!%$#@ Advmame

[TurboC--]

Finally tried getting my software set up again.  DOS, EasyMameCab.  Before, Advmenu simply refused to load.  But I had Advmame working with my 15 kHz arcade monitor, though it refused to display games in their native frequency.  So, I wiped everything.  Installed fresh from disc.  Advmenu works now.  Good.  Puckman works, but it is in squashed horizontal.  No problem.  I have to rotate it for vertical orientation.  Go into the advmame.rc file, add "vertical/display_rol yes".  High pitched noise, monitor flipping out.  Great.  Try with simply display_rol yes (all my games will be vertical and rotated anyway.) Same thing.  !@#$!#

I answered all of EasyMameCab's questions to tell it it was a 15 kHz arcade monitor, and I know its specs.  It should know what a damn 15 kHz arcade monitor is, when you tell it that's what it is.  It's not exactly obscure.  It should know not to throw it into some horrible mode that's going to ruin it.  What the hell mode is it trying to go to?  Why does it have to be so damn hard? 

You know, I don't really mind screwing around with hardware and software all day to fix 1000 obscure options.  I really don't.  But what I do mind is continually risking the life and health of my monitor when the DAMN program refuses to do what it is supposed to do.  So I am afraid to DO ANYTHING, because this is what happens.

This sucks.

[TurboC--]

So like.  Does anyone have a 15 kHz arcade monitor with advancemame?  If so maybe I can try your advmame.rc file?  In the meantime I might just bring up my old burned-in WG monitor, at least if Advmame ruins that one, it doesn't matter.

[elvis]

If you can, post the line that defines your clocks from advmame.cfg, and also run it with log output, and post the modeline it generates just before it goes into the "high pitched noise" mode and doesn't work.

[TurboC--]

Thanks for the help.  The log file is a 70K pile of mess, but I'll paste some parts I think are interesting:

advance:generate: modeline "generate 5.95782 288 320 336 384 224 237 240 256 -hsync -vsync"
advance:generate: failed to generate mode generate-interlace
advance:generate: failed to generate mode generate-double
advance:generate: failed to generate mode generate-double-interlace
advance:generate: failed to generate mode generate-triple
advance:generate: failed to generate mode generate-quad
emu:video: best mode 288x224, mode2x 576x448, mode3x 864x672, bits_per_pixel 16, vclock 60.6061
...
video: mode_set generate 288x224 bgr16 15.52/60.61
...
video:svgaline: mode_set modeline 5.95782 288 320 336 384 224 237 240 256 -hsync -vsync
video:svgaline: expected vert clock: 60.61 Hz
...
video: measured/expected vert clock: 74.99/60.61 = 1.23733 (err 23.7335%)
....
emu:video: mode generate, size 288x224, bits_per_pixel 16, bytes_per_scanline 576, pages 1
emu:video: vsync disabled because the vclock is too different 60.6061 74.99
...
emu:video: vsync disabled because fastest active
emu:video: vsync disabled because the vclock is too different 60.6061 74.99

So it's trying to run me at 75 Hz.  Fabulous.  You know, I had the mode SORT OF working before on the same hardware.  Sort of, because instead of giving me the arcade-true refresh, it would ALWAYS spit out my MAXIMUM chosen refresh instead.  And I don't think I was able to get it to 60.60606 Hz for some reason. 

The card is an onboard Ati Rage of some sort.  All I really want is to get Pac-man and similar games working, just for now (for christmas.)  Even if I have to hard-force one single modeline, and squash all games into it for now, that would still be great for most of the Pac-mans, Galaga, Frogger, and probably others, so that would be fine.  Later I want to upgrade the hardware, and even get an ArcadeVGA if I have to.  For now I just want my Pac Man.   

I was hoping EasyMAMECab would fix everything this time, but I am going to try putting that arcade-frequency TSR back in, and then running advcfg like I did before.  But before that seemed to screw my advmenu to prevent it from working...

[TurboC--]

Well I didn't run advcfg yet for fear of screwing anything else up, but here's the first few lines of my advmame.rc that presumably was generated by EasyMAMECab.

[TurboC--]

Err, more stuff of interest from advmame.log:

video: video_init
advance:msg:vbe: Detected broken video BIOS.
video: select driver vgaline
advance:msg:vbeline: Detected broken video BIOS.
...
video:svgaline: found driver rage
video: select driver svgaline
video: video_init report (multiline):
Unable to initialize the video driver. The errors are:
vbe: Detected broken video BIOS.
vbeline: Detected broken video BIOS.

Not sure what that means.

[elvis]

According to your config file it shouldn't allow 75Hz (you've hard-capped it to 63)

Have you tried forcing the VBELINE driver instead of the SVGALINE?


From http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-install.html :

5.2.2 DOS

    * Try forcing the use of the `vbeline' driver instead of the `svgaline' driver with the option:

   

device_video vbeline vgaline

    * If your board has a VESA VBE 3.0 BIOS, try forcing the `vbeline/vbe3' driver with the options:

   

device_video vbeline/vbe3 vgaline

    * If you are using the `vbeline' driver try changing the `vbeline_mode' option:

   

device_video vbeline vgaline
device_vbeline_mode smaller

[TurboC--]

Update: I decided to try wiping it again and installing EasyMAMECab with different options.

[TurboC--]

It SEEMS to be good now.