Soft-15KHz - slim new tool for 15KHz on normal vga cards

[SailorSat]

both

[brandon]

That may work, however you should change the active 320 pixels to 321, as Windows surely f*cks around with it.

what is the point of adding the extra pixel?  or is it too much to explain?  

[SailorSat]

Windows handles all 320x resolutions in a special way, and will linedouble them. (which we don't want)

[brandon]

ahh..  so that's why his 320x240 mode is 31 khz? I think I get it

[SailorSat]

Exactly

[ahofle]

Well the 1024x768i worked like a charm (thanks), but I still can't get 321x240 (and I NEED IT!).  In fact, looking at your list of resolutions on your project page, all the ones with a red asterisk (ie. "Fake"-Resolution to avoid DirectX-Problems) are missing from quickres.  Do I have some directX incompatibility?  I'm running 9.0c.  Any ideas for me to try?  Here's what I have loaded:

[SailorSat]

What Catalyst Version do you use?
It shouldn't show up 400x300  and 320x240 either

[ahofle]

Whatever the latest one is (ATI's driver site seems to be down).  I tried the ATI drivers with and without catalyst, and I also tried the latest omega drivers (based on catalyst 7.12 I think).  All do the same thing. 

[SailorSat]

Hm thats strange. Don't know what to try.

As for pci-express cards. I'd recommend a X600 series card, or a geforce 7.
I received a Radeon x1650 Pro today, which doesn't work at all (minimum pixel clock 7,12MHz)

[Ummon]

According to EasyMamecab, if it goes down to at least 8mhz, it should be usable.

[SailorSat]

The base modelines go down below 5MHz.

[Stobe]

I installed it on Windows XP. Vid card is an old Geforce MX (with forceware 7.something, I think??) Clicked on "Install 15Khz".  Then changed system resolution to 640x480 60Hz.

It would be nice to know what forceware exactly you are using.
As for the Windows Image, it MAY be your card does not support interlace, so try changing the desktop resolution now (can be pretty tricky though) to something like 640x240.

Forceware 77.72

I was able to boot all the way into windows and change the resolution to 640x240 (this was a task!).  And now the desktop fits within the bounds of the screen.  But all the icons are huge and not much fits. (as expected with such a low resolution).  But the problem is, after a reboot, the "choose user" screen only has enough pixels to show the windows logo, and "Shut Down".  I cannot seem to pick my user.  (and thus, cannot get to windows to tell it not to ask for users, lol).

Any clues?

-Stobe

[SailorSat]

plug it to a VGA monitor and hit f8 on startup, then tell windows to stard in VGA mode (which disables the drivers for this time) then you should be able to disable user selection.

[bent98]

01622: [Core] -refreshspeed has no effect (Aaron Giles)


I saw that as a fix in mame 124u1. Does the -refreshspeed address games that run over 60hz with tripple buffering on?

Wondering if it will address the sound stuttering in mame

[BASS!]

I've got a Sony PVM-2530 and a Geforce 8400gs pci-e and cannot seem to get it to work. I get the split screen at 640x480 and then when I load it and restart the machine starts up black. When I grab the other monitor it just reads "out of sync" and shuts off. Anyone have good results with this card?

[SailorSat]

As far as I can tell, the GeForce 8 Series does NOT work at all.

[bent98]

You know I was running mame 122 on my laptop and pacman and donkey kong awlays sound studdered but with 124u1 the run fine. Wondering what they fixed. I havent tried on my arcade cabinet but I am wondering if I will even need sailors soundsync.diff

[BASS!]

As far as I can tell, the GeForce 8 Series does NOT work at all.

I was thinking as much. Any plan for a work around?

[Ummon]

You know I was running mame 122 on my laptop and pacman and donkey kong awlays sound studdered but with 124u1 the run fine. Wondering what they fixed. I havent tried on my arcade cabinet but I am wondering if I will even need sailors soundsync.diff

I saw R. Belmont (I think) saying how far couriersud had come with DK sound emulation, so I picked up 124.1 and was pleasantly surprised. Not only is the sound much clearer and defined, but it doesn't dog my machine and runs at 100% almost 100% of the time. Now if they can just fix a couple other games' sound, I'll be using it...or maybe I'll just compile back in samples for those games.

As far as I can tell, the GeForce 8 Series does NOT work at all.

I was thinking as much. Any plan for a work around?

You missed this earlier in the thread.

[brandon]

Hm thats strange. Don't know what to try.

As for pci-express cards. I'd recommend a X600 series card, or a geforce 7.
I received a Radeon x1650 Pro today, which doesn't work at all (minimum pixel clock 7,12MHz)

how about the x700?  newegg doesnt sell the x600 anymore...

[northerngames]

Hm thats strange. Don't know what to try.

As for pci-express cards. I'd recommend a X600 series card, or a geforce 7.
I received a Radeon x1650 Pro today, which doesn't work at all (minimum pixel clock 7,12MHz)

what make and model was the x1650 you got?

[brandon]

Hm thats strange. Don't know what to try.

As for pci-express cards. I'd recommend a X600 series card, or a geforce 7.
I received a Radeon x1650 Pro today, which doesn't work at all (minimum pixel clock 7,12MHz)

what make and model was the x1650 you got?

maybe she got it working.. somewhat at least.. .

http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?t=7925&page=4

[SailorSat]

what make and model was the x1650 you got?

It's a Sapphire X1650 Pro

how about the x700?  newegg doesnt sell the x600 anymore...

Don't know. The ArcadeVGA2 PCIE used an X550, so I suppose other cards of the Radeon-X series (below x1000) work too.

[northerngames]

mine is a sapphire x1650 pro agp slot type and it works with 95% of the stuff that the arcadevga2.

I used the stock 15K setup only but if there is a way to get the mssing 5% somehow then it would work 100% for me.

I have not done any custom files of my own yet but all the ones I have copied and pasted off these page's would not work for me at all so far.

for those who have problems try using the stock settings first instead of custom ones and see if it helps or not.

[brandon]

I just ordered a Geforce 7600GS from ebay...  so far I've had better luck with Nvidia so I'm going to give this one a try.. probably better 3D performance than the Radeon X1550 anyways..

[northerngames]

my card required a little software tweak to handle a few res's that sailer was aware of and already had an easy fix so now everything is 100% that I throw at it.


awsome tool hands down 

[bent98]

I have a 7950 GT that works perfect with soft 15khz and is a way better card then the 7600. I will sell it for $75 plus shipping. If anyone is interested.

[Ummon]

Hm thats strange. Don't know what to try.

As for pci-express cards. I'd recommend a X600 series card, or a geforce 7.
I received a Radeon x1650 Pro today, which doesn't work at all (minimum pixel clock 7,12MHz)

what make and model was the x1650 you got?

maybe she got it working.. somewhat at least.. .

http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?t=7925&page=4

Well, if you know how to work the equation, there are alternatives. It can take a bit of trial and hardware, particularly specific to one's hardware (both video adapter and monitor).

[northerngames]

I ran resident evil 4 at 800x600 on the x1650 and it is too cool on the arcade rig the arcadevga2 would not display or run it at all when I tried it with that but it works and looks great now.

I also ran company of heroes, battlestations midway, onimusha 3, desert thunder, and have theatre of war and faces of war on the way now since I know they wil run also.

scarface has failed soon as the actual game starts but I am unsure what is actually causing it to lock up but it states something about the ati drivers dont support something on it when it cuase's the crash but O'well can't win them all I guess 

[ahofle]

Sailor, if a card has some default line-doubled resolutions that are preventing the real 15khz from being added, is it not possible to remove them with the 'remove xxx,yyy' format in the custom15khz.txt file? 

[SailorSat]

Hm...
the "remove" statement only removes resolutions from the Soft-15kHz list.
However Soft-15kHz should remove any base resolution from your VGA card.

The first exception are resolutions that your monitor sends to the card via DDC signals, but in that case your monitor would support them anyway.
The second exception would be on ATI cards, once ATI adds new "default" resolutions to the drivers (like the added 1280x720 some time ago) as those need to be put on the "black" list.

[brandon]

so resolutions I had to remove with refreshforce because adding the remove line in the custom.xxxx.txt did get rid of it... maybe that's an ATI thing

[SailorSat]

Holy crap... Just got my "X600", which turned out to be something that doesn't exist

The BIOS says its an RV380XT, which would be some kind of X550, but it ALSO says (per device ID) its an X600 series
Another funny fact is that it has a 350 MHz core clock and a RAM clock of 250 MHz (500 MHz DDR) which also doesn't match any of those ATI reference cards
The best part is the catalyst driver which say its an "ATI Radeon x300/x550/x600/x1050 series"...

Whatever...
This card can go down to about 4MHz pixelclock which is fine for 240x240 (and lower) resolutions, however it does not show 321x240, 321x256 and 401x256 pixel resolutions in the list... Also it shows 320x240, 400x300, 1024x480 (and various others) resolutions which will be output in 31+ kHz.

As for now I can't get them "removed" from the list.
Well... Lets see what the weekend offers

[Popcorrin]

Well the 1024x768i worked like a charm (thanks), but I still can't get 321x240 (and I NEED IT!).  In fact, looking at your list of resolutions on your project page, all the ones with a red asterisk (ie. "Fake"-Resolution to avoid DirectX-Problems) are missing from quickres.  Do I have some directX incompatibility?  I'm running 9.0c.  Any ideas for me to try?  Here's what I have loaded:

Hi ahofle,

  I have a med res monitor so I was planning on using 1024 x768i and I was wondering if you were pleased with how it looked?  Is the interlacing pretty noticeable(flickery)?

Thanks

[ahofle]

I'm very pleased.  It's a bit flickery in windows of course, but that is pretty unavoidable.  Looks great in games though.

[spuds]

hi all

I downloaded soft15 and ran it - but everything is all grey -

below are specs of  my PC - which I will use in an arcade machine via JPAC.
I only have onboard video.  This PC will ONLY be used for this application.

Also I do not have it hooked to the cab yet - I have it hooked to an LCD till I get everything working as i am a total noob to this.

I am using GameEx FE and I have MAME, PJ64 and ZSNES currently working on this PC fine.

The cab I am going to use is a D & D  mystara - with a well gardner model no. 25k7193.

Can someone point me in the right direction on this ?/

THANKS !!!
   
PC SPECS
Brand:    
Dell
      Memory (RAM):    
1,024 MB
   
Family:    
OptiPlex
      Hard Drive Capacity:    
160 GB
   
Processor Type:    
Intel Pentium 4 HT
      Operating System:    
Windows XP Professional
   
Processor Model:    
--
      Primary Drive:    
DVD+/-RW
   
Processor Speed:    
2,800 MHz
      Condition:    
Refurbished

[Popcorrin]

I'm very pleased.  It's a bit flickery in windows of course, but that is pretty unavoidable.  Looks great in games though.

I am excited to hear that.

Thanks

[Popcorrin]

hi all

I downloaded soft15 and ran it - but everything is all grey -

below are specs of  my PC - which I will use in an arcade machine via JPAC.
I only have onboard video.  This PC will ONLY be used for this application.

Also I do not have it hooked to the cab yet - I have it hooked to an LCD till I get everything working as i am a total noob to this.

I am using GameEx FE and I have MAME, PJ64 and ZSNES currently working on this PC fine.

The cab I am going to use is a D & D  mystara - with a well gardner model no. 25k7193.

Can someone point me in the right direction on this ?/

THANKS !!!
   
PC SPECS
Brand:    
Dell
      Memory (RAM):    
1,024 MB
   
Family:    
OptiPlex
      Hard Drive Capacity:    
160 GB
   
Processor Type:    
Intel Pentium 4 HT
      Operating System:    
Windows XP Professional
   
Processor Model:    
--
      Primary Drive:    
DVD+/-RW
   
Processor Speed:    
2,800 MHz
      Condition:    
Refurbished

If everything is greyed out, it is most likely due to the fact that your graphics adapter is not compatible.  I'm guessing your system has an older onboard intel chipset and I know from experience that it is not compatible.

[spuds]

If everything is greyed out, it is most likely due to the fact that your graphics adapter is not compatible.  I'm guessing your system has an older onboard intel chipset and I know from experience that it is not compatible

So,  what are my choices - do I buy a video card?
If so which one should I get for this machine.. please recommend something that is not expensive as i am on a tight budget here. but I do want this to work well - also NOTHING else will be running on this PC except this setup.

THANKS !!

[ahofle]

Are you saying you are running Soft15khz on an LCD?  Can you be more specific about your issue?  What specific resolution is showing grey?  You do realize that you can't display 15khz resolutions on an LCD right?