s. If I had Displays 1-3, after running it they're 4-6. Disable it and they move up to 7-9... And the weird phantom monitors are just "Connected by VGA" according to windows, despite no VGA on the card. And I can't remove them, or even disable them so that windows stops extending the desktop over 4 monitors.

I'm at a complete and utter loss. And doubly frustrated because I've followed the guide to the letter..

Any and all suggestions welcomed.

[Calamity]

EDID emulation enables a "phantom" display on the analog output that we use to support old EDID-less CRTs that otherwise are not properly handled by Windows. For the 6xxx family you have to use "analog_0" in the EDID emulation section.

Aside that, each time the video card is restarted by VMMaker, Windows increments the display device numbers, but that is not a bug. Everything goes back to normal if you restart the pc, or usually just by exiting the session and logging again.

If you mean that you have non-existent displays in the Windows display setup dialog, that's something I haven't seen, try disabling them through the dialog options.

[buttersoft]

Sorry, i meant to get to this one earlier.

There's more than one option in windows display settings to disable monitors. Windows should be able to turn off the use of them, or, hopefully, turn off detection. It's not always straightforward to do the latter, but it's normally possible. If this fails for whatever reason, hit the identify button to see your actual physical monitor's display number "x", then set MAME to target \.\DISPLAYx - this should help switchres find the right display. If not, open ArcadeOSD and hit the 2 key until the program is on the monitor you want, then hit the 1 key, and it will show the name/number of that display. Which, as you've noted, climbs when you reset the video card, so you have to restart and get the lowest number.

The next step might be to see if you need to clone the displays to help other emulators if they can't be targeted. Most other programs won't have any trouble with a cloned display, but the switchres utility that GroovyMAME uses might not be so happy.

Please report back with results, it sounds like an unusual bug

[Calamity]

The next step might be to see if you need to clone the displays to help other emulators if they can't be targeted. Most other programs won't have any trouble with a cloned display, but the switchres utility that GroovyMAME uses might not be so happy.

For an instant, try to imagine what a system needs to do behind the scenes in order to "clone" a display (usually over a completely different screen), you'll soon realize how a terrible idea it is. It is something that should only be done to get a poorly coded program to work while you look for a proper replacement. I can only think of a legit scenario for cloning, when you have two identical screens (e.g. two 15-kHz monitors), and you want the videocard to send the exact same output to both.

[buttersoft]

For an instant, try to imagine what a system needs to do behind the scenes in order to "clone" a display (usually over a completely different screen), you'll soon realize how a terrible idea it is. It is something that should only be done to get a poorly coded program to work while you look for a proper replacement. I can only think of a legit scenario for cloning, when you have two identical screens (e.g. two 15-kHz monitors), and you want the videocard to send the exact same output to both.

I completely agree, cloning is a bad idea. It might not even work. I was merely suggesting it as a workaround if other ideas failed.

In that old thread about cloning displays, i was trying it for the reason you list, and i failed to get it to work for MAME with two 4000-series cards. You suggested it was probably an issue in Win 7 with legacy cards. Everything else worked, but not GM. Has anyone actually tried it on newer cards?