Question about ArcadeVGA

[patm95]

I have a quick question about ArcadeVGA cards.  With the relative scarcity of arcade monitors now, I imagine more and more people are resorting to LCD screens or old CRT tvs.  Is there any advantage in using an ArcadeVGA card with either a LCD or CRT tv?  Were these cards advantageous to all arcade monitors or only those that could support multiple resolutions or refresh rates? 

[bitbytebit]

I have a quick question about ArcadeVGA cards.  With the relative scarcity of arcade monitors now, I imagine more and more people are resorting to LCD screens or old CRT tvs.  Is there any advantage in using an ArcadeVGA card with either a LCD or CRT tv?  Were these cards advantageous to all arcade monitors or only those that could support multiple resolutions or refresh rates?  

The ArcadeVGA card basically is only an advantage if you have a real single fixed frequency arcade monitor, so it can boot up safely without going out of range.  It also is an advantage if you use Windows and have an arcade monitor of any type, including multisync ones because then you can actually utilize the monitor.  Then again you can always get Soft15Khz and do the same thing, and it really is basically the same thing besides the boot up part (which can be worked around through various tricks using dual cards, bios hacking, etc).  If you use Linux mostly the whole ArcadeVGA card is more of a limitation than a help, because you can do all it does in Linux and more, just can't do that first bios startup in 15Khz mode.  Also in Windows with Soft15Khz about the same, you can do much more with Soft15Khz because you could have a much more powerful card and with the proper bios installed so fully supported and yet just have that initial bios startup be where it wouldn't work if it's a fixed freq arcade monitor.  I have an ArcadeVGA card, I flashed the BIOS to the original Radeon 2600 HD it was and it's acting better, faster, smoother now.  It doesn't boot up in 15Khz but then again I use a Wells Gardner d9800 monitor so it doesn't matter, and actually the bootup of it always made my monitor whine for some reason, so it wasn't a perfect 15Khz I guess.  

So basically if you have a fixed arcade monitor it might be an advantage, but it also does 15.9 Khz bootup which is out of spec of arcade monitors and not 15.750 Khz, so that's even debatable.  Otherwise any other monitor you just use a video card that can do low pixel clock rates and Soft 15Khz or possibly use Linux and custom modelines (my program genres works well like Soft 15khz does if your using Linux), then you've got something actually much more feature rich (can make custom modes, can have full 3d acceleration, can choose many more options of how things work rather than the black box bios of the ArcadeVGA).

[patm95]

So is there much of an advantage of a fixed frequency arcade monitor over a tv? It seems like a fixed arcade monitor would just give advantage to games that used that frequency whereas other games wouldn't look quite right or at least not look as authentic?

[bitbytebit]

A TV would not look nearly as nice as any arcade monitor unless you went scart/composite into it and still wouldn't be as good.  A TV has various layers of re-encoding the signal and will always be less sharp and defined, plus way less configurable on refresh rates too.  So There's a big advantage to an arcade monitor, just search for people with pictures that show the comparisons up close of the screen and you'll see the difference in detail.

Thanks,
Chris

[patm95]

Thanks for all your information.  I have a lot to consider here I think.  Sounds like ideally I would have an arcade monitor that supports mult frequencies and resolutions, but what about something like a CGA arcade monitor?  That would only be sufficient to play the old 80s games right?  I imagine some newer games wouldn't look quite right on it?  I am wanting to play a wide range of games on mine (just mame though, no console emulation).  Sounds like I really just need to save up and do it right and get a really good arcade monitor.  Seems like these are getting harder to come by.

[bitbytebit]

Thanks for all your information.  I have a lot to consider here I think.  Sounds like ideally I would have an arcade monitor that supports mult frequencies and resolutions, but what about something like a CGA arcade monitor?  That would only be sufficient to play the old 80s games right?  I imagine some newer games wouldn't look quite right on it?  I am wanting to play a wide range of games on mine (just mame though, no console emulation).  Sounds like I really just need to save up and do it right and get a really good arcade monitor.  Seems like these are getting harder to come by.

Yep, basically with a CGA monitor you'll be limited by the vertical vs. horizontal games, either one way or the other and the ones not oriented right will be a bit nasty.  You'll also miss out on quality for the games which go beyond a certain size and were in the higher freq ranges, but not a majority of classic games had that problem although your vector games probably won't be so great.  For a bit more, if you find a d9400/d9800 then you ca basically do about every single game pretty close to perfection.  That of course looks like it's been a daunting task because you do have to create modelines which normally people wouldn't use in odd ranges like 18Khz Horizontal and stuff, to get games like Pacman to play the right refresh rate on a horizontal monitor.  That's what I've been working on with my lrmc/switchres combo currently, but you of course can also get plenty of nice output on just normal fixed frequency CGA arcade monitors too, for the games that are really around 15.7Khz and not vertical.