CRT Emudriver on tri-sync monitor

[tronbaby]

Hi all, I've got a Blast City cab with an auto tri-sync monitor.  I've got Groovymame working beautifully with CRT Emudriver on a R9 380 GPU, using a J-PAC.
I want to also run Demul and some other emulators that do 24Khz and 31Khz (640x480p), but I'm not sure how to setup CRT EMudriver to do that.
Has anyone else had any experience with a tri-sync setup?

[buttersoft]

Blast City is a pretty well-known cab, so your monitor may have a dual- or tri-sync preset already in the monitor.ini file under the crt_emudriver directory. The first step is to go into VMM and redo your modelines - remembering that you can export the current set if you need to.

The Arcade15 preset range line, that you may be using right now, looks like this:

monitor "arcade_15", "Arcade 15.7 kHz - standard resolution", "4:3"
        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

A tri-sync preset for a Nanao MS-2930 or 2931 looks like this:

monitor "ms2930", "Nanao MS-2930, MS-2931", "4:3"
        crt_range0 15450-16050, 50-65, 3.190, 4.750, 6.450, 0.191, 0.191, 1.164, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576
        crt_range1 23900-24900, 50-65, 2.870, 3.000, 4.440, 0.451, 0.164, 1.148, 0, 0, 320, 384, 0, 0
        crt_range2 31000-32000, 50-65, 0.330, 3.580, 1.750, 0.316, 0.063, 1.137, 0, 0, 480, 512, 0, 0

Note that the tri-sync has three ranges, and what those ranges are. Your monitor may not be a Nanao MS2930 or 31 at all, of course. In which case a little digging might be required.

The monitor presets sticky is a good place to start if you want help understanding all those terms in the range lines:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,116023.0.html

[tronbaby]

Brilliant, thanks Buttersoft, I'll experiment.  Appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
Also, did you manage to flash your R9 380's bios in the end?

[buttersoft]

I've never had an R9 380? I planned to grab one at some point, but people keep coming back saying the top-end cards that still have a real analog out can't be flashed, so i'm gonna hold off.

[fuchi_jeg]

I have a tri-sync and a 380x. I haven't found a way to make demul auto switch resolutions. It works great if you run your desktop and front end at 640x480. Changes the video settings in demul to your preferences and then change the demul ini files to read only. Otherwise your controls and video options will periodically be reset.

[tronbaby]

Thanks for the tip.  I had noticed my controls randomly got reset once or twice and I wasn't sure how it happened.
I'm using Attract Mode as a front end and then using Rocket Launcher to launch Demul - that part works really well, nice and clean.  It was just configuring 31KHz to begin with I'm having problems with - my PC seems to have 640x480 interlaced by default and I get strange things happening when I try to run at 640x480p - so I wasn't sure what settings I had in CRT Emudriver.  I'll experiment with the advice from buttersoft and see what happens.  @buttersoft I thought you had bought an R9 380 from a previous post, my mistake.

[tronbaby]

I've been experimenting.  I tried applying the settings for my cab - it is an MS-2931.  My problem seems to be with the J-PAC now.  If I have the 15Khz jumper set, then all 15Khz games will switch and work great.  But of course it wont work for 31KHz games.  And the same is true vice versa.  I thought if I had the jumper on the J-PAC set to 31Khz, that would cover all resolutions below it too.  But when I have that set, I dont get the monitor to do its auto switch, and the picture isnt right on low res games. 
This question may be more about how to configure the J-PAC to autoswitch now.  Anyone with a tri-sync and a J-PAC got any advice?  Thanks

[cools]

IIRC remove the jumpers on the JPAC for a tri-sync, since you want to send both 15 and 31 to it.

[tronbaby]

I got excited then, that would have been simple, but no joy.  I've got the VGA out from the PC going to the J-PAC.  I'm not using the Blast City VGA cable, video is going through Jamma via the J-PAC.  I removed the jumpers from the J-PAC now.
I've had a look at the modelines and they contain all the right resolutions, so that looks right.  The problem seems to be that without the 15Khz jumper on, it wont flick to a 15Khz signal properly.  Usually the monitor makes a noise when it changes between 15, 24 and 31Khz mode too, and I'm not getting that happen.
Any other suggestions?  Thanks for the help everyone.   

[Endprodukt]

---smurfy--- design of the jpacs video protection circuitry. I ran into the same problem. Remove jumpers, solder h/v sync on the VGA input of the j pac.

Removing just the jumpers will result in composite sync.

[tronbaby]

Thanks everyone.  I sorted it out.  I reinstalled Win7 to start from scratch, probably overkill, but I was messing so much I thought it would be cleanest.
I followed Calamity's in depth installation instructions for CRT Emudriver. 
Selected the tri-syn preset for the MS2930/MS2931.
Then enabled EDID emulation.
Added supermodes, then generated and installed modelines.
I connected the cab's VGA connector directly to PC's graphics card.  BUT, I still had to make sure no jumpers were on the j-pac.  I thought this was strange - because even though I was not connecting the VGA to the j-pac, if the jumper was on it was distorting the image.
It all works perfercly now and MAME games look wonderful in 15khz, model 2/model 3 games switch to 25Khz and look much better and 31Khz games look perfect in 640x480p.  I've got a Demul speed issue now, but everything else is great.  Thanks all.

[tronbaby]

Thought I'd post to share a finding I made.  I had GroovyMame with CRT Emu working perfectly now on my BlastCity cab.  It's autoswitching to 15Khz for old school arcade games via GroovyMame, 25Khz for Model2 and Model3 emulators and it's doing 31Khz no problem too. 
However, I had a problem that Demul was too slow.  It would stutter and not manage constant 60fps.  I've messed with all the settings for hours.  My PC has 8GB RAM, 4GHz i7 4790K CPU and a Radeon R9 380X GPU - its should be quick enough and others have said they get full speed.
The problem was that I was running Windows 7.  I created a fresh install of Windows 10 and it runs perfectly now.  I'm not sure what the specific difference is now - I can only assume Windows 10 has better DirectX or OpenGL drivers?  I dunno, but anyway it's perfect now. 
Hopefully this might help someone else who tries - I've spent dozens of hours getting to this point, not to mention the constant upgrades I've purchased to get to my current setup! 

[SORHP]

thank you for updating