Main > Monitor/Video Forum
Soft-15KHz - slim new tool for 15KHz on normal vga cards
Zebidee:
You could use the X700 with that or another XP64 PC and CRT_emudriver because the old driver (1.2) supports that card in XP (not in Win7+).
Soft15khz was great for it's time and I used it lots myself, Sailorsat deserves much kudos, but it is only for very old cards now and CRT_emudriver is frankly much better. While I can imagine using it on a retro machine to emulate stuff even more retro, I can't imagine going back now for any current or future arcade builds.
Don't forget that you can use CRT_emudriver with AVGA cards!
I have a bunch of old AGP video cards from that era that would be great for Soft15khz, including a couple of AVGAs, but no AGP motherboards to build PCs that might use them.
retrometro:
--- Quote from: Zebidee on March 30, 2020, 02:46:53 pm ---You could use the X700 with that or another XP64 PC and CRT_emudriver because the old driver (1.2) supports that card in XP (not in Win7+).
--- End quote ---
I ended up finding a great deal on a couple of 4th gen i5 computers with W10x64 in the cab w/ the Wells Gardner and leaving the X700 in the Core2Duo PC on XP64 but moving it to the home office to TV CRT via s-video. It's not as nice but much better than an LCD. The TV is shared with some Pi's and NES/SNES/PSX "Classics".
--- Quote from: Zebidee on March 30, 2020, 02:46:53 pm ---Soft15khz was great for it's time and I used it lots myself, Sailorsat deserves much kudos, but it is only for very old cards now and CRT_emudriver is frankly much better. While I can imagine using it on a retro machine to emulate stuff even more retro, I can't imagine going back now for any current or future arcade builds.
--- End quote ---
She certainly does! Embarrassingly, I don't donate enough to freeware/shareware but I definitely donated to her back in the day. Worth every penny and more.
I keep seeing CRT_Emu Driver around. I'll have to look it up as a solution should I want a beefier GPU than the AVGA3000 I got and the AVGA5000 available.
--- Quote from: Zebidee on March 30, 2020, 02:46:53 pm ---Don't forget that you can use CRT_emudriver with AVGA cards!
--- End quote ---
That's good to know! What are the advantage of using either CRT_emudriver or soft15khz with an AVGA card though since you already have tons of the lower resolutions and 15hz modes?
--- Quote from: Zebidee on March 30, 2020, 02:46:53 pm ---I have a bunch of old AGP video cards from that era that would be great for Soft15khz, including a couple of AVGAs, but no AGP motherboards to build PCs that might use them.
--- End quote ---
Even if you found AVGA mobo's laying around, you'll be relegated to old versions of MAME since sometime over the last several years (2016 or 2017?) the MAME project has made shader model 3.0 a minimum requirement unless you use "-video gdi". :( This was my primary motivation in ditching the ATI X700 bc it only supported up to shader model 2.0 whereas the AVGA3000 and up are good for several versions up.
Zebidee:
Just one thing soft15khz still has going for it: the setup is very easy and almost no learning curve. CRT_emudriver is arguably easy to setup as well, but you have to know what you are doing to get the best out of it.
--- Quote from: retrometro on March 30, 2020, 05:03:58 pm ---That's good to know! What are the advantage of using either CRT_emudriver or soft15khz with an AVGA card though since you already have tons of the lower resolutions and 15hz modes?
--- End quote ---
There are many advantages, but two big ones. First, CRT_emudriver lets you define (& tweak!) any mode you want, not just accept what AVGA gives you. 2nd, even if you don't install any new video modes, CRT_emudriver also lets you take advantage of Groovymame and all of it's refresh-rate-matching-goodness. Games really do play much better and closer to original with Groovymame.
After you install CRT_emudriver, the AVGA still provides a unique advantage in that your bootup etc screens will be output at 15khz always, so you'll never have to worry about what to do while waiting for CRT_emudriver to kick in. Also, if you have some glitch happen where CRT_emudriver gets kicked out, or you have to boot into safe mode or whatever, your AVGA will let you still do things without having to go to the shed and drag an old VGA monitor out to retore your settings.
--- Quote from: retrometro on March 30, 2020, 05:03:58 pm ---
--- Quote ---[Quote from: Zebidee on 31 March 2020, 06:46:53]
I have a bunch of old AGP video cards from that era that would be great for Soft15khz, including a couple of AVGAs, but no AGP motherboards to build PCs that might use them.
--- End quote ---
Even if you found AVGA mobo's laying around, you'll be relegated to old versions of MAME since sometime over the last several years (2016 or 2017?) the MAME project has made shader model 3.0 a minimum requirement unless you use "-video gdi". :( This was my primary motivation in ditching the ATI X700 bc it only supported up to shader model 2.0 whereas the AVGA3000 and up are good for several versions up.
--- End quote ---
Yeah - that happened around Mame 0.182 I think.
FYI, I'm running 2 XP64 machines (core2duo, HP SFF ex-desktops) with X1050 SFF cards in them with CRT_emudriver/Groovymame. I set them up in late 2018 with a hacked Groovymame 0.200 build (I edited the source code to remove the d3d pixel shading check so that it would run). I've had zero problems with it, but not sure that the same thing would work with latest Mame (actually, pretty sure that it won't). They are both dual boot XP64/Win7 to make things easier if I ever get around to upgrading.
I'm doing another build on XP64 right now with an HD4650 card, which doesn't have the pixel shading problem, but am getting another problem with the latest x64 mame (well, 0.219 anyway) which looks like an underlying video card/XP/dll problem (the HD4XXX are considered legacy now). So I'll be using Groovymame 0.200 with that too. I've done this PC as a dual-boot to Windows 7 too, to make my inevitable upgrade path easier. In fact, this card works with 0.219 under Win7 so I'll probably migrate there once I've learned a bit more about how to make Attract Mode work the way I want as a front-end (or maybe I'll just hack MameWAH to work better on Win7).
I always make my posts too long, but I think the key message here is that unless you want to be stuck in the past, tinkering constantly to make things work, you have to move to Windows 7+ and newer video cards eventually.
buttersoft:
Err, the AVGA cards are based on Radeon 3000 or 5000 series models depending, but i thought their using a different bios meant crt_emudriver didn't recognise them and so wouldn't install? Has this changed back again? Never versions of GroovyMAME require newer versions of crt_emudriver to run, as well.
Zebidee:
--- Quote from: buttersoft on April 02, 2020, 10:37:48 pm ---Err, the AVGA cards are based on Radeon 3000 or 5000 series models depending, but i thought their using a different bios meant crt_emudriver didn't recognise them and so wouldn't install? Has this changed back again?
--- End quote ---
I've never done it myself, but I definitely recall reading from multiple different authoritative places that is is possible to install CRT_emudriver on AVGA cards, just like any other AMD card. After all, people re-flash their graphics card BIOS's all the time. I've be interested to know otherwise, guess I should dig around a bit to backup my claim.
--- Quote ---Never versions of GroovyMAME require newer versions of crt_emudriver to run, as well.
--- End quote ---
That's also news to me Buttersoft, and I think not strictly true. I've not had any problems running newer versions of Mame with the old 1.2 driver on XP64 per se.
The problem isn't CRT_emudriver, but the newest versions of Mame (eg 0.219) won't run properly (or at all) on older video cards - and won't run with older versions of DirectX available on XP (ie up to v9). The problem isn't with Groovymame either - I get identical issues with both Groovy and vanilla Mame on XP64 with an HD4650 card - and no problems with same PC/card under Win7. The error messages I'm getting indicate a DirectX/dll issue rather than a CRT_emudriver issue - and it definitely isn't a Groovymame issue.
DirectX has been updated for Win7+, and latest Mame needs that to run. So Win 7 with AVGA5000 or AMD HD5000 series + should be all good?
Clearly I'm going to have to give up on XP for future builds, but that is OK because I've nearly run out of old crap computers and video cards.
Anyway, you know me, I always respect your ideas & keen to be corrected if you have any good sources or direct experience regarding the AVGA cards. Calamity would know, but he won't monitor this board and I don't want to bother him unnecessarily.
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