Upgrading computer...... Need advice on video.

[TeamTEOR]

I have been out of the loop here in this MAME realm for a while (2 years or so). My cab has always served me well, but is really feeling slower these days after updating some of the other PCs here in the house, and I have an opportunity to give it a nice upgrade.

At present, my cab has a the following hardware:
BillLabs Autosync BL25C90T monitor
Soyo Dragon MB (AGP & PCI slots)
ArcadeVGA AGP video card
AMD 2100+ XP CPU
1gb Ram
2 IDE hard drives (110gb, and 190gb)
DVD Drive
Cooling Fans that run so hard that it vibrates the whole machine
Keywiz PS2 encoder

Is it really worth buying a new ArcadeVGA PCI-E card, or has there been a new software alternative that has become as good to work without the need for it for the new hardware card? The reason I ask is because my wife just updated her office computer and she gave me her old one (she kept her SATA Raid hard drives and PCI-E video card)....

Here are its specs of what is in the tower being used for the upgrade (and the changes are quite significant to want to upgrade to this).
Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L (no AGP slot, only PCI-X16 & PCI)
Intel GMA X4500 onboard graphics with VGA output (can share up to 256mb of ram for video)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz
4gb Ram
Maxtor 500GB IDE drive
DVD Drive
Standard cooling fans (this machine is quiet and runs cooler that they older system)

With all of the talk about blowing up monitors I am worried about doing the same if I was to power up this computer attached to this monitor without first taking some precautions. 

If a software solution will work she said that I can snag her ATI Radeon HD 4550 PCI-Express video card if I bought her one that was more up to date. (It is the one thing holding her PC back anyway in terms of speed with the new i5 3ghz quad core & 8gb or ram she is running now).

I appreciate any help, links, and advice available on this.
Tom

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

that video card will probably be more than sufficient. I'm running a 4350 on my core 2 duo machine and run everything from mame to n64, nulldc, and the newer Taito X2 games like Street Fighter 4 at full speed at 800x600.

Go check out the GroovyMame forum for some new special drivers for ATI cards that enable over 100 resolutions and native refresh rates on arcade monitors:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?board=52.0\

[TeamTEOR]

Thanks for the info. I am going to try to see if I can get their 64 bit Linux build to work. I DLed it and it is almost done burning at 4x (the slowest it would allow me to burn). I bet it will halt with the built in Intel video, the Diamond S3 Trio64+ PCI card, or the ATI Rage II PCI card that I have to test till I can get access to that ATI 4550 PCI-Ex.

The GroovyMame Windows stuff there seems a little cryptic on their wibsite. I don't quite get how it is supposed to work.

****Update****
As I thought, The 64 bit Linux/GroovyMame halted with all 3 video cards..... The machine runs Windows 7 64 bit just fine.
I did choose that it was connected to an LCD as it is presently attached to my 21 inch Samsung monitor with a VGA cable.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

The support forums are just gearing up now, we're all working on getting more accessible documentation.

Customizing the driver set up you can actually get proper resolutions and refresh rates even on regular vga monitors, as well as arcade monitors. there's even a few LCDs that will do various refresh rates properly.

[Calamity]

Thanks for the info. I am going to try to see if I can get their 64 bit Linux build to work. I DLed it and it is almost done burning at 4x (the slowest it would allow me to burn). I bet it will halt with the built in Intel video, the Diamond S3 Trio64+ PCI card, or the ATI Rage II PCI card that I have to test till I can get access to that ATI 4550 PCI-Ex.

The GroovyMame Windows stuff there seems a little cryptic on their wibsite. I don't quite get how it is supposed to work.

****Update****
As I thought, The 64 bit Linux/GroovyMame halted with all 3 video cards..... The machine runs Windows 7 64 bit just fine.
I did choose that it was connected to an LCD as it is presently attached to my 21 inch Samsung monitor with a VGA cable.

You need an ATI Radeon to run GroovyArcade (Linux), it will work fine from R7000 to the HD5000 family. Those ATIs you've tested are way too old for it.
In Windows, you can't use anything above HD4000 family by now.

More than cryptic, I'd say that GroovyMame's documentation does not exist at all 
While there's a lot of information if you dig in some threads, actually it's not condensed in a single place unfortunately. But don't get intimidated, it's not difficult to use once you know what to do: install the ATI modified drivers, set up your monitor specs and run GroovyMame. That ATI 4550 will be perfect for it.

[TeamTEOR]

Well, the wife had a fit today when I said I was going out to get her new video card so I can take her old one. Why?? I don't know! I was going to get her the same one I have, ATI 5670 with 2gb of DDR3. Maybe she thought I was upgrading mine and giving her my old one (not the case). That card rates a 7.6 on Windows 7 system scores. In any case due to her fit she saved us $75 or so! I went and found an ArcadeVGA 3000 PCI-Ex card on eBay for $59.99 +$5 shipping (located here in the states, not the UK).

[TeamTEOR]

The ArcadeVGA PCI-E card hates my Arcade monitor, it will not initialize it. I can use the DVI-to-VGA adapter and load up fine on my LCD computer monitor. I loaded the drivers for it that came on the CD from Ultimarc, and also installed LogMeIn.com to that I can remotely work on the new computer when it will not display video directly.

Since the wife is in bed for a couple of days (not feeling well) I took her video card out and put it into the arcade tower. One thing I will note, no matter which card I am using, if I plug in the arcade monitor while the LCD computer monitor is live the LCD will turn off as well with a "No Signal Error".

One thing that makes me wonder here is if the power supply might be too weak is it is not able to power the video cards to put video on both monitors? There is only 1 IDE hard drive, 1 DVD drive, and the 1 video card in the system, so I would think that it should be fine. The Power Supply is a COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus RS-460-PMSR-A3 460W ATX12V V2.3 Power Supply so I really doubt this is the case.

Can someone put a direct link to the correct drivers I would need to use if they are not the ones from the Ultimarc CD?

I did also notice that in the monitor display properties for the arcade monitor it does not show the other refresh rates, 15khz, 24khz, or 31khz. It starts at 59hz and works on up from there.

Thanks again gang,
Tom

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I did also notice that in the monitor display properties for the arcade monitor it does not show the other refresh rates, 15khz, 24khz, or 31khz. It starts at 59hz and works on up from there.

You're confusing horizontal scan rate with vertical scan rate. Vertical is 'refresh rate' (ie: numbers in the neighborhood of 60Hz), Horizontal scan rate is measured in kHz (k = kilo = x1000). If you think about the 'distance' that the electron beam is covering you can see why the total distance left-to-right is much greater than top-to-bottom. Thus to reach the same point at the same time (the bottom most right corner), the horizontal must travel much much faster.

[TeamTEOR]

Thanks for clearing that up. It has been a long day for me, and I am still awake trying to research this out. That info should help me understand some more.

I did send out an email to BilLabs to ask them if they has a manual or spec sheet for the BL25C90T. If I get info back I'll be sure to post it.

[TeamTEOR]

I returned the ArcadeVGA PCI-E card to the seller as the manufacturer said it sounds like the card might be defective. We have about 5 or 6 emails sent back and forth trying to work on it.

At present I found a ATI HD-4550 on sale at Best Buy (new, unopened).


The new PC works great loading up into Windows7 64Bit Home Premium, and works fine with an old LCD monitor that I have using the HDMI port and a DVI-to-VGA converter dongle. Don't let the Experience points fool you, I have not run the tests on it yet. Also, to note, this is a full version of this software, not anything that is hacked. I had to buy a new copy of windows when I updated my wife's PC to the i5 processor, so I had this copy on hand.


The resolution on the DVI Port & LCD monitor is set to 800x600, also I set the standard VGA port to output to 640x 480.

Plugging in the Arcade monitor makes me loose video on both screens, unplugging the LCD does nothing to give me video on the arcade monitor as well. Using LogMeIn.com (instead of TightVNC) will allow me to make changes to the system while there is no video out to the monitors, but no matter what I do or change there is never any love from the ATI card to the arcade monitor.

[larsoncc]

So...  what you doing with that old AGP Arcade VGA card once you get this squared away? 

I see a AGP slot in my computer...  it's kinda empty...  I hear it likes heavily discounted electronics...

[TeamTEOR]

Thanks for your interest, but I have planned to make a small cab for my son, so he will be getting the old stuff once the new stuff is working.