Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Monitor/Video Forum => Topic started by: SirPeale on May 05, 2007, 09:21:32 pm
-
http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?t=8170
-
Has anyone here given this thing a try?
-
It sounds too good to be true; this little program would render a PowerStrip setup and even an ArcadeVGA obsolete.
I might have time to give it a quick try later this week.
-
Yeah, sounds a little fishy. If all that was required to pull this off were registry tweaks, as this mod says, sounds like people would have figured this out long ago. And I don't think standard PC monitors and video cards can natively pull off the wierd modes and resolutions of arcade games, no matter how much you tweak it. That's why MAME tries to find the best resolution your video card can actually display.
-
Well i know that in linux, all that is requried in many instances is to add modelines into the driver, it just doesn't work all the time due to the card's limitations. This sounds like the windows equivelent.
-
Why are people so pessimistic here??
I for one truly believe that windows can support almost any resolution you want. There's a quick way to see this using MAMEWAH. Set it to run at the resolution you want (something that will be supported by your video card) and then alt-tab or ctr-esc to Windows. You'll now see Windows running at that resolution!
All done through VBScript. This utility probably goes one step further and also sets the refresh rate.
I for once already own an ArcadeVGA, and have no need for this utility. But it's great to see different options open to people.
-
Of course Windows can display any resolution, it's just software. Windows could display a resolution of a billion by a zillion, with colour depth of 63 Joe Don Baker bits if it wanted. The problem is the hardware driving everything, ie your video card and the monitor. Just as modern video cards meant for the home market top out at around 2000 pixels, they can very well not run very low resolutions and non-standard video modes.
If this works, then more power to the creator. It just sounds like such a simple fix that it would've been figured out already. It's like if we invented the power of flight by attaching a million birds to a big box that carries people, and then someone comes along in the year 2007 and says "Hey, how about we just put wings on something and glide it through the air!"
-
This is cool! I have a perfect project to try this on!
-
Do a search, n00b! (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=66375.msg671107#msg671107)
;)
-
Do a search, n00b! (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=66375.msg671107#msg671107)
;)
If you'll note, I posted it first.
n00b.
-
Also:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=66402.0
-
ForceWare drivers support it since 66.93 or such, not that long ago.
Catalyst drivers... well yeah, they support it ever since the first catalyst, actually the ArcadeVGA is just a radeon with a hacked bios, If you delete those "DALCUSTOMCRT" registry keys from the avga drivers, guess what... it outputs everything with 31+ KHz.
Matrox PowerDesk is quite known for letting you define custom stuff, although most likely only used for 15KHz with TVs.
Yeah... Thats how it all started.
looking what gets changed where, how it works, how I can convert binary from/to modelines, then wrote a small frontend and voila... thats it.
However, I later looked into other cards and drivers.
3Dfx was quite easy to figure out as they contain all mode parameters in plaintext (at least the better v3/4/5 drivers do).
Intel GMA however, was more of luck.
I noticed that my fathers notebook did miss some resolutions if I used the "generic" Intel drivers, instead of the HP supplied ones.
So I did a quick registry search and found the difference in some "DTD" keys, but couldn't figure out how they work until someone in the entech (powerstrip) forum mentioned they look like EDID definitions, and a few lines of code later, yeah... there indeed striped EDID defintions.
However, I don't know how to disable the "default" resolution on Intel GMA yet, so Soft-15KHz does not support these Chips yet.
Also my father took the notebook and ran away after I told him about what I was going to try ;)
Theoretically Kyro and Kyro2 cards should work, however I was told that only the first beta drivers for 2000/XP had support for it, and it was later droped.
Also XGI is said to be compatible, but other than a Volari V3 there are no cards available, and the V3 does not. Although the V5 or V8 should do fine, but I don't know anybody owning one.
Yeah... Thats all about it... more or less :)
-
Do a search, n00b! (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=66375.msg671107#msg671107)
;)
If you'll note, I posted it first.
n00b.
D'oh!
:notworthy: