10 years later - still having problems with screen size

[rmcelwee]

WOW, it has been 6 years since I last posted on here!

I built my cabinets (one with a WG 25" vertical arcade monitor and one with a WG 25" horizontal arcade monitor) 10 years ago. The cab with the horizontal monitor always had problems with some of the games showing up as 14" vs 25" games. I never was able to fix the problem and just learned to live with it. Now after years of not messing with the cabinets I'm ready to play with them a bit (software wise). I currently run ArcadeOS (ver 2.47) as my front end to ver 0.62 of MAME. I'm assuming the problem is one with ArcadeOS and not MAME so I am interested in trying a different front end. I'm guessing that Advancemame would be good to try BUT before I do I thought I would ask here and see if anyone had a good solution for my screen size problems. Thanks!
 

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Sounds like mame was never sending the right video mode. What video card are you using?

[rmcelwee]

ATI 3D Rage Pro

[rmcelwee]

Hehehe, just found a post I made on this problem from 8 years ago:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=3893.0

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Wasn't a very in-depth thread, eh?

Are you planning on upgrading your PC any? Are you using Soft15kHz on that card? What model WG are they?

[rmcelwee]

I'm not planning on any upgrades to the PC (it was actually upgraded about 4 years ago to the current configuration). I've had a heck of a time getting sound to work so I am scared to touch anything <G>.

 I don't know what soft15khz is (I'm assuming it is something that helps windows display on an arcade monitor). I am currently checking into it now. I am running under win98 (or is it 95???) dos with dos mame and arcadeos. No fancy drivers and no windows.

I just looked at the back and it is not a WG monitor (must be on my vertical machine). There is a sticker indicating it is a Phillips M08X.



EDIT: After looking at soft15khz I think I will try an XP build and see how it works. Thanks...

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Looks like that M08X is the tube, not the chassis itself. There are many different tubes that would be compatible with the chassis on the monitor.

Look here:
http://homearcade.org/BBBB/monitor.html

What's the actual specs of the PC? Between a modern build of mame and Soft15kHz, I've found it rather easy to get the native game resolution running on the monitor (and filling it completely as a result).

[rmcelwee]

Duh - it is a WG 7191.

The old machine is a Dell Dimension 2300 P4-1.8
I'm building a Dell Dimension 2400 P4-2.66 to experiment with. I'm doing a Ghost of an old XP build that doesn't have much on it because it is probably faster than installing a fresh copy. Hmmm, maybe I better start fresh. OK, scratch that. I am getting ready to build an XP machine from the Dell 2400 today. I'll grab the latest mame and the latest soft15khz (unless you have a better idea). Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

BTW, what front end do you use? I'd like to try something that is proven to work with soft15khz, the latest mame (or whatever you have) and XP (assuming you are running XP - maybe I should have asked). I don't mind trying to build a mirror of what you are running. thanks!
 

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I'm running a K7400, but the K7000 will work essentially the same way.

I have a much higher end machine (3.6Ghz Core2Duo), and use the front end Hyperspin. It requires a bit more horse power because of the way it scales graphics, and the like. Mala is a nice alternative for machines that are not as quick.

I would recommend installing something like TinyXP fresh on the machine. TinyXP is a 'stripped down' version of XP which disables a lot of legacy support and otherwise rarely-used services. It reduces the boot up memory footprint and reduces boot times. It can be found in all the 'usual places'.

At the moment I am using Soft15kHz and bitbytebit's build of MAME, which is built on enhancements made by SailorSat (who wrote Soft15kHz), designed for use in a cab environment.

http://mario.groovy.org

Bear in mind that you are making a significant jump in versions of mame. Many of the ROMs have had alterations made to the names of the files within, some have been re-dumped, and many more added. It would be in your best interest to acquire a full set of roms designed for use with the build of mame you plan on using. (in this case, .141u1).

[rmcelwee]

I'll try Hyperspin and the XP I am installing now (straight from the Dell resource CD). If everything works I'll leave it alone. If it is slow as hell (or if I am just looking for something to do) I'll grab TinyXP and Mala and see if that helps.

I have a newer version of Mame Plus and a collection of roms (not sure what ver everything is - about 16GB of stuff that is unrar'ing now). I'll replace the mame with the one you are using. I'm hoping that you might be around for some quick tech support if I need it and if I am using what you have it would help. Hopefully everything will work fine and I won't bug you too much.

Thanks again for the help. I was WAY past due for a software upgrade.

[rmcelwee]

Well, I spent all day working on it and this is what I have:

Dell 2400
On board Dell sound card
NVidia GForce4 MX4000
TinyXP Beast 2
Mala
Soft15KHZ
Latest version of Mame-I686 (the flavor Cotmm68030 suggested did not work for me)
Gauntlet

The Gauntlet is FULL screen (this is what I was lacking before) but is so slow that it is no fun to play. I'm not sure where to go from here so I am calling it a day. I do know this, using new front end after 10 years of using ArcadeOS sucks! I am not someone who likes change. <G> 

[rmcelwee]

I did find one thing interesting. I turned off the soft15, removed the computer from the arcade cabinet and put it back on the bench. I hooked it back up to a regular monitor and the speed is just fine. I'm going to assume that the soft15 is what slowed everything down to a crawl. I'll have to do some further testing on this.
 

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

There really shouldn't be any way that Soft15Khz could slow down the emulation. All it does is change some registry keys to have windows outputting a video signal compatible with standard resolution monitors.

Something else will have to be at play.

In what way did bitbytebit's build of mame not work?

In other news, I think it's probably been 19 years since I've seen someone use the <G> notation. Way back in the days of using GEnie BBS.

[rmcelwee]

I'll have to try it again to check the speed (currently copying about 6000 rom files over the network so it will be a while). I'll get the sound working, or at least try - I always have a hard time with that, and then hook it up again.

I can't remember what error it displayed but it was probably just me giving it a bad command line. I think it complained about not seeing a mame.ini (which I most definitely did NOT have - I was thinking it was going to create it). I'll try it again.

Yeah, I still use <G>. Ironically it was when I sold my ISP business (which started as a 1 line BBS in 1991 and grew to 256 lines) that I started building my Mame machine. That was early '99. As I said, I don't like change. I'm still creating my web pages with Windows Notepad after all these years.

[rmcelwee]

Cotmm68030, I'd like to thank you again for all the help. I am on day two of the redo project and it is coming along fine. The speed is much better, I have sound, and I am using that special mame build you suggested. I had a few MALA questions but I found there is a forum here for that so I posted over there. I'm not sure that software even existed the last time I worked on my cabinet. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that your help was really appreciated. Hopefully I'll be able to help someone and pay it forward. Thanks!

[Gray_Area]

With that slow of a processor, I don't know as you're going to get all you want out of it using current MAME. I wouldn't use anything after .107 .

[rmcelwee]

Thanks. I'll take a look at some older versions...