Software Support > GroovyMAME

Old monitor, new issues

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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:

--- Quote from: lilshawn on February 21, 2023, 01:39:17 pm ---ideally you wouldn't convert it with any adapters if you don't have to, since that can introduce delay in the frame delivery.

--- End quote ---

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.

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