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

[digger909]

hi all!

i have trawled thru all 37 previous pages of posts but I cant find what I'm looking for.  I'm running mame v105 into a naomi universal cab with a sanwa 31khz monitor.  using a radeon 9800 pro with catalyst 6.5.  a few games look spot on but capcom/irem/midway stuff doesnt fit the screen.

could someone give me all available resolutions at 31khz to add to my usermode.txt?

[SailorSat]

Is your screen 31kHz only?
I can provide several 120Hz modes which should give a perfect output.

[digger909]

Is your screen 31kHz only?
I can provide several 120Hz modes which should give a perfect output.

Yes its 31khz only.  Am I being dumb or would 120hz modes damage the monitor? 

i am a noob at this stuff but Im certain I read for my monitor, 640x480@60hz otherwise the chassis will be damaged.  But if you know different SS, I would appreciate the modes.

[SailorSat]

Actually... Don't know anything at all

[digger909]

Actually... Don't know anything at all

lol, now your just being bashful... 

point out my obvious mistake, I can take it

[SailorSat]

Theres actually no mistake.

Real 240 lines at 120Hz would be exactly 31kHz.
However not every monitor actually likes 120Hz.

[digger909]

Theres actually no mistake.

Real 240 lines at 120Hz would be exactly 31kHz.
However not every monitor actually likes 120Hz.

so do i just stick with the preset 31khz modes that install as default?

[SailorSat]

Most likely yes, I could provide some "double" resolutions, but I don't know if that would help.

[digger909]

Most likely yes, I could provide some "double" resolutions, but I don't know if that would help.

I have tweaked the settings in mame.ini and things look a lot better now. 
Guess the installed resolutions were good enough afterall...

[Ummon]

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

What card is this?

Most likely yes, I could provide some "double" resolutions, but I don't know if that would help.

I have tweaked the settings in mame.ini and things look a lot better now. 
Guess the installed resolutions were good enough afterall...

With a VGA monitor, I wouldn't use soft15, as you're going to be able to play any game if mame is to D3D or ddraw+hwstretch. They will all fill the screen. Running at 31khz/60hz gives you fairly blocky graphics, not all games fit the same way, and, unless you use interlace, excludes games you might otherwise want to play, for example medium-res games.

[Malenko]

What card is this?

BFG GeForce 6200 PCI

[Seven11]

Ok, guys, I've been messing with this for a few days now, and I seem to have a big problem.  I get everything to work (and it looks GREAT, for the record), and I even tested it with a few games, but when I tested with Super Street Fighter II Turbo it played the game just fine.  BUT when I exit the game the screen gets all messed up and I have to go thru and uninstall soft15 AND my video drivers, then reinstall drivers, reboot, reinstall soft15, then reboot again to get the screw up to go away.  I'll explain what I have so far:

Pentium4 3.0GHz
1GB RAM
160GB HDD
Nvidia 6800GS OC
J-PAC
Soft15KHz Build 48
Wells Gardner 25K series arcade monitor

I tried searching online AND in the manual for the KHz modes the monitor supports, as I'm fairly sure it is NOT a multisync, due to its age (1992), but when I hook an arcade PCB to it, it displays it perfectly.  Also, I have these lines in my custom15khz.txt file, as someone earlier on posted up (which got me this far, so thank you, whoever originally posted them).

Code: [Select]

remove 288x240
remove 296x240
remove 256x256
remove 240x240
remove 321x256
remove 352x256
remove 352x264
modeline '288x240@59,305' 6,2 288 320 352 396 240 243 246 264 -hsync -vsync
modeline '296x240@59,305' 6,2 296 320 352 396 240 243 246 264 -hsync -vsync
modeline '352x256@59,697' 7,47 352 352 405 450 256 257 260 271 -hsync -vsync
modeline '352x264@59,697' 7,47 352 352 405 458 264 265 268 279 -hsync -vsync
modeline '321x256@59,014' 6,45 321 336 368 414 256 258 261 280 -hsync -vsync
modeline '256x256@60,436' 5,3 256 272 296 352 256 260 263 277 -hsync -vsync
modeline '240x240@60,436' 5,3 240 240 280 336 240 244 247 261 -hsync -vsync
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, as I really have nowhere else to turn.  I'm fairly new to this kind of stuff, but I guess I'm learning pretty quickly as I've already read through 38 pages of this thread :-)

*EDIT*
It should also be noted that I've been using regular MAME32 for this cabinet.  As I await a response, I am going to get / install cabMAME to see if that has any affect.

[Ummon]

What card is this?

BFG GeForce 6200 PCI

...alright, let's peddle back a bit:

- what do you mean by 'not work'?

- what monitor is this?

- you might try that card on a different machine; I've seen them behave differently.

Ok, guys, I've been messing with this for a few days now, and I seem to have a big problem.  I get everything to work (and it looks GREAT, for the record), and I even tested it with a few games, but when I tested with Super Street Fighter II Turbo it played the game just fine.  BUT when I exit the game the screen gets all messed up....

- what do you mean by 'messed up'?  Pictures would help.

- what is your desktop set at?

[Seven11]

Thanks for the response 

Ok, i dont believe my monitor supports 31khz, simply because i got it to stop 'messing up,' as i said, by removing all resolutions in the custom31khz.txt.  Now I have a new problem, which seems to me should be an easy fix, but I must be looking in the wrong places... 
Whenever i let MAME decide the resolution (switchres 1), the games almost always appear in quadruples or doubles on the screen.  Like divided in half or into quarters.  If I set a resolution manually, the game screens are always pretty sharp and solid, but are centered on the screen and are usually very small.  As in, less than half the size of the monitor itself. 

So, my question is:
Is there any way to make the games in mame fill the entire screen without allowing the machine to switchres? 
Or, is there some magical way to allow them to switchres without duplicating the picture, assuming that my monitor won't go into the higher KHz ranges?

To answer Ummon's previous questions:
By 'messed up,' I meant the screen goes way out of sync and even if I got it to stop rotating via vertical/horizontal hold pots, the picture would still be dicey and unreadable.  I would get you a picture, as you asked, but that problem seems to be gone now, and to recreate that issue would just be a GIGANTIC step backwards at this point 
My desktop is set to 640x480,16bit,60Hz.  That is what gives me the best looking picture in windows for this particular setup, but I am definitely willing to change it if necessary.

[krick]

If I set a resolution manually, the game screens are always pretty sharp and solid, but are centered on the screen and are usually very small.  As in, less than half the size of the monitor itself. 

Do you have artwork installed in MAME?  If you turn off bezels but leave other artwork turned on, many games will behave as you describe due to the way the new artwork system works.  Can you name a specific game that you see this behavior with?  Try going into the TAB menu and setting the display to "Standard" and see if that changes anything.

[SirPeale]

Attempting to upgrade the machine in my cab.  The old one is a K6/2 400.  The new one is a 1.6G P4.  It's got a GeForce 2mx card in it.

I had everything all configured, so I ran Soft15 and moved it over to the cab.  The cab, BTW, has a JPAC and a K4600 in it.

First thing I note is what seems to be the bottom half of the screen is cut off.  And what part of the screen does show the mouse movements don't match up with what's going on onscreen.  At the very top it's okay, but the further down you move the mouse the further away the "click point" is.

And it seems to want to default to 1024x768.  Every time I select 640x480 it goes right back to 1024x768.

Any ideas?

[Seven11]

Try going into the TAB menu and setting the display to "Standard" and see if that changes anything.

Ok, I think you're onto something here.  I went thru the mame.ini file and turned all the bezels and everything related to artwork off, but it didn't change anything.  BUT when I load a game and go thru the TAB menu video options, all of those options are set to enabled, and the screen is set to crop.  I change them all to disabled, and set the screen to full, but the settings never "take."  It always goes right back to having everything set to enabled and crop.  I'm thinking reinstalling MAME might fix this problem, so I'm going to try that.  I'm gonna go get the latest official release of MAME, unless you can suggest something better.  Thanks for the help, I'm almost there :-)

[Seven11]

And it seems to want to default to 1024x768.  Every time I select 640x480 it goes right back to 1024x768.

You may have at some point allowed windows to adjust the screen resolution by itself.  I don't know where you would find the option to turn that off, but that might be something to look into.  I know if you set your resolution very low and restart, windows will pop up a nag bubble about your screen settings are low, and would you like windows to adjust this for you or something like that.  If you have ever said yes to that, windows itself won't allow your res to go below 1024x768@16bit.  Well, it will allow the change, but when you restart it will "fix" it back to higher res.  Aren't these windows "features" just wonderful?

[SirPeale]

And it seems to want to default to 1024x768.  Every time I select 640x480 it goes right back to 1024x768.

You may have at some point allowed windows to adjust the screen resolution by itself.  I don't know where you would find the option to turn that off, but that might be something to look into.  I know if you set your resolution very low and restart, windows will pop up a nag bubble about your screen settings are low, and would you like windows to adjust this for you or something like that.  If you have ever said yes to that, windows itself won't allow your res to go below 1024x768@16bit.  Well, it will allow the change, but when you restart it will "fix" it back to higher res.  Aren't these windows "features" just wonderful?

I mean that I can manually select 640x480, but when it changes the resolution it's right back @ 1024x768.  No restart necessary.

[krick]

Ok, I think you're onto something here.  I went thru the mame.ini file and turned all the bezels and everything related to artwork off, but it didn't change anything.  BUT when I load a game and go thru the TAB menu video options, all of those options are set to enabled, and the screen is set to crop.  I change them all to disabled, and set the screen to full, but the settings never "take."  It always goes right back to having everything set to enabled and crop.  I'm thinking reinstalling MAME might fix this problem, so I'm going to try that.  I'm gonna go get the latest official release of MAME, unless you can suggest something better.  Thanks for the help, I'm almost there :-)

Individual game ini files will override the mame.ini, so make sure that if you make changes to mame.ini, you remove those settings from the gamename.ini.

You don't need to "reinstall" MAME.  Just delete all the ini and cfg files to reset everything back to the default settings.

If you don't want to see any artwork, remove all the artwork zips from the artwork folder.  That is the easiest solution of all.

[SailorSat]

Attempting to upgrade the machine in my cab.  The old one is a K6/2 400.  The new one is a 1.6G P4.  It's got a GeForce 2mx card in it.

I had everything all configured, so I ran Soft15 and moved it over to the cab.  The cab, BTW, has a JPAC and a K4600 in it.

First thing I note is what seems to be the bottom half of the screen is cut off.  And what part of the screen does show the mouse movements don't match up with what's going on onscreen.  At the very top it's okay, but the further down you move the mouse the further away the "click point" is.

And it seems to want to default to 1024x768.  Every time I select 640x480 it goes right back to 1024x768.

Any ideas?

I guess its the MX card. NVidia cut down those cards software wise.
If you can, try another card.

[SirPeale]

Attempting to upgrade the machine in my cab.  The old one is a K6/2 400.  The new one is a 1.6G P4.  It's got a GeForce 2mx card in it.

I had everything all configured, so I ran Soft15 and moved it over to the cab.  The cab, BTW, has a JPAC and a K4600 in it.

First thing I note is what seems to be the bottom half of the screen is cut off.  And what part of the screen does show the mouse movements don't match up with what's going on onscreen.  At the very top it's okay, but the further down you move the mouse the further away the "click point" is.

And it seems to want to default to 1024x768.  Every time I select 640x480 it goes right back to 1024x768.

Any ideas?

I guess its the MX card. NVidia cut down those cards software wise.
If you can, try another card.

Damn, I was really hoping to be able to use this.  I have a motherboard with nForce2 and it works great with this.

[SailorSat]

Well the other way would be to simple don't use any mode with interlace (i.e. set windows to 640x288).

[SirPeale]

I'll give it a shot.  Right now I put an ATI 9800 card in there.  But I'd rather keep that in a machine that I need the pony-power for.

[KissMyWookie]

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.

Does the HD4350 work well under XP with Soft-15kHz?
(Are you able to set a lot of custom modes and have them all useable)

I love your tool SailorSat - found it a couple of days ago and have been playing around with it on an XM2950 ever since. 

Steve

[SailorSat]

Most likely one of the best cards on XP atm.

[KissMyWookie]

Re: the ATI 4350 cards...

Most likely one of the best cards on XP atm.

Does this also apply to the outputs of 4550, 4650 and 4800 series cards? What kind of a minimum pixel clock can they output?

I'm currently using an old NVidia 6600 GT card, which I'm very happy with the wide range of modeline outputs I can achieve, but the NVidia drivers are a big let down (with only 32 modes supported). It can go down to at least 6MHz though.

(After first finding Soft-15kHz, I tried it on my Win7 machine which has an ATI 4870 1GB card, but unfortunately I read that the drivers do not yet support custom modes - so I'm unable to compare the outputs to the NVidia.)

Update: I just ordered a Sapphire 4550 passively cooled card from NewEgg.com (a reseller over here in the US). They had it for $39.99 with free shipping and a $10 mail in rebate. It has an HDMI connector on the back, which is good for future proofing and uses the same core as the 4350, but with GDDR3 memory running at 1600MHz.
For anyone else who is interested in picking up one of these great bargains, here is the URL:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102819

[SailorSat]

I've only tried the 4350 of the 4000 series radeon but some friend uses a 4650 and it works fine.

As for the PixelClock. Well actually I've yet to reach the minimum clock on a Radeon card (except X1000-HD3000 series, where it SOMETIMES is limited to a minimum of 7.12MHz)

[krick]

Update: I just ordered a Sapphire 4550 passively cooled card from NewEgg.com (a reseller over here in the US). They had it for $39.99 with free shipping and a $10 mail in rebate. It has an HDMI connector on the back, which is good for future proofing and uses the same core as the 4350, but with GDDR3 memory running at 1600MHz.
For anyone else who is interested in picking up one of these great bargains, here is the URL:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102819

Wow, nice card and a great price.  I think I'm going to do a hardware refresh on my MAME cabinet...


ASUS P5KPL-CM LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131288

Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116072

They sell the motherboard + CPU as a combo with a $10 discount...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.197649
Combo Price: $115.98 (free shipping)

OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2F10664GK
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227364
$49.99 ($39.99 after $10.00 Mail-In Rebate)  Free Shipping

So, motherboard + CPU + memory + video card = $220.38 (after taxes) - $20 rebates = $200.38
All items have free shipping.

[random92]

Hey all, I need some help here!

I have the vga->component adapter hooked up and installed soft15khz (hd2900pro vid adapter).

I hit "install 15khz" button, set desktop to 640x480 (on my lcd monitor), then rebooted with tv hooked up. I can sort of see it, but it's not perfect, very jumpy picture. Is the video 480i initially?
I can't seem to change the resolutions. How do you change to other low resolutions?

I mean, it seems to work a bit. With soft15k uninstalled and adapter connected to tv, the picture is very distorted because of the progressive 640x480 input. However, with soft15 installed I can sort of see things, but video remains jumpy.


Anyone with experience connecting to a TV care to give a little advice? Thanks!

ps.
I wasn't able to choose a lower resolution with either windows or catalyst control center. both at 640x480 for lowest
-edit
tried quickres. since i can't see what's going on really i picked a bad resolution and things got crazy forcing me to uninstall drivers. ...

-edit2
so far connected the vga-component adapter to my plasma which seemed OK with low resolutions. set it to 321x240 with quickres then connected the component cable to the crt. it was half way stable, jumping a bit occasionally with some warpiness going on in the middle section. other resolutions were scrambled, like 256x256

I'm pretty sure this transcoder doesn't touch the video timing/size, just takes it from vga to component.
for a USA ntsc tv, what would the 15khz settings it can handle be? i'm hoping to get the same low resolution progressive modes I can get with classic games on the wii.

another question: how can you set fullscreen output to some emulators for 320x240 etc when they have that option blocked out? is mame/arcade the only way to go for soft15k?

thanks very much for your time everyone

[SailorSat]

I don't have a monitor with component input, so I never could debug that stuff.
There are various possibilities.

a) The monitor doesn't like "non standard" timings.
b) The graphics card component out doesn't like "non standard" timings.
c) well... whatever.

All I now know is that we can force any radeon to output YUV instead of RGB on the VGA ports.
As for now, stick to 240 line modes as they seem to be somewhat stable.

*EDIT*
As for Fullscreen modes. Well that depends on the emulator.
Just don't use 320x240, as that resolution is currently disabled and replaced by 321x240 on your radeon.

[Chunce DeLeone]

How does this card look? 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161152&Tpk=ATI%20Radeon%209250%20AGP

[Ramza]

Hi everybody,

I'm using soft15khz on my Astro City and it's working really well. However, I was wondering if there is a custom res to match the CPS3. 392x240 looks ok with cps3emulator, but not as nice as the arcade board. So did anyboy try to add a 384x224@59,583393 (CPS3 runs at 59,583393hz) custom res to soft15khz?

[krick]

Well, I got XP installed and all that jazz.  I'm using a Radeon HD 4550... finding an old card is kind of tricky it seems.
Anyways, I run soft15khz and the "Install 15khz", "Install 25khz", "Install 31khz" options are ghosted.  Should I try an older version of Catalyst?  I'm using whatever came w/ the card, which is presumably quite new.

EDIT: Got a cheap 9250.  Now to wait for that sucker to arrive.

Did you ever get your HD 4550 working?  I've got one coming in the mail today and I was trying to figure out what to expect when using soft15KHz on it.

[Ummon]

I don't have a monitor with component input, so I never could debug that stuff.


*EDIT*
As for Fullscreen modes. Well that depends on the emulator.
Just don't use 320x240, as that resolution is currently disabled and replaced by 321x240 on your radeon.

Since it's component, vs SCART, I think you're supposed to stick with one resolution....um, 640x420.

[KissMyWookie]

Today I replaced my NVidia 6600GT with an ATI 4550.

I did have problems with a blank screen after installing Soft-15kHz resolutions and rebooting - but that kind of fixed itself after I told Catalyst to ignore the EDID and set the maximums myself (also unchecking the display properties box - "ignore resolutions that this monitor cannot display").

Now I have uncovered another two problems....

1) The first - I installed my 320x224 resolution that I created on the NVidia card, which displayed NeoGeo games at their correct framerate and without borders... but on the ATI card it displays the same borders that are shown when running Neo-Geo games at 320x240 resolution. Is this something to do with Soft-15kHz changing the modeline at all?

If it's not, then the NVidia card gives much more accurate and true outputs, but has the 32 mode limit - while the ATI screws up the outputs but has no limit (correct?). ... I'm not sure if I'll send back the ATI card, as having the hardware give a correct output is more important than having a driver bug which restricts the number of modes.

2) The second (probably a MameUI bug) - under the screen tab, the "\\.\display1" setting will not display all of the modes installed by Soft-15kHz, but the "\\.\display2" setting does (or seems to). Has anyone else encountered this problem before?

Steve

Forgot  to mention - I am using Catalyst 9.5 (v8.612 driver) on XP 32-bit.  Connected to an NEC XM2950 multisync monitor via VGA cable.
NVidia 6600GT card was an ASUS Top edition.
ATI 4550 card is a Sapphire passively cooled 512MB version.

[krick]

I did have problems with a blank screen after installing Soft-15kHz resolutions and rebooting - but that kind of fixed itself after I told Catalyst to ignore the EDID and set the maximums myself (also unchecking the display properties box - "ignore resolutions that this monitor cannot display").

I got the same ATI HD 4550 card from Newegg.

Can you explain what you did in a little more detail?  I seem to be having the same blank screen issue.  It worked the first time I hooked it up, but after I rebooted, nothing shows up.

What drivers are you using?  I'm currently using the driver that shipped with my card.

these issues below might need to be addressed by SailorSat...

I notice that the XP loading screen is all scrambled, like the freq is out of range or something.  I expected the BIOS screens to be doubled, but I thought that once windows started loading, soft15khz would kick in.

Any idea why 800x600 would be MORE readable than 640x480  on my arcade monitor?  They're both interlaced, but the flicker on the 640x480 is brutal.

[krick]

This is kinda old and you've probably already seen it, but just in case...


CASE STUDY OF PROBLEMS CAUSED EDIDs
Fixing the nVIDIA EDID Problem

http://www.geocities.com/jgeneedid/

[KissMyWookie]

This is kinda old and you've probably already seen it, but just in case...


CASE STUDY OF PROBLEMS CAUSED EDIDs
Fixing the nVIDIA EDID Problem

http://www.geocities.com/jgeneedid/

That doesn't apply for ATI cards.

[SailorSat]

You have to use the FIRST Output on ATI cards. Most likely it is NOT the VGA port, but the DVI port on modern cards.

Thats why you have to use \\.\DISPLAY2 on your setup.

Give it a try with a DVI-VGA adapter.