Arcadevga Card w/ Arcade Monitor Under Linux How-To

[Dak-ak]

I spent a while (bout a week of hour here, hour there) learning how to configure the X server to run an arcade monitor...

my xp install died quite unexpectantly but not surpisingly so I installed slackware linux onto my mame box (been digging linux lately).  Took a bit of tweaking to get it running, but its not that hard to reproduce... Is there enough interest in the community for me to jot down a how-to?  should I mail andy@ultimarc and let him know that linux works too?  

I'd recommend it: Its a cheap, quicker, and more stable operating system and it does what we're all looking at windows to do... emulation without a lot of BS going on... (something windows doesn't always manage.)

[dhansen]

I think a resounding YES!!  Write it up!  I was pretty impressed by the Advance CD project that used Linux also...

Doug

[b3atmania]

I second that YES!

As XFree86 does not use the BIOS to set videomodes but programs the registers of the videocard directly an howto would not be limited to just  ArcadeVGA users, but would work for many other cards as well.

As a suggestion I would also include info on making modelines for medium resolution monitors. This would benefit ArcadeVGA owners since those modes are supported by default.

Anyway, I would like to contribute. I don't have an ArcadeVGA card, but I do have an 15/25/31kHz multisync monitor that I drive with a Matrox Mystique videocard.

[SirPeale]

You've got a third 'HECK YES' from me as well.

I've got it running mostly on my system, but I couldn't get AdvanceMAME/MENU to run.  Locks the system up hard.  Not sure why.

An arcade monitor howto in Linux would be really handy.

[arcadepcnut]

go for it. windows is pissing me off. i only use it for the networking aspect and it slows mame down alot!

[Dak-ak]

Good to hear other people are interested in linux :-)

I'm not sure if I'm going about this the same way as windows does... I think I may just be using the ultra-low clock (4.3 something) to pull off some interesting modes... I have all but three of the resolutions that ultimarc lists turned into modelines that display alright on my monitor, and gxmame seems to switch happily between them...

I'll post back later once i get a quicky html written up and uploaded to my webhost...

(nothing like fullscreen pacman.. F'ya...  )

[Dak-ak]

http://asuaf.org/~dboyer/avga_w_linux/

I can hear my girlfriend pounding away at fullscreen tempest... YATTA...

~Devin

[tom61]

Do you have the accelerated drivers running, or just the default XFree86 drivers? Just curious if you have OpenGL running.

I'm gonna post this to the Ultimarc forums, as someone asks about using the ArcadeVGA in Linux about once a month or so.

[jaywood]

Nice. But unfortunately a bit ahead of where I'm at. Perhaps someone here has some advice ...

I am (working towards) converting my cabinet to linux. The cabinet is JAMMA with a standard 15K monitor (Sharp Image SI-327), original as far as I know. The PC is a PIII 733 with 128MB RAM and an ArcadeVGA card. It works well enough in DOS with ArcadeOS, but I want to use it with advmess and advmenu, plus other benefits of linux.

I've installed Slackware 9 (2.4.20 kernel), and upgraded to svgalib 1.9.18, with the patches from advmame/contrib, compiled from source on that system. The svgalib demo programs run -- fine on the SVGA monitor, and sort-of OK on the arcade monitor; the modeline isn't quite right yet, so the image is a bit scrambled. But more notably, running it locks the keyboard and I have to do a hard reset to regain
control.

I've successfully compiled advmame, advmenu, and advmess (latest versions, or nearly so -- 0.77 mame) on this machine. These run, at least, when connected to an SVGA monitor, I can see a slightly messed up image from advmenu, and keyboard control works. However, connected to the arcade machine, I try to run advcfg or advv, and get the same lockup as when running the demos.

I've considered switching to another card, but I'd really like to use this one -- and I'm not sure the issue is card-related. (Though, the behavior of the svgalib demos seems to vary greatly depending on which card -- therefore which driver -- is used.)

Any ideas?

(Note: I have also posted to the Ultimarc board and the advmame user list on this problem. Thanks)

[Dak-ak]

What exactly stops the keyboard from working? have you tried using runlevel 3, and then starting the xserver manually? is it the xserver that kills your keyboard input? as far as i know, the monitor you use shouldn't have anything to dow ith your keyboard... have you looked at the xfree86 log? (/var/log/xfree86.0.log i believe) might be some hints there.

On a side note, I've updated my page a little bit... a hair prettier, and one more modeline is present.

[jaywood]

I don't know what exactly stops the keyboard from working. It seems to be that svgalib is handling the keyboard input directly when the demo programs and advcfg are running, and that it is effectivly disabling or ignoring keyboard input. When this happens, there is no response to ESC, Ctrl-C, or Alt-Ctrl-F2 etc (to switch to another virtual terminal).

I'm not running X on this machine and have not installed any of the X libraries. My goal is to do all of this through the svga libraries and advmame. I realize this is different than your approach, but thought that since both relied on svgalib working -- and since my problem is specifically with that -- that I was still following the same path you've been down.

[Dak-ak]

I don't believe my method "relies on svgalib".  I wouldn't be surprised to find that I need it as a dependency somewhere, I don't believe I am using it...

I call "xmame.SDL -fullscreen <romname>"... xmame hits up the xserver and looks for the closest-match resolution that is available... for instance, if i run puckman, it should look for a resolution of about 224x288 (its a vertical game).  It should find 352x288 and use that for display.  after the game is exited, the resolution is set back to the orignal setting (640x480i or whatever).

I am not familiar with the svgalib approach... Its the sort of thing I would probably be able to wade through if i was in front of your box, but can't hope to help you get through like this... you might have better luck hitting a genuine linux forum (www.justlinux.com is my favorite).

Just as a guess, however... is svgalib supposed to handle keyboard input? or is it just a display driver/sofltware/whatever-the-hell-it-is...?  Maybe you lose keyboard input because its not actively looking for any action. (although some of the more basic commands should work... weird)

[jerryjanis]

When running advancemame under Linux, if I don't set keyboard=svgalib in advmame.rc (it's set to keyboard=auto by default) then I run into the keyboard lockup problem that sounds similar to what you're talking about.

By the way, check out Aaron's Millipede Mame cabinet site if you aren't already, I used it all the time as a reference when trying to set stuff up.

Dak-ak - Thank you so much for figuring this stuff out!  This is really awesome.  I've been running Linux on my arcade cab for a few months now, but I've only had 1 modeline set up (640x480 interlaced) for X.  Therefore I've been using AdvanceMame, but I've been having a heck of a time getting USB mice to work.  I can't wait to see how this works on my cab!

[Dak-ak]

figured out why I could never keep all of the modelines from rolling around...

Apparently I had either A) the vertical refresh rates were too spread out so i couldn't dial one vertical hold setting for all of them, or B) Some of the ones I was using was simply too low (low 40s to low 50s).  Some somewhat random tweaking got them all within to stop rolling badly.  I updated my XF86Config has been updated to reflect these, but they are hardly scientific.

jerryjanis:  Please get back and see how all of these work out for you... They are less than perfect... for example, the rolling problem I just took care of tonight... or how none of these modelines seem to fit correctly on the screen (puckman, for example, is much too tall for my monitor, and although the playing area is the right size to fit on the screen, all the extra information is off the top and bottom viewing area.)

things improve daily I suppose... heck, i just learned what the -vsync and -hsync options mean (polarity of syncing signals... not sooo surprising).

At this point, anyone with a standard res monitor and a videocard with a dot clock that can get down to 5 should be able to half-assedly emulate the arcade monitors...

lucky for andy, very few people run linux, and i bet that very few cards can get down as low as his :-)

[jerryjanis]

jerryjanis:  Please get back and see how all of these work out for you... They are less than perfect... for example, the rolling problem I just took care of tonight... or how none of these modelines seem to fit correctly on the screen (puckman, for example, is much too tall for my monitor, and although the playing area is the right size to fit on the screen, all the extra information is off the top and bottom viewing area.)

I tried them out and they worked allright.  As you said, most of the modelines were far from perfect as far as size is concerned.  Many were a bit too tall, too short, (etc.).  I guess that AdvanceMame has made me greedy - it lets you really tweak modelines by moving them around and stretching them.  I think that for me,  anyway, AdvanceMame does a GREAT job of creating modelines, so I may be better off using AdvanceMame than creating my own with the web site you listed.  However, this is all helping me to get a better idea of what the heck I'm doing, so I managed to get AdvanceMame working better than ever.  Hopefully I will be able to pull modelines out of AdvanceMame and apply them to XF86Config, and use them in X11 also to get a good comparison.  (That's one problem with Linux - so many freaking alternatives it's hard to know where to begin sometimes).

Here's something that might be of some use to you - I took a look at what AdvanceMame does to actually tweak the modelines.  What changes to the modeline result in moving the picture to the right, left, up, down, and stretching it?

Modeline:
p           1     2     3     4   5     6     7     8
6.5395  320 344 376 416 240 243 246 262 -hsync -vsync

Horizontal adjustments:
--------------------------
To move the picture to the right, decrease 2 & 3 by equal amount (advancemame changed it 8 at a time)

To move the picture to the left, increase 2 & 3.

So if I move the picture to the right, the new modeline would be:
p           1     2     3     4   5     6     7     8
6.5395  320 *336 *368 416 240 243 246 262

To increase the horizontal size, decrease 4 & p by same ratio.
To decrease the horizontal size, increase 4 * p by same ratio.

So if I want to stretch the horizontal size, the new modeile would be:
p             1     2     3     4   5     6     7     8
*6.4766  320 344 376 *412 240 243 246 262 -hsync -vsync

p: (412 (old #4) /416 (new #4)) * 6.5395 -> 6.4766

Vertical adjustments:
-----------------------
To move picture up, increase 6 & 7 by 1
To move picture down, decrease 6 & 7 by 1
To increase vertical size, decrease 8 by 1
To decrease vertical size, increase 8 by 1


Nice work, by the way - I hope we can get this working perfectly!

[Dak-ak]

if you're running some of hte modelines i have, you can try xvidtune to play with the numbers... I just havn't figured out... how to make a decent test for it yet (aka, how to findout if my changes are helping or hurting/are enough or not)...

eric raymond did some pretty hardcore writing on this at:

http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO.html

look at section 16 for correction methods (which you already found out)

EDIT: might as well say it.  If we can find a source with advancemame modelines, we're set for setting up xfree.. looks as if you stick "modeline" in front of it, it works :-)

EDIT2: Have you heard of anyone getting 3d acceleration with a R7500?  Doesn't seem like ATI produces drivers  

EDIT3: http://cvs.mess.org:6502/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/contrib/tools/Attic/modelines?rev=1.2

apparently in the /xmame/src/unix/contrib/tools/ directory is a xfree configuration file... unfortunetly it is for PCs...

[Surfr]

Hi.

Great work with the HOWTO. I have been playing with my Mortal Kombat 3 JAMMA+ cab and Debian for months now.

Until today I had been running all games at 640x480 and scaling with SDL. This was OK but the image quality wasn't perfect and some games didn't seem to want to start.

I just put your modelines into my XF86Config and a lot more is working now

I am however experiencing the off-centre screen on just about every mode that I have tried. I'll take some pics with the digicam if its of any use. Are these settings that I can tweek with xvidtune? If so, can you select which mode you are currently tweeking in xvidtune? I guess I would need to go through them all in turn?

Just want to say thanks. I had emailed Andy thismorning to ask for the tech specs for the card and then I found this thread minutes after on the Ultimarc forums.

If we all club together we can make a really good howto on this. Linux is definately the way forward.

I'm using the gamelaucher frontend for my cab (MK3, ArcadeVGA, JPAC) Its a lot nicer than AdvanceMenu and is multi emu.

Which brings me to my second question. Anyone running many other emus on their linux cabs?

so far I have mame, zsnes working. I'm going to try UAE and Steem (or another ST Em) on the weekend. I NEED my llamatron with robotron dual joystick support. Its SO nice on Jeff Minters cab but he's running win98.

Also a few of us over on the Llamasoft forums www.yakyak.org are in the planning stages of writing a High Score client server application so merge our MAME hiscore.dat files so mates names appear on your cab for that authentic Arcade feel of the challenge. Pop on over if interested.

I'll keep popping back to the HOWTO URL to see if you manage to improve any of the modelines.

[AMIGrAve]

I am however experiencing the off-centre screen on just about every mode that I have tried. I'll take some pics with the digicam if its of any use. Are these settings that I can tweek with xvidtune? If so, can you select which mode you are currently tweeking in xvidtune? I guess I would need to go through them all in turn?

Yes, you can cycle your X modeline using Ctrl + Alt + Keypad Minus or Keypad Plus, then you can make your changes to xvidtunes and note the changes you should make to your XFConfig. You'd better keep your 640x480 by default, so you can plug a mouse and use 640x480 as virtual screen when using lower resolution, it will be easier to use xvidtune if you see all the window frame.

Linux is definately the way forward.

You said it dude !! ;-)

Which brings me to my second question. Anyone running many other emus on their linux cabs?

My linux cab is not yet up, I just ordered a J-Pac this week-end, but I plan to use xmess for Msx, C64, Spectrum, ... emulation but also game consoles such as Nes, Sega master system, ... I don't feel the need to use specific emulator for these because mess just do the job fine.
I plan to use also UAE (320x256) as a good amiga fan, and perhaps dosbox for some PC oldies (320x200).  My monitor is a 25Khz switchable to 15Khz but I don't know yet if I'll switch it to 15Khz.

Also a few of us over on the Llamasoft forums www.yakyak.org are in the planning stages of writing a High Score client server application so merge our MAME hiscore.dat files so mates names appear on your cab for that authentic Arcade feel of the challenge. Pop on over if interested.

Cool !
Thanks for the information !
Sounds interesting !

[Numbski]

Well, I know I'm drudging up a REALLY old topic here, but this appears to be the most appropriate thread.

I'm using FreeBSD (X.org), ArcadeVGA, and a Wells-Gardner K7000 series monitor.  I've followed the tutorial, and tweaked, tweaked, tweaked, and then tweaked some more.

The problem I'm running into pretty much across the board is that just about every resolution that I've gotten to work is overscanned both left and right.  It's just too wide horizontally.

Now, per the writeup:

http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO/fixes.html


"16.3. The image is too large both horizontally and vertically

Switch to a higher card clock speed. If you have multiple modes in your clock file, possibly a lower-speed one is being activated by mistake.


16.4. The image is too wide (too narrow) horizontally

To fix this, increase (decrease) the horizontal frame length. That is, change the fourth number in the first timing section. To avoid moving the image, also move the sync pulse (second and third numbers) half as far, to keep it in the same relative position."

I've done both of these things.  I've gone to the highest clock I can, and I've moved the sync pulse and hfl and far down as I can get away with and not make the screen complete garbage.  It's still too wide. :\

Here's the modeline I've been tweaking:

 Modeline "640x240@60" 11.62 640 662 700 724 240 245 248 253 -hsync -vsync

You can ignore the @60 part...I doubt that calculates to 60Hz anymore.  If I tweak the clock up any further, or the frame length down any further, I get garbage.   Any ideas?  I get more or less the same problem for all of the resolutions that I've gotten to work without rolling.

[Numbski]

I forgot to mention that I've used a couple of Jamma boards to test that the monitor is adjusted correctly, and it is.  Any normal arcade board works fine.

[Numbski]

http://lrmc.sf.net

Low Resolution Monitor Configurator.   Very useful.