Gonbes GBS-8200 CGA->VGA adapter won't save horizontal/vertical position/size

[clhug]

I didn't see a lot of posts about these boards in general, and can't find anything about this specific issue here or anywhere else, but I'm hoping someone might have experience enough with them to know if the board might be faulty or if it's just how these boards work.

I just bought one of these Gonbes GBS-8200 boards to replace a dead CRT with an LCD monitor in an old arcade cabinet (Arkanoid II).  I ordered off Amazon, one of the many on there that I'm sure are probably Chinese knock-offs, but I did look for one that had many reviews (and mostly good reviews), vs. one that had very few or no reviews, in hopes that would indicate one that was mostly dependable.  (Though yes, I know there are such things as fake reviews too, so reviews are no guarantee.)

It works great in general (nice color, stable picture), with one exception.  In short, it doesn't seem to save my horizontal and vertical position and size settings.

In more detail...

Upon first connection and power up, the picture doesn't quite fill the entire monitor screen.  It's about an inch short vertically and a 2 or 3 inches short horizontally.

I can use the settings on the 8200 board to adjust the horizontal and vertical size and position to make it fill the screen!  But as soon as the board loses power (when I turn off or unplug the game cabinet), the next time I turn on the game the picture reverts to the original size and position.

At first I thought it simply wasn't saving the settings.  Upon further testing I confirmed that it does save all other settings, picture (brightness, contrast, etc.), resolution, language.  It's only the Geometry settings (H/V size/position) that are an issue.

BUT upon further investigation, I discovered that the board DOES save the numberical values of the Geometry settings.  Even though the picture has reverted to its original size and position on the monitor screen, when I go into the board's Geometry settings, the numerical values of each setting ARE what I left them at when I adjusted it and before I turned off the game.

I can then select any individual setting and change it up or down by a single increment, and the picuture suddenly jumps to the position and size corresponding to that setting.

So it is apparently saving the H/V position/size settings its memory, it's just not applying them upon power-up.

Any ideas?

[Zebidee]

Shmups forum is really the place for you to go for GBS questions.

They are very moddable and reprogrammable, can do a lot of stuff with many different video formats. Quality bit iffy, but interesting bit of kit.

[clhug]

I posted this question on 3 different forums, shmups included, and didn't get an answer on any of them. BUT I managed to solve it myself, totally by accident, so I wanted to post back in case anyone else runs into this, hopefully it helps them.

All I did was press the "Input" button (the left one) repeatedly to rotate through the inputs.  When it got back to the input I was using, the picture suddenly jumped to the custom Geometry settings I had made, and it stayed that way from then on, after many power cycles.

I doubt this is by design, but I'm glad there was a fix for it.

I'm not sure it matters, but I'm using the 6-pin wiring harness that comes with the board for the video input signal.

[Zebidee]

True - Shmups at least is more interested in modding them, rather than how to use them "out-of-the-box".