ATI 6970 Crtemudriver 2.0b Sony Kv27fs120 Groovymame only 5 useable resolutions

[arcadepcnut]

3 Questions at the very bottom and from past experience im sure this is the best forum to ask.

Background
I havent upgraded or messed with my machine in 2 years as everything was working well no need to upgrade or update. However my 4850 Ati card failed. So i replaced with a ATi 6970 that i had on hand. so while i did this i upgraded the CRTEMUDRIVERS as well.

Much much less painful process than the previous installs. thank you so much.
Within a half hour i was outputting a 15hz resolution and was back up and going.

However one minor issue. i chose to be using the arcade_15 setting and superresolutions but i have a "TV" my exact model is sony kv27fs120 and i had a old custom vmmaker modeline i was using in the old CRT emudrivers.
With this mode 15 resotuions are generated but quite a few are out of spec for my screen. expecially the ones lower than 56khz and cause my monitor to go out of vertical sync.

So i used the ntsc setting and got 5 modelines all that work decent. But i remembered in the old vmmaker.ini i had found the perfect modelines for the KV27fs120 so i tried to use those and create a new mode in the monitor.ini file.

The old modelines is:
crt_range0 15625-16200, 55.50-61.00, 3.202, 4.803, 6.938, 0.192, 0.192, 1.152, 0, 0, 256, 480
crt_range1 15625-16200, 55.50-61.00, 3.766, 4.842, 6.456, 0.960, 0.192, 0.512, 0, 0, 256, 480

However these dont import successfully into the new Vmmaker and show on the nice little gui at the bottom zero for everything.

So i tweaked these two modelines and created a new entry into monitor.ini and Vmmaker approves:
monitor "sony_kv27fs120", "Sony Kv27FS120 15.7 kHz", "4:3"
   crt_range0 15625-16200, 55.50-61.00, 3.202, 4.803, 6.938, 0.192, 0.192, 1.152, 0, 0, 192, 240, 448, 480
   crt_range1 15625-16200, 55.50-61.00, 3.766, 4.842, 6.456, 0.960, 0.192, 0.512, 0, 0, 192, 240, 448, 480

Notice about i just cut and pasted the last 4 sets of numbers from the "ntsc" entry in monitor.ini file. I dont really know what im doing.

i still only get the same 5 modes instead of 15 modes from the arcade_15 setting.

3 Questions:
is my modelines in monitor.ini wrong? can someone help correct?
with 5 modes what am i loosing? so far the games i spot checked look good.
Last, would it be better to use the arcade_15 setting and just delete out the 4 entries that dont work for my monitor?

Thank you for your help.




       

[Arroyo]

The old modelines is:
crt_range0 15625-16200, 55.50-61.00, 3.202, 4.803, 6.938, 0.192, 0.192, 1.152, 0, 0, 256, 480
crt_range1 15625-16200, 55.50-61.00, 3.766, 4.842, 6.456, 0.960, 0.192, 0.512, 0, 0, 256, 480

Your range is missing interlaced lines min and maximum (2 additional entries needed at the end).  It looks like in your modelines above that you were defining the maximum for progressive and interlaced but left out minimums.  I’m guessing this because of your 256 and 480 numbers.

Also unless I’m missing something there isn’t a need for two entries like that as you made no changes to the horizontal range min or max, nor were there any changes to frequency range.  Therefore those two entries are sending conflicting information, telling GroovyMame to adjust the porches to different values with the same parameters. 

I have very similar TV’s and as it sounds like you have already figured out, they don’t handle frequencies below 59hz very well (a water ripple effect below 59hz, and then flipping picture below 56hz).

What worked for me and other testers was using the Arcade15 preset and then modifying the frequency range outputs to whatever you can tolerate (59hz roughly for me).  You should only have one set of porch values not two different sets like you have above.

Here’s a more thorough conversation on the topic, bit of a long read but probably will help understand things better:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,159544.0.html

[arcadepcnut]

thank you very much i still dont understand exactly what im doing. i ended up simply using the modeline you recommended in that thread. i still only get 5 modes but i guess thats all a TV can do...

crt_range0  15625-16200, 59.50-60.10, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 240, 448, 480

[Arroyo]

What do you mean when you say “get 5 modes”?  Do you mean 5 resolutions?

[arcadepcnut]

sorry was out of town. I only get 5 super resolutions instead of 15 that i do with my arcade monitor. i guess thats ok because so far most games i have spot checked look fine.

[Arroyo]

sorry was out of town. I only get 5 super resolutions instead of 15 that i do with my arcade monitor. i guess thats ok because so far most games i have spot checked look fine.

The number of resolutions you get is dictated by the modeline you use in VMM.  Try this, instead of editing the modeline in VMM, just use the Arcade_15kz preset.  That should give you the 15 super resolutions.  Then you can edit the mame.ini file under crt_range0 with your edits.  Keep in mind this in effect will be doing the same thing as giving you the 5 resolutions.  When you edit the modeline with the constraints of range of the TV you are telling Groovymame that your monitor can only handle the vertical frequencies that you outlined, as well as the resolution min & max. 

Another way of saying this is even if you get 15 resolutions, because you need to limit the range due to the TV you will limit which resolutions you can use due to the vertical refresh limits, and resolution limits of the display.

Make sense?