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

[alui]

Mm-hM. That's what I thought. You probly can't. My nvidia 6200 behaves exactly the same. I've tried to enforce native resolutions at 60hz with Rivatuner, and no go. Seems something in how it interacts with Windows, because it can do almost anything, even pixel clocks below '5' via Advancemame. Anyways, what you're getting are called, or at least what I call, high-refresh native modes. The luminosity won't be as high, but there should be hardware scanlines. Right?

I guess I'll just settle with the ones that do work.  I was just making sure I didn't miss anything since SS said his 6600GT can do all 240 resolutions, except one, with the 71.84 firmware.  I guess not all 6600GT's are created equal.

[SailorSat]

Actually they aren't however I still don't see what a manufactor could change on/in the card to make it behave like it does.
However I have a clue. There was a "doublescan for lower resolutions" switch somewhere in the forceware. Maybe it get triggered with special manufactors.

[Ummon]

What that means alui is to look in your Nvidia control panel for such a feature. Hm, maybe I should look in mine...if I hadn't already ages ago....it's in 'display mode timing' in mine....nope, not selected.

[Malenko]

I cant seem to run 640x480, the monitor goes ape ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. The odd thing is it runs 800x600 just fine. forgot to post this at home so I'll put the detasils up when I get there, but Im running it in a KI1 cab with I believe a 25" polo and a Geforce 6600 PCI card

it can hit other low resolutions meh, I'll edit this when I get home with specifics

[alui]

I just checked mine as well.  It's unselected.  So it's my card kicking in by itself, when the lines go below 392. 

What that means alui is to look in your Nvidia control panel for such a feature. Hm, maybe I should look in mine...if I hadn't already ages ago....it's in 'display mode timing' in mine....nope, not selected.

[Ummon]

I just checked mine as well.  It's unselected.  So it's my card kicking in by itself, when the lines go below 392.

It's something I haven't the knowledge to diagnose, but have already described above.

[BlazzingFlippers]

Hey all.  About to get my Wells monitor in a few days and so I will be trying this program out.   This is all new territory for me.  I have a Geforce 8800 in the machine and from the link in the SailorSat's post, it says the 8 series requires a dongle of somekind?  What exactly is that? 

Would it be easier for me to just throw in an older videocard?  I have some older ATI cards laying around.  The 8800 is probably being wasted in the Mame PC I assuming?

Thanks!

[Ummon]

Would it be easier for me to just throw in an older videocard?  I have some older ATI cards laying around.  The 8800 is probably being wasted in the Mame PC I assuming?

Thanks!

Probably. And, it depends. Current mame offloads a lot of 3D game graphics processing to the GPU. Or is starting too. Something like that.

[krick]

Probably. And, it depends. Current mame offloads a lot of 3D game graphics processing to the GPU. Or is starting too. Something like that.

Not true at the moment.  Currently MAME offloads ZERO 3D processing to the GPU.  Current MAME uses some functionality of current video cards for combining artwork images with the new artwork system and that is all.

From the MAMEDev FAQ:

When will MAME use Direct3D/OpenGL to emulate 3D games?

Probably not ever, at least in the sense this question is likely being asked. MAME now uses Direct3D (and SDLMAME uses OpenGL) to composite and scale the game graphics, artwork elements, and MAME UI displays, but the actual 3D rendering is always done in software in order to ensure consistent operation across different video cards and operating systems.

Additionally, the bottleneck for many 3D games in MAME is actually their insanely fast RISC processor rather than the actual 3D rendering. This is the case in games such as Crusin USA, Killer Instinct (which has no 3D hardware anyway), and Gauntlet Legends.

There has been talk in the forums of using the shaders on modern cards to let the GPU do some simple generic rendering tasks in MAME, but the devs admit that if that were to happen, it would be a LONG time from now.  Also, this is a far cry from using the actual 3D hardware in the GPU to render polygons on the screen.

If you want to play MAME on a high-res computer monitor along with bezels and other non-emulated content, then you simply need a card with a decent amount of memory to handle the giant artwork files.  I think 64MB was determined to be a decent starting point with 128MB probably being better.

If you're running running MAME on an arcade monitor, then there's really no point in using a really fast card since you cannot use high-res artwork anyway.

However, other less-accurate (but faster) emulators can and do use the GPU to some of their 3D rendering, so that's something to keep in mind.

[BlazzingFlippers]

Got me monitor this morning, chip in the glass and all, but until I exchange it for a new one I wanted to test Soft 15khz out.  I tired it on older systems, one using a Geforce FX 5900, and one using a Radeon X1300.  The Geforce machine was able to get to more resolutions successfully than the ATI machine.

2 things though on both machines I wanted to ask.  The first is higher resolutions, say anything above 300x300, it causes the Wells monitor to produce that ear splitting sinewave sound.  640x480 and 800x600 all do this.  I'm wondering is this just normal with these monitors?  The 2nd thing is in addition to this noise, all higher resoultions jiggle and jitter very badly. 

Would any of this be helped by getting the ArcadeVGA card?

Thanks!

[ssndk]

Got me monitor this morning, chip in the glass and all, but until I exchange it for a new one I wanted to test Soft 15khz out.  I tired it on older systems, one using a Geforce FX 5900, and one using a Radeon X1300.  The Geforce machine was able to get to more resolutions successfully than the ATI machine.

2 things though on both machines I wanted to ask.  The first is higher resolutions, say anything above 300x300, it causes the Wells monitor to produce that ear splitting sinewave sound.  640x480 and 800x600 all do this.  I'm wondering is this just normal with these monitors?  The 2nd thing is in addition to this noise, all higher resoultions jiggle and jitter very badly. 

Would any of this be helped by getting the ArcadeVGA card?

Thanks!

I have the ArcadeVGA2 card. I get the sinewave sound too, but only for a few seconds.. then it disappears. I don't have any problems with jiggling and jitter at any resolution. Are you running 640x480 and 800x600 interlaced? for the D9800 it should just be the standard output that comes out of the card, the monitor can handle it and doesn't need it to be interlaced.

[BlazzingFlippers]

Thanks for the info ssndk.  How would I tell if I'm running those resolutions interlaced or not?  I'm using the quickres tool to change resolutions.  When I installed Soft15k, I used the Install 15k button and then rebooted.  My videocard is a Geforce FX 5900 however this high pitched sinewave at high res happens as well using another computer with ATI Radeon X1300. 

At this point I have to run Windows in 320x240 to save my ears from the sinewave but at that resolution I can't see much.

Also I should note as I just remembered this.  The monitor did not do the high pitch thing until after I installed Soft15k.  When I first used the monitor, I was able to manually switch to 640x480 or 800x600 through display properties in Windows and everything was fine.  Maybe its not just working well with my particular videocards?

I'm thinking I should just get the ArcadeVGA card and this would hopefully get rid of this?

[ssndk]

Thanks for the info ssndk.  How would I tell if I'm running those resolutions interlaced or not?  I'm using the quickres tool to change resolutions.  When I installed Soft15k, I used the Install 15k button and then rebooted.  My videocard is a Geforce FX 5900 however this high pitched sinewave at high res happens as well using another computer with ATI Radeon X1300. 

At this point I have to run Windows in 320x240 to save my ears from the sinewave but at that resolution I can't see much.

Also I should note as I just remembered this.  The monitor did not do the high pitch thing until after I installed Soft15k.  When I first used the monitor, I was able to manually switch to 640x480 or 800x600 through display properties in Windows and everything was fine.  Maybe its not just working well with my particular videocards?

I'm thinking I should just get the ArcadeVGA card and this would hopefully get rid of this?

I've never used soft15k, but I would suspect that it would run 640x480 and 800x600 interlaced since normal arcade monitors can't run these resolutions (and the fact that it sounds, from the name, like it makes all resolutions run at 15khz) . If that's the case you will get jitter, I did get jitter before I installed the tri-sync adjustments for my ArcadeVGA since those resolutions ran interlaced.

I believe there's a way to add the correct non-interlaced resolutions to soft15k.. You could do a search on that. I think if you run it at the non-interlaced resolution you should get rid of the high pitch noise too (since it wasn't there before you installed soft15k).



 

[SailorSat]

You could choose "Install 31kHz".

[BlazzingFlippers]

You could choose "Install 31kHz".

Thanks ssndk and SailorSat for the help.

SailorSat that did the trick!  No more ear piercing and 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions are running normally.

One last question.  Some of the older Capcom games like Final Fight and SF2 run at 384x224.  This resolution produces the high pitch sound but also the screen is badly distorted.  Would this be fixed if I got the ArcageVGA card or is this a weird resolution where I just have to pick something close that looks ok?

Thanks

[tyson171]

Hey sailorSat, first just wanted to tell you what a WONDERFUL! piece of software you have.  Secondly i'm using a radeon hd 4770 with the newest drivers and everything works great!  The monitor i'm using is a wells gardner 25k7191, 25" monitor which originally was running mortal kombat 3, my question is what resolution should i run games like Merc or other vertical shooters at?  right now the games don't take up very much of the screen?  I just used a program to go through and automatically adjust all of the resolutions, (the ultimarc utility), so whats a good starter resolution for vertical shooters?  Thanks in advance!

[ssndk]

You could choose "Install 31kHz".

Thanks ssndk and SailorSat for the help.

SailorSat that did the trick!  No more ear piercing and 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions are running normally.

One last question.  Some of the older Capcom games like Final Fight and SF2 run at 384x224.  This resolution produces the high pitch sound but also the screen is badly distorted.  Would this be fixed if I got the ArcageVGA card or is this a weird resolution where I just have to pick something close that looks ok?

Thanks

Mame tries to choose a resolution close to the native one.. but it doesn't always choose the right one. I think I have borders on that resolution.. unfortunately I can't check it right now.  Remember to use the geometry settings on the monitor (board attached to the frame) to correct for distortions, my EGA mode was totally off but looks perfect now. You will soon learn that you can't have all resolutions fill the entire screen (black borders) without constantly changing the geometry.. and that changing one game to look perfect might make another one look off.  Basically you have to adjust a little back and forth before you hit a geometry setting that's good for all resolutions. AVRES helps and mamewah's resolution tool can be used too.. but you'll probably have to tweak it a little (sometimes a lot) with the geometry settings anyway.

If your video card supports all the resolutions that you can make with soft15k I see no need for an arcadeVGA, you will still have to mess around with geometry settings. ArcadeVGA is just a nice no fuss solution for getting everything up and running quick in my opinion.
 

[SailorSat]

One last question.  Some of the older Capcom games like Final Fight and SF2 run at 384x224.

I guess MAME autochooses 384x288 for those games, which is a 50Hz resolution. Try forcing it to 392x240 via ini. See ssndk's post on that.

Guess your monitor screams with anything not 240 lines with 60Hz.
I've got that effect with a 32" Hantarex Polo too, though the screaming goes away after a few minutes (guess it's a temperature problem.)

Hey sailorSat, first just wanted to tell you what a WONDERFUL! piece of software you have.  Secondly i'm using a radeon hd 4770 with the newest drivers and everything works great!  The monitor i'm using is a wells gardner 25k7191, 25" monitor which originally was running mortal kombat 3, my question is what resolution should i run games like Merc or other vertical shooters at?  right now the games don't take up very much of the screen?  I just used a program to go through and automatically adjust all of the resolutions, (the ultimarc utility), so whats a good starter resolution for vertical shooters?  Thanks in advance!

Hm... Depends on the shooter.
Older vertical games that use 256x240 or something like that should work fine with 320x256 or something like that though you won't get 60Hz anymore. For other shooters with higher resolutions (384x224) you actually will have a problem. Either run them in 640x480 (with interlace) or you will have to "turn" them 90° and turn your inputs too. So those games get fullscreen the way they would be output on a vertical monitor, but as your controls are turned too, they should play like a side scrolling shooter.
There's no real workaround unless someone uses a 15/25kHz DualSync Monitor. (where you can use 512x384 60Hz)

[tyson171]

If your video card supports all the resolutions that you can make with soft15k I see no need for an arcadeVGA, you will still have to mess around with geometry settings. ArcadeVGA is just a nice no fuss solution for getting everything up and running quick in my opinion.
 

I think that soft 15hz is also a no fuss solution also for getting everything up and running quick! I had hardly any problems with anything, just have to do a lot of fine tuning and try to figure out how to make some games look better (which doesn't have a whole lot to do with soft 15hz, more of a custom config thing for your setup).  640x480 has a decent amount of flicker on my screen (in windows you can really tell, but with hyperspin running you can't really tell).  Not sure how to set interlace or not in interlace? Sorry i'm really new to custom resolutions ect, but we all have to start somewhere right?

[Ummon]

  How would I tell if I'm running those resolutions interlaced or not? 

Um, research and understand how a CRT behaves and handles different resolutions, then read the information on the Soft15 page and understand it.

For everyone - monitor wikiiiiiiiii. Like in my sig, yo. Look for it. Read it, breath it, live it. Love it.

[Sosetsuken]

Hey SailorSat, i've got a few Questions regarding soft15khz (and one for CabMAME),

1. I've installed soft15khz, and using my new monitor(Barco CRT Monitor via RGB SCART) and my Radeon Mobility 9700 with Cat 6.5 drivers, i can get every resolution under 640x480 fine. At the moment i'm running my nullDC-Naomi @ 640x240 Stretched (so it fills the full screen), but it looks really weird.  I can't get 640x480 or above to work, they all look scrambled.  Can you point me in the right direction to get 640x480 ( i or p ) so that my naomi games look normal?

2. Running using your CabMAME patches works great(Bravo to you!) until I load games like 'Wyvern Wing' or '19XX'.  They display scrambled;

 19XX's resolution is listed as 224x384?
 Wyvern Wing's resolution is listed as 240x320?

 Is there a command i've missed to run these games with black borders at a standard res?

3. This is a kind of Off Topic question, when Street Fighter IV comes out for PC (if it supports running @ 640x480) will it be able to be run on my Cab via Scart to the monitor with soft15khz or will I run into trouble? (Will SF4 crash because of the refresh rate?)

Thanks very much for all the help and hard work you've done!

[SailorSat]

Hm...

to 1.)
define scrambled? can you attach a photo?


to 2.) 19xx on a vertical monitor would output 384x224, if you want to run it on a horizontal monitor you would have to use 512x384 (25kHz) or in 640x480 (interlaced, 15kHz). CabMAME may be a bad choice for such cases.
Pretty much the same for Wyvern Wing (320x240 in vertical).


to 3.)
should work fine. for the "windows side" there is no difference between 15kHz and 31kHz modes, at least on 2000/XP.

[Sosetsuken]

Thanks for that Sailor Sat,

1.) Stupidly, I was putting in 15khz & 25khz/31khz in soft15khz, I uninstalled it on only enabled 15khz modes and it was solved.

2.) Ok thanks, i might just set up a special non CabMAME exe just for Vertical Shooters @ 640x480i.

3.) Ah great thanks for that.

[Ummon]

SS, do you know what the earliest drivers that will work for an ATI X1600XT?

Hm...
6.1 supports the X1600 Series, but that doesn't state if the X1600 XT too :/

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/previous/radeon/radeonxip-cat61-xp.html

(just replace the cat61 with higher values for other drivers, i.e. cat66 for 6.6 )

Well, officially nothing before the 9500 is supported anymore. I having a ---fudgesicle--- of a time finding drivers for a 9200 Pro.

[SailorSat]

I'll upload party of my archive tomorow.

AMD recently droped the ATI driver archive

[SailorSat]

Catalyst 6.2 for Windows 98/ME -> http://files.arianchen.de/drivers/6-2_wme_dd_cp_30314.exe (14,4 MB)

Catalyst 6.5 for Windows 2000/XP -> http://files.arianchen.de/drivers/6-5_xp-2k_dd_32464.exe (12,0 MB)

[Malenko]

is there a specific nvidia driver we should be using? I cant seem to use 640x480 at all but I can use some lower resolutions and 800x600 (which looks pretty freekin good) I posted a similar thing above but Im workin on details and pix and this is my way of reminding myself.  Is there any reason that lower resolutions will work and higher resolutions work , but not 640x480?

[SailorSat]

Malenko: What driver are you using right now?

For the rest... Let an image speak for itself

[isucamper]

SS, this is great news.  Why was it so easy to get it working in Windows 7 after struggling so much to get it to work in Vista?

[Malenko]

whatever the latest one is from nvidia for the GeForce 6XXXX series

[SailorSat]

SS, this is great news.  Why was it so easy to get it working in Windows 7 after struggling so much to get it to work in Vista?

Actually I was quite surprised that they didn't change much in the drivers.
The "data" got a few bytes longer, but nothing I couldn't figure out.
Funny part is, both Vista and Seven basically use the same drivers.
However on Vista it still doesn't work the way it should.

As for Seven. It works pretty good though all "Interlace" resolutions are added twice for whatever reason.

640x480 shows up in 60Hz (31kHz) and 30Hz (15kHz). 800x600 shows up in 50Hz (31kHz) and 25Hz (15kHz). Other than that it works fine.

I'm currently searching for a way to "disable" the 31kHz Modes.

Funny sidenote. For GeForce 8 series (and most likely the newer ones too) you won't need the dongle anymore on Seven. WITH the dongle however, you get correct 640x480 60Hz in 15kHz... 

[SailorSat]

whatever the latest one is from nvidia for the GeForce 6XXXX series

Hm... doesn't help me at all

You can try with this one -> http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_97.78_2.html <- which is from 2007.

[isucamper]

SS, this is great news.  Why was it so easy to get it working in Windows 7 after struggling so much to get it to work in Vista?

Actually I was quite surprised that they didn't change much in the drivers.
The "data" got a few bytes longer, but nothing I couldn't figure out.
Funny part is, both Vista and Seven basically use the same drivers.
However on Vista it still doesn't work the way it should.

Lets just hope they don't make it more Vista like once it's out of beta.

We all owe you a lot of thanks (I owe you a donation... just as soon as I get some bills out of the way).  Moving forward, people wanting native resolution arcade games in MAME will have more options as far as which operating system they can run.  As XP is getting harder to get with a new PC, its great that Window's 7 will be an option as well.   

[retrometro]

Still waiting for support for Vista 64bit.  soft15khz didn't like my x700 in it.  XP 64bit works just fine.

[SailorSat]

Still waiting for support for Vista 64bit.  soft15khz didn't like my x700 in it.  XP 64bit works just fine.

My HD4350 does only show 3 resolutions on Vista AND Seven (actually the same driver).
So I guess until I find out why other resolutions get cut, we're stuck.

[tyson171]

Finally completely finished my cab! Now the fine tuning begins.....i'm not sure what i'm doing wrong, but whenever I open up a .ini file for say frogger for mame and try to change the resolution, then save it, it doesn't reflect the change when I open up the game?  What am i doing wrong? I'm using soft15hz, all resolutinos seem to be fine, and I used arcadevgares to preconfig all of my res files.  I included all of my .ini files as well.  (also using a 25" well gardner arcade monitor). No one seems to know why? Gonna post this here again, starting to drive me crazy? is it just something simple?

Here are my .ini files:

Mame.ini

#
# WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video                     ddraw
numscreens                1
window                    0
maximize                  1
keepaspect                1
prescale                  1
effect                    none
waitvsync                 0
syncrefresh               0

#
# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch                 0

#
# DIRECT3D-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
d3dversion                9
filter                    1

#
# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS
#
screen                    auto
aspect                    auto
resolution                auto
view                      auto
screen0                   auto
aspect0                   auto
resolution0               auto
view0                     auto
screen1                   auto
aspect1                   auto
resolution1               auto
view1                     auto
screen2                   auto
aspect2                   auto
resolution2               auto
view2                     auto
screen3                   auto
aspect3                   auto
resolution3               auto
view3                     auto

#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer              0
switchres                 1
full_screen_brightness    1.0
full_screen_contrast      1.0
full_screen_gamma         1.0

#
# WINDOWS SOUND OPTIONS
#
audio_latency             2

#
# INPUT DEVICE OPTIONS
#
dual_lightgun             0


Arcadevga.ini

[CONFIG]
Stretch=Y
StretchVal=288
Rotation=H
SingleScreen=Y
Overwrite=Y
Algorithm=P
StretchVector=N
Dash=Y
StandardView=N
[MAME]
MAMEpath=C:\HyperSpin\Emulators\Mame\
MAMEexe=mame.exe

Here is an example frogger.ini

So this is the original .ini

## frogger ##

-screen0 \\.\DISPLAY1
-switchres
-hwstretch
-nobezel
-nobackdrop
-resolution 512x288
-resolution0 512x288@0

and just playing around i tried changing it to

## frogger ##

-screen0 \\.\DISPLAY1
-switchres
-hwstretch
-nobezel
-nobackdrop
-resolution 352x256
-resolution0 352x256@0

I know that will mess up the refesh ect. but i just wanted to see how it would affect the game, but it doesn't change anything?  Please steer me in the right direction! Thanks in advance!

[Sosetsuken]

SailorSat,

i'm looking to build a dedicated PC for my Cab, it'll be running Windows XP, and I'd like enough power to play Street Fighter IV.

Do the Geforce cards ie. 9600, work with soft15khz without the dongle in xp?

Thanks.

[SailorSat]

Nope.

[random92]

Hey all, I just ordered one of those VGA -> Component transcoders from ebay for cheap. Hopefully I'll be able to play arcade games on my non-scart crt tv with this. I'll post reaction when I get it. Thanks for the tool, now I gotta read

[Malenko]

so I uninstalled soft 15, updated the drivers, reinstalled soft15. Now more of the lower resolutions work, but 800x600 doesnt and neither does 640x480 (but 640x240 does)


I rolled everything back, for now, because I'd rather have windowz running at 800x600 while I finish setting up the machine. another weird thing is , with the old driver 320x240 doesnt fill the screen (direct draw , switch res to fit, no hardware stretch) but with new driver it did.

Should I have just NOT gotten an Nvidia based card? I am using XP