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DosCab Doesn't Display LED Text - Arcade Cab

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minnegopher:
I'm running the latest DosCab on an arcade cabinet, with resolution set at 640x480 (with the lowres skin).  The problem is the following: the bluish LED fonts do not display approx. 50% of the time.  In other words, the fonts in the "Now Playing" box and "Next Selection" queue do not display.  Everything else on the screen, which is not an LED font, displays correctly.  It appears to be a random occurance, as I can exit DosCab and then re-enter, and sometimes the problem does not appear. By the way, this problem has showed up on my system for all recent versions of DosCab 3beta, so it's not a new problem on my system as a result of v.3b6.

Has anyone else experienced this type of problem?

Is there an .ini setting for these fonts that I can tweak to try to fix the problem?  Or is this a bug that only appears with my hardware set?

Thanks for your help.

Chris:
I haven't had this reported before.  The color for these fonts can be set in the skin file, and the size of the fonts can be changed by adjusting the number of lines for each display.  The actual fonts themselves are in a proprietary format, but there is an alternate font set available in the latest version.  In the [Display] section, find the line:

DisplayFont = jbdotmat.fnt


and change it to:

DisplayFont = jbsans.fnt

to try the alternate set.

Does changing the color or font set affect the problem?

When the fonts do not appear, do you lose all of the displays, or just one or two?

Are you using an arcade monitor or a TV instead of a VGA monitor?  If so, how are you outputting the signal?

Thanks!

--Chris

minnegopher:
Thanks for the reply, Chris.  I will try changing to the alternate font set, per your recommendation, this evening.

In response to your questions...

* When the splash screen appears, with the standard text set, one of 2 scenarios will occur:
 a) only the splash's 2nd line appears
 b) only the splash's 1st and 3rd lines appear

 - if scenario (a) occurs, then no text will display in the 'now playing', 'play queue', and num_of_credits windows.  Other font types display properly in the song tags, etc.
 - if scenario (b) occurs, then all text appears in the afore-mentioned windows.  Other font types display properly.

* I have not taken any statistics against the probability of scenario occurance, but it seems to be approx. 50/50%.

* So, in order to see the LED fonts correctly, I need to exit and restart DosCab until scenario (b) occurs. 

* I am using an std. res arcade monitor which is connected to a PCI-video card.  The video is sent via VGA-out to a JAMMA-adapter PCB, which interfaces the arcade monitor.  I'm running advcab's utilities (vbe and vga apps) to enable 640x480 on the monitor.  I have not noticed any problems with the video, by use of other applications, prior to this DosCab anomoly.  The jukebox.ini is set for 640x480 resolution and uses the lowres skin.

Perhaps I can capture a screen, or two, that may help demonstrate this problem...

Chris:
Your arcade monitor is not capable of running at 640x480, so it's interlacing the video.  Since on the display text only every other dot is displayed (for the dot-matrix effect), you lose some of the text.  The text you can see is probably slightly "jittery".

The alternate font set will seem to solve the problem because it is solid, not dot matrix. The proper solution is to set DOSCab to run at a native resolution like 512x240 or 640x240.

--Chris

minnegopher:
When I changed the font to arial, then everything displayed on the screen, but this is when the font became 'jittery'.

Actually, the dot matrix font, when it displays, is perfectly clean.

The problem that I experience doesn't seem to be an every-other-dot problem, instead, the black font boxes show nothing at all.

I'll try messing around with advv to add some native resolutions, as you suggested, to see what happens.

Thanks.

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