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Issues with GroovyMAME, CRT Emudriver and the J-PAC

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hhhikikomori:
Hello everyone! I wasn't sure what section this belonged in, but since it's mostly related to GroovyMAME and CRT Emudriver, I figured I would start here.

I have a beautifully restored Sega Aero City that I was planning on using exclusively with my custom built GroovyMAME PC setup! I spent a long time configuring it (with the help of this lovely forum), and it works great on its own so far. Recently, I have been testing it with an HDMI monitor and an OSSC, so I'm able to debug what resolutions/frequencies it's outputting during its use. As of now, when the PC boots it automatically launches GroovyMAME, and the frontend is running in 480i. As soon as I launch a game, switchres does its thing, and the game is running in its native resolution. Whatever games I've been playing have been showing around the 15kHz range, and the OSSC displays them beautifully with absolutely no issues.

When I connected this setup to my Aero City via the J-PAC, it doesn't successfully display stable signal until GroovyMAME launches. This is more or less expected, but the "line frequency halving" feature doesn't really work (I suspect that my PC isn't outputting 480p at any stage during its startup). When GroovyMAME's frontend is working, the J-PAC and the Aero City monitor display 480i perfectly. The picture is stable and looks great! However, as soon as I launch into ANY 15kHz game that I own, the monitor starts scrolling vertically (or, horizontally in this case since it's in the TATE configuration). When I exit the game and go back to the frontend, it's still stuck at whatever resolution that switchres changed to, and it's unusable. During this entire period, the SYNC IN and SYNC OK are both lit - so I'm assuming that whatever resolution my PC is sending to the J-PAC is within spec. However, my Aero City's monitor doesn't seem to like it.

Do I need to set my GroovyMAME to stick with a single Aero City compatible modeline and not do any switchres stuff? Is there something I need to tweak on the monitor chassis itself in order to take the signal that the J-PAC is outputting? Thanks in advance for the help!

Zebidee:
Don't use composite sync if using a Jpac - it has its own sync circuit.

Produce and attach a logfile - instructions are in Calamity's sig line, at the end of every post.

 :cheers:

hhhikikomori:
Oh yeah, I forgot about the log thing. It's been a while - thanks for reminding me! The log for Gunbird 2 and my mame.ini file are both attached to this post. I also have some CRT Emudriver .txt files if you end up needing those!

In any case, I was just noodling around with the .ini files. I ended up trashing the ROM specific ones and messed around with a few changeres and modeline settings in mame.ini - and it all works flawlessly! I also manually set the desktop modeline again via ArcadeOSD (2560 x 240 @ 60p, 15.658 kHz) and the desktop also seems to be happy, with no more weird scrolling! It's been a long while since I've gone through and edited the .ini files...am I right in remembering that there's a glossary of what each setting does? On that note, is there anything with my current config that's raising and red flags? To me, everything seems to be working great now - but I'm not sure what I changed to make that happen!

Zebidee:

--- Quote from: hhhikikomori on April 19, 2023, 03:01:27 pm ---In any case, I was just noodling around with the .ini files. I ended up trashing the ROM specific ones and messed around with a few changeres and modeline settings in mame.ini - and it all works flawlessly!
--- End quote ---

Yeah, funny that! The most fun thing about Groovymame is that, mostly, you don't have to worry about all those ini files. Once you have it set up right, GM (and switchres) take care of everything.

A good approach to troubleshooting in GM is to 1) make sure monitor presets and VMMaker settings are right, or at least how you want them, then 2) delete mame.ini 3) from cmd window, run groovymame.exe -cc to regen mame.ini

Obviously, you may also need to add-in your rom and art directories to mame.ini, if you are not using defaults.

4) run config/install on VMMaker. There are guides. Super modes FTW.

Before installing modes via vmmaker, under "mame" (fourth tab), be sure to browse/select your groovymame.exe and tick the box to export settings. Then Click "OK" (this is what triggers the export settings, so be sure to click "OK").

After that, GM pretty much sorts itself out. It is such a relief - I used to spend hours and hours getting all the game settings right, or at least as good as possible, now I (mostly) just leave it to GM and enjoy :D

hhhikikomori:
Thanks for the tips! I think I've got a good handle on the GroovyMAME side of things, and it runs perfectly now, no matter which game I'm playing! However there is somewhat of a new issue, and I'm trying to debug why it's happening.

With my PC, I'm currently using two screens - one with my AMD Radeon R7 240 (VGA out into the J-PAC), and my motherboard's built-in HDMI output (into another display for debugging). I'm doing this so I can easily browse and change settings while my arcade monitor is connected. When I have both displays going at the same time, I am able to have the desktop on my arcade monitor running at 640x480 interlaced (or whatever resolution I choose) and it's perfectly stable and usable! As soon as I turn off "Extend these displays" or I unplug the secondary HDMI display, the video on the arcade monitor goes haywire.

Eventually, this PC will be installed inside of the Aero City itself and will only have the VGA output of the AMD video card utilized. During its boot cycle, it can hang on this video output for a while (like the original GIF that I posted), which is not ideal for my eyes or the monitor's health. Do you know what would be going on here?

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