Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Front End Support => MaLa Frontend => Topic started by: m_mcgover on June 04, 2008, 08:09:20 pm

Title: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga monitor
Post by: m_mcgover on June 04, 2008, 08:09:20 pm: Sorry in advance if this has been answered before, but I have not been able to find it all together.

Can someone step me through the mala/mame/ini changes I need to make to make 288 line and greater vertical games playable without loss of lines or squishing at screen top/bottom on my horizontally mounted CGA monitor?

My machine has a 25" wells-gardner k7000 series cga-resolution monitor. I am using the newer Arcadevga card to drive it. Mala is my frontend.

I know there are a number of steps, which include fiddling with vertical size and generating .ini files for every game, but I can't seem to find the right combination. The best I am able to do is get a vertical game like pengo have the bottom really squashed. Curiously, the top of the screen seems to be undistorted and completely on screen. I cannot reduce the vsize any more (already at its limit), so what can I do? Is there a magic combination of settings in the game.ini file that will remedy this? Is there someother monitor knob I can adjust besides vsize and vpos?

Please someone provide a detailed step by step. Thanks in advance!
Title: Re: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga mon
Post by: Minwah on June 05, 2008, 07:55:56 am: It sounds to me like you have adjusted the vertical size down so much it is distorting the image...perhaps an issue with this type of monitor(?)
Title: Re: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga monitor
Post by: m_mcgover on June 06, 2008, 05:30:13 pm: I'll try and re-adjust size back up to see if that helps. I'm just confused since other appear to be able to get this to work...
Title: Re: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga monitor
Post by: Ken Layton on June 06, 2008, 06:03:58 pm: And the monitor is freshly capped? If so, the also adjust the 50/60 control as shown here:

http://jstookey.com/arcade/WG_25k7191/
Title: Re: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga monitor
Post by: m_mcgover on June 06, 2008, 06:19:35 pm: Ken- Thanks for the reply (and the link). No, the monitor is not freshly capped. I assume I can still try adjusting the 50/60 to see if that improves things? I'll give it a shot tonight. Thanks!
Title: Re: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga mon
Post by: NOP on June 07, 2008, 09:12:18 am: I think you need this page:

http://ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

which shows you all the various mame.ini steps to tweak, and has a link to the arcadevga resolution tool to generate the .ini files for each game. Worked great for me! I was able to get a few games that had previously come up only as a garbled screen to show properly.

-jeff!
Title: Re: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga monitor
Post by: m_mcgover on June 07, 2008, 11:28:07 am: Yes, I ran Gavin's utility to generate .ini files for each game, prior to my original question. I guess I can go back and double check that the resolutions suggested by the utility line up with the vertical games and report back.
Title: Re: help! Need tutorial to get 288 line games to display right on horiz cga monitor
Post by: m_mcgover on June 10, 2008, 09:26:38 pm: Ken was right. I needed to adjust the 50/60 pot on the monitor to correct what turned out to be mild vertical fold over on the bottom which prevented me from getting the vertical games to display correctly. I am now able to get pretty close with just the slightest bit of cut-off. Thanks again to all (and especially Ken) for your suggestions!