Mala configured to run on second display

[slsimon]

Hello everyone.  Quick question:  Can mala be configured to run on lets say display 2 with mame configured to run on display 2 as well?  I am pretty sure mame can be configured with a switch to run on a separate display, (not sure what the switch is yet), but was just wondering before I started playing around if Mala can be configured to do so also.  I am going to start by looking in the ini file.  thanks, Shane

[slsimon]

Well, after some brain storming and some search, I found a utility that is always working flawlessly for me.  The utlity is called ultramon.  Because my Planar 15" touchscreen monitor software (Elo) does not support multiple monitor setup, I could not get the multiple monitor to work within Windows correctly.  When I selected my 21" game display as primary, the touchscreen display touchpanel would not respond correctly with the 15" panel.  Was wanting to move the mouse on the primary display.  So I decided to make the 15" display primary and the 21" secondary.  I then downloaded ultramon and was able to create some shortcuts within the utility to specify display output per the jukebox application and Mala.  They both are reporting correctly on the displays.  The only glitch that I have and am not sure how to tackle is that the avi file that I have configured to run at Mala startup still wants to output to the 15" display.  So while the avi is playing on the 15" display, Mala is already displayed on the 21" display waiting for game play.  Errr, always something. 

Once I figure out a possible workaround for the avi mala startup file, I then should be able to use quicksoundswitch to redirect audio with the shortcuts made with ultramon so that the audio gets redirected appropriately to the appropriate audio source so that both mame/mala game play can occur while at the same time I should be able to listen to my mp3 songs via the jukebox software on the touchscreen. 

Any ideas from anyone would be appreciated as to how I might go about trying to get the avi setup to run on the 21" display before mala runs? 

I am going to play around with the layout editor and see if there is a way in there to specify a definable with a specific avi for my layout.  This should allow the video to be played on the 21" display.  The game avi's snaps play fine on the 21" display, only the startup avi is giving me fits at the moment.  Thanks for any info...

Check out ultramon and quicksoundswitch.  They are both nice utilities. 

[loadman]

I'm glad you had some success 

But I fear there are many more layers of the onion yet to discover with what you are trying to do overall. 

[slsimon]

I'm glad you had some success 

But I fear there are many more layers of the onion yet to discover with what you are trying to do overall. 

Agreed loadman.  I am just going to try to peel off each layer at a time and see what I can come up with.  I find it hard to believe that there has not been a programmer that has not wanted and or found a need to be able to manage multiple display output as well as multiple audio outputs with a management utility.  I think everyone here on this forum would/could benefit from a management utility like that.  I'll keep on plugging away.  If I can get that quick sound switch working the way that I want it to and get this AVI (mala startup) working, I should be good to go. 

Does Mala not have an option either in the INI and or the config setup that will allow one to specify video output like mame has?  Just wondering.  I looked through the ini file and noticed a location where it specifed avi location but nothing concerning video output. 

I will keep plugging away.  I am much closer now than I was a week ago.  So that is a good thing...  Thanks,

[loadman]

I'm glad you had some success 

But I fear there are many more layers of the onion yet to discover with what you are trying to do overall. 

Agreed loadman.  I am just going to try to peel off each layer at a time and see what I can come up with.  I find it hard to believe that there has not been a programmer that has not wanted and or found a need to be able to manage multiple display output as well as multiple audio outputs with a management utility.  I think everyone here on this forum would/could benefit from a management utility like that.  I'll keep on plugging away.  If I can get that quick sound switch working the way that I want it to and get this AVI (mala startup) working, I should be good to go. 

Does Mala not have an option either in the INI and or the config setup that will allow one to specify video output like mame has?  Just wondering.  I looked through the ini file and noticed a location where it specifed avi location but nothing concerning video output. 

I will keep plugging away.  I am much closer now than I was a week ago.  So that is a good thing...  Thanks,

MaLa has not got that option, but I think it is more than that. Every EMU you run under MaLa (or whatever FE) has the potential to mess up your Dual Monitor/ Dual Sound Card Settings when you are going against the grain of things.

No argument that what you want to do is technically possible, but it may take a lot of work. Being Lazy I would just use a second PC for the Jukebox and save my energy for drinking Beer 

[slsimon]

loadman, I had some time today to play around with the dual monitor configuration.  I am afraid you are correct with the diplay settings.  Below is what I could get working and what I can't at the moment. 

Working:

Ultramon configured shortcut to specify that jukebox application run on second display (extended desktop, display 2)
Mame Game emulation on primary display (display 1)
Super Nintendo emulation on primary display (display 1)
Nintendo 64 emulation on primary display (display 1)


Not working:
Daphne emulation
nintendo emulation
sega genesis emulation
sega cd emulation
sega dreamcast emulation
PC Games

Those emulators that are not working will have a 40 percent shift of the mala layout and the mala starting box to the second monitor while the game still plays on the primary monitor.  I am wondering if this is because those emulators are changing the display setting resolutions thus causing the whole screen to shift to the extended desktop display. 

Its odd that a couple emulators work fine and others don't.  Any insight as to why this might be happening.  I may end up having to build another PC for the jukebox.  More money to spend.  Thanks for any info....

[NickG]

most probably the changing resolutions; that shifted MALA on my system.  First I got around it by forcing SVGA resolution on the games monitor.  Well that's no good, so:

I turned off stretching in MALA Layout, and ensured that the MALA Layout top left corner started in the Display 1 even though the other display was set as Primary
for the games/emulators to work in fullscreen overlay mode.  When I did this I was using an ATI card; I ran desk.cpl and I clicked and dragged the little monitor images in the settings tab; so that secondary was on the left with the monitors in horizontal desktop span or on the top with the monitors vertical desktop span.  This worked out using wide and tall layouts respectively.  This was for an slightly different effect than what you are trying to accomplish , and it may not help because of the touchscreen issue.  On another note I have since then switch to an Nvidia card and instead of using the software to switch the order of the displays I physically swapped the video connections.  This also effectively switches the displays - in my case.  I tried Ultramon before all of this, and itwas great but I uninstalled it because of a taskbar issue, IIRC.   

[slsimon]

most probably the changing resolutions; that shifted MALA on my system.  First I got around it by forcing SVGA resolution on the games monitor.  Well that's no good, so:

I turned off stretching in MALA Layout, and ensured that the MALA Layout top left corner started in the Display 1 even though the other display was set as Primary
for the games/emulators to work in fullscreen overlay mode.  When I did this I was using an ATI card; I ran desk.cpl and I clicked and dragged the little monitor images in the settings tab; so that secondary was on the left with the monitors in horizontal desktop span or on the top with the monitors vertical desktop span.  This worked out using wide and tall layouts respectively.  This was for an slightly different effect than what you are trying to accomplish , and it may not help because of the touchscreen issue.  On another note I have since then switch to an Nvidia card and instead of using the software to switch the order of the displays I physically swapped the video connections.  This also effectively switches the displays - in my case.  I tried Ultramon before all of this, and itwas great but I uninstalled it because of a taskbar issue, IIRC.   

Hmm, I am going to have to play with some more settings in mala layout.  As far as the touchpanel, I have it setup as the extended display and it works fine as a touchpanel that way.  I have successfully created an ultramon shortcut file to redirect the jukebox software to use the second display so I am finished with that configuration. 

You really lost me with the following:

 "fullscreen overlay mode.  When I did this I was using an ATI card; I ran desk.cpl and I clicked and dragged the little monitor images in the settings tab; so that secondary was on the left with the monitors in horizontal desktop span or on the top with the monitors vertical desktop span."

Can you provide more of an explaination?  Sorry for me misunderstanding.   

What does the Nvidia card offer (model please) that the ATI card did not offer?  I have an ATI Radeon 2400 Pro card by the way.  Thanks,

[NickG]

about the Nvidia -
  I upgraded to the Nvidia 8800GT 512MB from my ATI X1800XL 256MB for better performance.  I can turn all my video quality settings all the way up (mostly for PC games) without sacrificing speed now.  I've just recently learned about Nvidia's 3D stereo driver, which sadly doesn't work with card, yet.  It supports Red-Cyan glasses, shutter glasses (better) and Polarized glasses mode (best, IMO.)  I ran Unreal tournament in red-cyan glasses mode using Dragon's hook program and it's got me totally stoked for the new technologies and next Driver release.  Thats one thing ATI hasn't done, AFAIK. 

-To clarify what I was talking about earlier - this:



In the pictured configuration, Display "2" is set as Primary, and Display "1" is set as secondary.  This is great for Mame, which defaults to Display "1" and keeps the Mala layout from moving around when the games screen switches resolutions because Mala Layout starts at Primary display.  for other emulators and PC games which start in Primary this obviusly doesn't solve the problem but here are some instructions anyway for clarification.

First, a correction  It is not called span mode: with Nvidia's it is reffered to as dualview, I've forgotten the proper term for ATI's.  In both brands the Windows taskbar shows up only on one of the displays (I think it's Display "1") when you have the correct mode. 

*note you may need to try this without any helper apps like Ultramon running at first.  Also just another warning;  this may not even help you out, I am still not completely sure what you are going to accomplish.

1.  Open Display Properties - you can do this by right clicking on the windows desktop and selecting "Properties"
2.  Click the "Settings" tab
3.  You have to see two monitors in this box to continue.  If you do not see two monitors in the settings screen then you have to rectify the situation to continue - let me know your video card(s) and I might be able to provide further info. 
Anyways,  so there are these two (at least) boxes that represent the two monitors in this window.  One of them is labeled "1" and the other is labeled "2".If neither box is "grayed-out" then proceed to step 4.  If either box is "grayed-out" click on it and check the selection box Labeled "Extend my Windows desktop to this monitor."
4.  You may have noticed the very first words on the "Settings" tab.  Across the top of the child window it reads, "Drag the monitor icons to match the physical arrangement of your monitors."  TRY IT!  Click on the box labeled "2" and drag it to the left or on top of directly above the box labeled "1".  If all goes well it should snap into position and stay there.

I think I may need to give Ultramon another shot.  I need to run more programs than just Mame.

[slsimon]

NickG.  Can I ask where you found this setting in Mala layout?

"I turned off stretching in MALA Layout, and ensured that the MALA Layout top left corner started in the Display 1 even though the other display was set as Primary
for the games/emulators to work in fullscreen overlay mode."

On a positive note, I am making progress with just moving the monitors around and specify correct primary and secondary displays with the display properties configurations above. 

Thanks, Shane

[NickG]

oops -  thats another error from my first post.  It had been a while since i had messed around with this and I was going from memory.I don't know of any setting that can get MALA to start in Display 1 instead of the Primary.    What I meant by "I turned off stretching in MALA Layout"  is that I use a fixed-size layout.  I had a problem with scalable layouts because my Mala layout spans across both screens.  If I use a scalable layout and the game screen resolution changes , then then Layout stretches or shrinks to fit.  Since I need the layout to stay still even when I am playing the game I use a fixed size layout.  In this situation the Mala layout stays the same size no matter what the games screen does.  The layout would still move around on the secondary screen if I were to change the resolution on the primary screen.  so that is why I configured it similarly to my previous post.  Now that I realized this only works for MAME , I have to go back to something like Ultramon or something

[slsimon]

oops -  thats another error from my first post.  It had been a while since i had messed around with this and I was going from memory.I don't know of any setting that can get MALA to start in Display 1 instead of the Primary.    What I meant by "I turned off stretching in MALA Layout"  is that I use a fixed-size layout.  I had a problem with scalable layouts because my Mala layout spans across both screens.  If I use a scalable layout and the game screen resolution changes , then then Layout stretches or shrinks to fit.  Since I need the layout to stay still even when I am playing the game I use a fixed size layout.  In this situation the Mala layout stays the same size no matter what the games screen does.  The layout would still move around on the secondary screen if I were to change the resolution on the primary screen.  so that is why I configured it similarly to my previous post.  Now that I realized this only works for MAME , I have to go back to something like Ultramon or something

Ok, that is what I thought, but was not sure.  I have my layout fixed at 1024x768.  Well, I am able now to play the emulation games without the shifting over to the extended display.  What I had to do was set the primary display as display 2 (CRT 21") and the 15" Planar touchscreen display to display 1.  I then in display properties, moved the second display to the right of display 1.  Now, emulation does not shift to the extended display due to the extended display being on the left of display 1.  Wow, that is a mouth full.  Hopefully your falling me here.  Ok, so since I moved the extended display the left of the primary display in display properties, I can't get the jukebox application to load correctly on the extended display.  I am thinking this has something to do with the display properties (location of display monitors).  I have reverted back to Ultramon and am having a little luck with it.  You can't specify monitor 1 or monitor 2 anymore to run applications, but rather if I specify in the Window configuration box within Ultramon for the jukebox application to use the last used postion, the jukebox software loads on the primary display and then jumps to the extended display.  So I guss I have that partially working.  Almost there before I have to tackle the sound card switching with quicksoundswitch.  I am going to have to go back to my dos days and try to remember some of those commands that I know I will need to use. 

Well, keep plugging away and eventually we both will get there.  Thanks,

[curtis-r]

I realize this is nearly a year-old thread, but I am trying to get my MAME cabinet to act as the second monitor in a dual monitor system.  Mame 129 allows designation of monitors in a multi-monitor system, so no problems there. 

Primary problems: Though I created a MaLa desktop shortcut and modified the properties so that Ultramon is supposed to open it on monitor 2, it almost never works.  I've also tried using a hotkey to manually switch Mala to monitor 2 after it's open, and that kind of works, but sometimes after a little bit, Mala crashes.

Anyone successful in getting Mala to operate on a monitor other than #1?