Issues with GroovyMAME, CRT Emudriver and the J-PAC

[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.

 

[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]

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!

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

[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?

[Zebidee]

Running video output from both video card and onboard at the same time? Honestly I'm surprised it even works at all.

It is like inviting trouble, because your computer has to run different drivers for each display. Computers can get confused about which is the primary display, wrong drivers are loaded, and so on. What I see others often do instead is to use two (or more) video heads from a video card.

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?

Looks like you want to supress parts of the boot cycle that are out of range for your Aero City monitor. Try this:

No GUI Boot

    At Windows desktop, hit WIN+R, then type "msconfig". Within a few seconds the System Configuration window will come up.
    Click the "Boot' tab
    Check "No GUI Boot" box, then OK

Here are some other great tips for setting up a "MAME" PC with an arcade monitor (Windows 7 focus):
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,148050.0.html

[hhhikikomori]

Looks like you want to supress parts of the boot cycle that are out of range for your Aero City monitor.

For some reason, and I don't know why, my AMD video card only starts to output video when Windows has booted up, even if it's the only video output! So luckily for me, I don't have to worry about the BIOS/boot stuff outputting video that's out of spec with the J-PAC/monitor. What is interesting, is the behavior that I'm noticing with my desktop modeline when the motherboard's HDMI output is not connected.

I plugged the AMD/VGA output into my OSSC so I could see exactly what is happening. When I boot my PC with the motherboard's HDMI output hooked up to something, it is outputting 523i (15.68kHz @ 59.99Hz). This matches the desktop modeline that I set, and the Aero City's monitor work perfectly with this. When I don't have the motherboard's HDMI output connected and it's only the AMD/VGA outputting video, it is outputting 603i (16.22kHz @ 53.81Hz). My Aero city absolute hates this (hence the scrolling in the original post's GIF).

Do you have any idea what could be going on here? Is there an issue with the modelines that were generated, or anything with ArcadeOSD or VMMaker that I need to modify? To be clear, GroovyMAME still works perfectly, but the desktop resolution of my PC is acting oddly. It's almost making me consider getting one of those HDMI dummy plugs and calling it a day

[Zebidee]

It all comes down to your monitor presets: what you tell Vmmaker, CRTEMU, Groovymame, about what your monitor is capable of. You could bring your in a lot tighter.

I imagine your Aero cab probably has a Nanao monitor in it. They probably won't work well at 53.81hz. They don't like non-standard resolutions much and, if repair techs moaning stories are to be believed, don't appreciate "MAME" cab usage much because of the constant frequency changes.

There, I've said it. Now, with all that out there, if I had your presumably Nanao arcade monitor, I'd set my monitor preset to something like "NTSC" standards, to be close to 60hz, and leave it at that. Nanaos are great monitors, but they are difficult to get repaired.

[hhhikikomori]

Thanks for the tips! And yeah, if I'm not mistaken, my Aero City does have a Nanao MS8-26 in it. After a ton of back and forth, I was able to get VMMaker to generate a much smaller list of modes, and everything seems to be working okay now! It seems like when I remove the HDMI cable from the motherboard output, my VGA display seems to change to some random resolution that's installed on it (from the mode list). Last time it was unfortunately springing for one that was out of spec for the Nanao monitor, but this time around, it seemed to have chosen a better one as the fallback, and I was able to manually set my monitor (via Windows resolution settings) to be 480x640 (vertical) interlaced.

However, this took a lot of random trial and error and I would ideally like a better grasp on how to handle this moving forward. When I edit the settings in VMMaker and set my monitor's configuration to vertical, it seems to spit out modelines that are very odd. Is there a way to manually alter my available modelines and have VMMaker install those onto my card? Or, if that's playing with fire, are there some good resources out there for getting 15kHz TATE modelines generated correctly?

Thanks for your help, by the way! You've really helped me nail down the issues and were a great resource through all of this.

[Zebidee]

...I was able to manually set my monitor (via Windows resolution settings) to be 480x640 (vertical) interlaced.

Get into the habit of using arcade_osd (comes packaged with the CRTEMU driver) to change resolutions, as windows settings can screw it up, isn't really aware of what resolutions are available. Pin arcade_osd to your 'start' bar, even setup a keyboard shortcut if that is your thing.

DC2 (Display Changer 2) is another great (and free) utility for changing resolutions. I like to setup a bat (batch) file and a keyboard shortcut to run DC2 automatically and change resolution to something safe (like 640x480i, or 720x480i which I'm using at the moment). I think it is also possible to do this with switchres, though I haven't worked that out yet.

However, this took a lot of random trial and error and I would ideally like a better grasp on how to handle this moving forward. When I edit the settings in VMMaker and set my monitor's configuration to vertical, it seems to spit out modelines that are very odd. Is there a way to manually alter my available modelines and have VMMaker install those onto my card? Or, if that's playing with fire, are there some good resources out there for getting 15kHz TATE modelines generated correctly?

CRTEMU works best if you get the settings right and then just let it do its thing. Can't stress this enough. It also works best if you have a fairly small set of video modes (say, <20), which means super-resolutions plus a handful of practical modes like 640x480i, 720x480i,  320x240p and so forth.

By the same token, once you get the CRTEMU settings right for your vertical setup, you won't have to worry much about it anymore. I guess you have rotated your desktop already? There are monitor rotation options, with a helpful graphic, at the first tab in Vmmaker.exe. It has been a few years since I've setup a vertical cab, I can't recall everything and that was on XP (but theory still the same). My vertical cab isn't working atm so I can't just fire it up and have a look. So will leave you to experiment a bit - I think you want "vertical [fixed]" and to tick the box "desktop rotates too", but am not certain. But again once you have the settings done right you won't have to worry, GM will take care of the rest.

The modelines may look odd when rotated because instead of 320x240 etc, you'll get 240x320, but is all the same thing really.

Thanks for your help, by the way! You've really helped me nail down the issues and were a great resource through all of this.

My pleasure! Calamity deserves kudos even more    Thank us with some pics of your setup working?

[hhhikikomori]

Get into the habit of using arcade_osd (comes packaged with the CRTEMU driver) to change resolutions, as windows settings can screw it up, isn't really aware of what resolutions are available. Pin arcade_osd to your 'start' bar, even setup a keyboard shortcut if that is your thing.

I think that's where the initial problem was, somehow! I did set the desktop mode using ArcadeOSD, but it was able to be automatically change depending on my HDMI port's usage for some crazy reason. As soon as I set the desktop resolution using Windows settings, it wasn't able to be altered by anything! But yes, if I'm able to get my modelist to be much smaller, having ArcadeOSD do it shouldn't be a problem.

CRTEMU works best if you get the settings right and then just let it do its thing. Can't stress this enough. It also works best if you have a fairly small set of video modes (say, <20), which means super-resolutions plus a handful of practical modes like 640x480i, 720x480i,  320x240p and so forth.

One of the issues I was having, is that if I told VMMaker that I have a horizontal setup (default settings), then it would have no issues generating modelines for my particular chosen preset (in this case, Arcade 15.7kHz). If I have the same settings but select the Vertical configuration, it ended up generating only three modelines, and all of them were interlaced. I'm not sure why this was happening, but maybe I need to spend a little more time with VMMaker to have it generate the exact modelines that I want!

[Zebidee]

I'm not even sure that you need to re-generate modelines after selecting your vertical arrangement/setup in vmmaker.exe, they are all the same. Once you have chosen your arrangement, click OK and vmmaker will update the mame.ini

"Horizontal" or "vertical" really only applies to how we perceive the video output subjectively. We are simply telling GM that we have "'tated" the monitor on one side or the other, and to whether to rotate the output or not.

[buttersoft]

As Zeb says, i find it much easier to set up everything for a horizontal monitor, and simply tell GM to RotateL or RotateR. You can tell windows to rotate the desktop as well, of course.