Help with Groovymame 2 monitors

[Roland_001]

Hi all,

So I finally have Groovymame running fairly well.  Here's my setup:

Frontend: Launchbox/Bigbox, running Groovymame, regular MAME (for a few ROMs' that seem to not like Groovymame) and Retroarch for the rest.

GPU: R9 380x with EmuDriver installed, with the custom resolutions uploaded via VMMaker

Displays: (currently set as "Extended" in Windows)

Display 1: 1080p LCD for configuring.  Will eventually be replaced with a Pixelcade LCD as a Marquee
Display 2: 27" JVC CRT via component input (DVI -> VGA -> Transcoder -> CRT).  This is the display that runs Bigbox, and what I want Groovymame to output to.

Currently, groovymame only outputs to the CRT if I set it as the primary display.  Otherwise, it outputs to the LCD, and the CRT is blank.
As I'll need the LCD connected for at least a few weeks for tweaking configurations, it's tedious to go back and forth between the two.  Plus I'll eventually replace it with a different LCD to act as a marquee.  I know there's a way to I'm sure there's a way to set it up where I can keep the LCD as the priimary windows display, and have Groovymame output to the CRT?

Arcade OSD lists the LCD as \\.\DISPLAY1, and the CRT as \\.\DISPLAY2

I'm assuming that with this information, I need to somehow modify the mame.ini in the Groovymame directory, but for the life of me, I can't figure out exactly what I need to do.  I would appreciate any/all help.

Regards,

Rolyen

P.S.  I'll post parts of my mame.ini file in case it helps (These are my current settings):

# OSD VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video                     auto
numscreens                1
window                    0
maximize                  1
waitvsync                 1
sync_mode                 2
monitorprovider           auto
.
.
.

# OSD PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS
#
screen                  \\.\DISPLAY2
aspect                    4:3
resolution                auto
view                      auto
screen0                   auto
aspect0                   auto
resolution0               auto
view0                     auto
screen1                   auto
aspect1                   auto
resolution1               auto
view1                     auto
screen2                   auto
aspect2                   auto
resolution2               auto
view2                     auto
.
.
.

# OSD FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
switchres                 1
switchres_ini             1
switchres_backend         auto
modesetting               0
modeline_generation       1
monitor                   Arcade_15
interlace                 0
doublescan                1
super_width               2560

[Calamity]

Hi Roland,

This configuration works (I test it every day here), so there must be something going on. First make sure you have an up-to-date GM, because second display has been broken at some points in the past.

Basically, all you have to do is: groovymame game -screen \\.\DISPLAY2

Post a log so I can see what's wrong (groovymame game -screen \\.\DISPLAY2 -v >game.txt)

[Roland_001]

Thanks Calamity.  I thought that maybe I needed to change the numscreens to 2, and then somehow define the two screens?  But playing around with that seemed to only cause problems, so I changed it back to the default (numscreen 1).

I'll check my GM version tonight and try to post a log, thought I just d/l'd it a few weeks ago, so probably close to the latest version.  The last few times I've tried to create a log file using those command line parameters (running from Command prompt through Windows I presume?), it would create a blank log file (have the right name, but no text in it).  I'll try again tonight and post an update.

-Rolyen

[Roland_001]

So I have GM version .251, as shown at the top when I run GM via command prompt.

Unfortunately, I'm having he same problem I had before - using the command shown above (mame.exe sf2ce -screen \\.\DISPLAY2 -v >sf2ce.txt) results in the creation of a file sf2ce.txt that has a size of 0, and is blank when I open it up in a txt editor.

I'm sure I must be doing something wrong, but can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong.

When MAME runs, I do see a string of text running in the command-prompt window. I'll let the game run for a while, then hit ESC to exit out.  When I do so, the string of txt disappears.  A log file is generated, but it's blank.  I must be doing something wrong??

[Roland_001]

So strange. So I ran the command you mentioned on another install of Groovymame (the original directory I had installed it to, before I moved it to a sub-folder in Launchbox).

This time, it would give me a viable log file at least, so..progress!

The sf2log is with the CRT set as the main display. Everything works as it should.
the sf2log2.txt is with the LCD run as the main display.  it launches on the LCD, with very a very short wide "scrunched" screen.

[Calamity]

Is this Windows 10 or 7?

[Roland_001]

Windows 10