Horizontally mounted monitor playing vertical games: overscan at the top?

[Diewrecked]

Hi guys

Don't know if this should be here or in the Arcade Monitor forum as it's actually a MAME setup question (I think!) - please let me know if this is in the wrong place and I'll move it.

I am running MAME on a 26" Hantarex MTC-9000 monitor, horizontally mounted. Whenever I play any vertically orientated games I get a little bit of overscan at the top of the screen, for instance where it should say "HIGH SCORE" I can only see the bottom half of the letters and there are little extra rows of pixels going down about three character lines. I've played with the vertical sizing pots on the back of the screen but to no avail.

Is there somewhere I can configure MAME to "shrink" the screen area very slightly when playing vertical games so that I don't get the overscan?

Many thanks in advance you guys.

[ahofle]

Is that a standard resolution monitor?  I didn't have much luck playing 288 line games like Pacman and Galaga on a standard res arcade monitor, but 256 line games like Centipede and Donkey Kong looked perfect.  Which games in particular are you having problems with overscan?  I ended up running the 288 line games at 640x480 interlaced with hardware stretch.

[Diewrecked]

Thanks Ahofle. So far I've only tested Gorf and Pacman (I haven't even built my CP yet, I'm still experimenting and playing with stuff pre-build).

I didn't even know there were two "levels" of vertical games. Is there a list of which is which somewhere? I can run some tests and come back to you with some results.

The screen is (afaik) standard frequency currently running 800*600. I am trying to push back against running 640*480 because my front end (3DArcade - screenshots here http://3darcade.mameworld.net/arcades/arcades.htm ) would look rubbish at that res (it's designed for 1024*768 but can kind of blag 800*600 but that's about it). Unless of course I can set Windows (and hence 3DArcade) to run at 800*600 and MAME to run at 640*480? Is that doable? And would it fix the overscan issue?

I should point out that the screen is plugged into a JPAC and controlled by a PCIE ArcadeVGA card if that helps?

[Turnarcades]

Arcade monitors eh? If it weren't for these little problems I'd use them myself. If only they were as plug and play friendly as regular PC CRT's.... some are close, but boy do they cost.

[ahofle]

OK, Gorf is 352 lines (240x352) and Pacman 288 (224x288).  It all depends on the resolution of the game you are playing.  You can find the resolution of a particular game by pressing 'tab' in game and selecting 'game information'. 

And yes, you can set each MAME game at a specific resolution without affecting your front end (or any other MAME game).  It's easiest to use MAMEUI to do this, but you can also manually do it by creating an INI file for the game you want to change (for example gorf.ini) and set the resolution there.