Old monitor, new issues

[Tommy714]

I have a High Resolution Makvision/Wei-Ya M2929D1G-62 CRT.  I had it hooked up to an old Pentium IV with Windows XP.  All was good in the world.......

Now I'm upgrading the PC, and the more modern PC won't take Win XP. 

What version of Windows would be recommended?  I'm not open to Linux.

And once I decide on the version of Windows, what would be the next steps to get this rig working?

[buttersoft]

I'd recommend Windows 10 or 11. 10 is really popular, and will be supported by most emulators devs for years going forward. Is this primarily a MAME machine? And are you mostly wanting to play 15kHz classics? SF2 and Neo-Geo era and a bit newer? At 31kHz, your monitor is going to use a 480p mode for those, but MAME has good stretching options now. I'm not sure if using GroovyMAME and/or crt_emudriver would net you any benefit.

Next is to figure out what signal format the monitor takes. VGA should be ok, you get an HDMI-to-VGA dongle (old ones work best, or brand-name new ones like ugreen or belkin or comsol, which are still cheap but nothing like the money an HDFury2/3 will set you back). If displayport to VGA is easier, you can use the Delock 62967 also. If the monitor need the VGA broken out into separate lines, you might look into the VGA pinout, and then get a VGA breakout that has screw terminals. Otherwise, what sort of signal does it take?

I would also maybe suggest something like CRU to provide an EDID override - this acts like a monitor sending information to windows about it's capabilities. This will protect your monitor from windows delivering video modes it can't handle. And even if it has an out-of-range warning i.e. inbuilt protection, it's nonetheless convenient.

[lilshawn]

it's just a plain old computer style VGA... the 2929 does 640x480 and 800x600. 60hz refresh.

ideally you wouldn't convert it with any adapters if you don't have to, since that can introduce delay in the frame delivery. vga out from the computer straight to the monitor if you can.

[buttersoft]

ideally you wouldn't convert it with any adapters if you don't have to, since that can introduce delay in the frame delivery.

Most cheap HDMI-to-VGA converters are not scalers, and so don't have a frame buffer. All that stuff would cost more. Conversion is done on the fly. New ones suck for other reasons, but older ones are normally pretty good.

[lilshawn]

yeh yeh for sure, an 8 dollar converter from amazon is certainly going to have a cheap as ---- chip doing the downscaling and probably going to have some weirdness. i have a cheap one that seems to introduce tearing all the time... like it's mistimed or at an odd refresh rate or something my display does not like... but another one i have that i paid like 50 bucks for works just fine.

[buttersoft]

yeh yeh for sure, an 8 dollar converter from amazon is certainly going to have a cheap as ---- chip doing the downscaling...

There isn't any downscaling going on in most of the ones i meant, like below. I tested almost two dozen different ones when grabbing stuff for my MiSTer (mostly saved from ewaste as i work in a large-ish office) They're just converting 1:1 on the fly. Newer, no-name ones run into trouble with 15kHz/c-sync because they've moved to a cheaper alternative to the once-ubiquitous AG-6200 converter chip, if anyone is interested, but for the OP's use they will certainly work better than anything like those HDMItoAV boxes, which certainly DO scale.



OP shouldn't need, and probably doesn't want, anything that scales

[Tommy714]

k, I can still plug in the old computer into the monitor and it works fine just set to 800x600 with Win XP.

I cant even seem to get windows 10 to acknowledge it.  I had it running with windows 8.1 (I've tried several different OS trying to find the best.  Should I go back to windows 7?

I have a small 2nd monitor plugged into the computer so I can see what's going on.  When I try to go the muliple displays, it's not detecting it.

Is it likely driver issue?

[buttersoft]

What hardware are you using? With your XP machine it goes PC direct to monitor, yes, with no adapters in the middle, but is it the same with your new PC?

In Windows 10 if you have a GPU with a DVI-port, or a VGA port, you should be able to go into display settings from the desktop, hit detect, and watch a grey box appear as an extra monitor that says "Display not detected." You click to select it, then scroll down until you get to the multiple displays heading, and set the dropdown box to "Try to connect anyway on: VGA". There is a similar process to do this on Win 7, but i would recommend Win 10 for the other benefits it brings.

I'm not sure if this will work for a mobo VGA port, but let us know how you get on.

[Tommy714]

The original computer is a Dell Pentium IV

It is using a ATI 9250 w/128.  It has a DVI and VGA port.  It was connected using the VGA port.

When I go into the display settings for Win 10, I am not finding the part where I can "Try to connect anyway on VGA".  I click on the detect monitor button, and nothing.  When I click on the drop down, only the original monitor shows.  Am I supposed to go to a different screen for the connect to vga anyway drop down?

What hardware are you using? With your XP machine it goes PC direct to monitor, yes, with no adapters in the middle, but is it the same with your new PC?

In Windows 10 if you have a GPU with a DVI-port, or a VGA port, you should be able to go into display settings from the desktop, hit detect, and watch a grey box appear as an extra monitor that says "Display not detected." You click to select it, then scroll down until you get to the multiple displays heading, and set the dropdown box to "Try to connect anyway on: VGA". There is a similar process to do this on Win 7, but i would recommend Win 10 for the other benefits it brings.

I'm not sure if this will work for a mobo VGA port, but let us know how you get on.

[buttersoft]

When i click on detect, this is what i get.


You then click on that display-not-detected rectangle to work with it, then scroll down to find the "No display detected" box which you change to "Try to connect anyway on: VGA"

If you aren't even seeing that display-not-detected come up, i would point to a driver issue. That 9250 is twenty years old now and the latest drivers for it work with XP, according to AMD's website. To use a newer OS, you might need to grab an updated card like a Radeon 7450 or low end R5 card. I prefer AMD for these builds as you can use crt_emudriver as a fallback, just in case. Just make sure it has either VGA or a DVI-I port, not DVI-D (which last is digital only). Or plan to buy a HDMI-to-VGA converter or similar, which are pretty cheap, but also a mixed bag in terms of quality.

Or you could go back to XP, if your new machine will let you install it. But this probably means hunting down older MAME versions and roms as well. And any other emulators, frontends, drivers, etc.

EDIT: Hmmm, you might be able to use safe-mode to get in as well. Most PC's would default to outputting video through the VGA port if no display was detected. But it might not be at 480p or 600p - hence, safe mode. You'd probably need to tell the PC to reboot in safe mode from the working monitor. TBH i'm not sure exactly how this would work.

[Tommy714]

So I got ticked off, and started throwing money at the problem.  Bought an ATI Radeon 9450 low profile (it has a HDMI, VGA, and HDMI port on it).  Threw that in, installed drivers, and up and running with no problems.

It wasn't that expensive, but I hate buying parts just hoping and praying it will fix it.  The thing that's really annoying is that I have an old ATI VGA PCIE, but it's not low profile, and wouldn't fit.

Anyway, problem solved! 

Damn Intel MoBo graphics

Thanks all for the help.

[buttersoft]

yeah, buying a newer but still cheap GPU was going to be the easiest way for sure

Glad to hear it's working now.