Neo Geo and mame in same cabinet screen height issues.

[venom]

Someone has suggested to try and fix the issue below I try groovy mame and the Catalyst driver.

Unfortunately I have one of the older arcade VGA cards which I think is PCI rather than PCIE.  . From what I can work out searching the forums there is not a catalyst driver for that card, just wanted to check before I give it all a try.

ACTUALLY CHECKED CARD IT IS AGP not PCI
IT uses version 2.1 of arcade VGA drivers
INFORMATION ABOUT LATER MODELS OF THE ARCADEVGA
The ArcadeVGA 2 was based several different chips:
ATI Radeon 9200 / 9250 AGP

This one ....

http://mame.3feetunder.com/ultimarc/

My issue :

Just wondered if anybody had mame and a neo geo in the same cabinet.


I am still getting an issue with screen size.

I can use vertical alteration on monitor the arcade monitor (amiga 14inch)  to get neo geo mobo displaying games full size on the arcade screen.

But then my PC screen  (with agp arcade VGA)  is not correct as miss lots of stuff off like bottom of pacman cant see the bits below the border in game.

I have an amiga monitor acting as a arcade monitor using an early arcade VGA card in older style PCI alot

But if I fiddle with the knobs on monitor to get the PC just right so start menu etc is in right place then the neo geo has borders top and bottom (i.e a bit squashed).

Just cant seem to get both neo geo and mame running full screen at same time ?


Is there something else  I need to set on neo geo or a further mame setting.

The problem is its difficult to get to back of cabinet all the time. Games play fine so  I can live with neo Geo being squashed (if only it was was more than a 14 inch screen)

[Calamity]

Hi venom,

I'm afraid that's a limitation of CRT monitors. You can't do anything about it apart from hacking your monitor by soldering an external potentiometer on the front. No software will fix that.

I believe your old AVGA should be supported. Give a try to the CRT_Emudriver based on Catalyst 6.5.

[venom]

 The amiga monitor supports 15kz natively so  I am  essentially using an arcade monitor.

I have deleted mame.ini and created a new one with -cc switch.
I have renamed my mame ini FOLDER as that was causing games to be too zoomed in, e.g pacman was full screen with bottom of maze cut off . Rtype was only missing a smaller bit top and bottom orginally when using my olde game.ini settings

Since renaming ini folder ...

Now when I run pacman rather than the bottom of maze being cut off. I can see all the maze but in a lot smaler window in centre of the screen. Like someone has took a photograph and stuck it in the middle of screen. Nowhere near full screen !  So I think its just a matter of getting the resolutions right now.

My neo geo plays fine on the monitor full screen, its the screen sizes in groovy mame I am struggling with its not using the whole monitor just the central bit. 

I was getting his error in groovymame originally

groovy mame switchres could not find a video mode that meets your specs

I will try the calamity driver now

[venom]

If I wanted to try the live cd to test rather than running on windows.....

whichone of these is the latest x86 32 bit ?


Download GroovyArcade-Arch2012.03.25-i686.iso

Download GroovyArcade-Arch2012.03.25-x86_64.iso

Download GroovyArcade-Arch2012.06.09-x86_64.iso

Download GroovyArcade-Arch2012.06.09-i686.iso

[Calamity]

This is the one you're looking for:

Download GroovyArcade-Arch2012.06.09-i686.iso

But if you're going to try the Linux route, I strongly recommend you to wait for the next live-cd (hopefully coming soon), because you said you're using a PCI card and the new one is going to contain a fix for this very specific case (= the current one won't work without manual teaks).

Your monitor supporting 15 kHz doesn't change the fact that it's a CRT monitor, just like any arcade monitor is, so the CRT golden rule applies: you cannot alter the vertical size without physical adjustments on your part. GroovyMAME is just software so it cannot violate the golden rule.

Pacman (rotated) has 288 lines. Neo Geo, only 224. If you adjust your CRT for Neo Geo, Pacman will be cropped up and down (288-224 = 64 lines missing, 32 up and 32 down). If you adjust your CRT so that Pacman fits the screen, Neo Geo will have two big black borders up and down (32 black lines up, 32 black lines down). It's a very simple matter.

"switchres could not find a video mode that meets your specs" means that according to your current monitor settings (groovymame -cc, sets 'generic_15' as a default 15 KHz monitor, so that should be ok), your system doesn't report any video mode that is 15 kHz. So the modeline engine is disabled and defaults to your desktop resolution, so GM is not actually working. Please attach a log here, so I can point you in the right direction:

groovymame.exe romname -v > romname.txt

[venom]

Cheers calamity I know understand that I need to sacrifice neo resolution or the mame/pc settings. Having tinkered with it today. I have altered the vertical pot to almost stretch the screen to its vertical limit, minus a little bit. I only have a 14inch screen so dont want to loose too much ! Then I did the following and its looking FANTASTIC. There is a few lines missing top and bottom from rtype but pcaman now looks great !

Thanks for all the help and a lot of forum posts on here ! Need a good all in one guide

Anyway if this helps others

I tried several different settings, anyway this is what has fixed it in the end.

Deleted c:\emulators\mame32\mame.ini AGAIN

Renamed my c:\emulators\mame32\ini FOLDER to INIOLD

Renamed groovymame.exe as too long to type its full name !

Went to DOS typed C:\emulators\mame32\groovymame.exe -CC

Then installed catalyst driver 6.5 from here

http://mame.3feetunder.com/windows-ati-crt-emudriver/

Interestingly they reccomend the below so if my shutlle ever blows up, it will be a cheaper alternatvive to arcade vga .....

Some cards listed above have known problems with low dot clocks.
For best results, a Radeon 9250 (AGP), Radeon X300-X600 (PCIe),
or Radeon HD 4xxx (PCIe) card is recommended.

Rebooted and Windows XP screen was fine but then screen picture unreadable as wrong frequency\settings.

Whoops forgot to set soft15K !

Restarted XP pressed F8

Loaded windows in VGA NOT Safe mode

Installed Soft 15K again and selected the graphics card. Thought is was a 7000 and accepted it fine.

Rebooted

Started Groovymame.exe and voila pacman fixed and looking pretty decent (at last can see bottom of maze and ghosts) !

Reconfigured Gameex to use  Groovymame.exe instead of mame.exe.

Rebooted again and voila all works near perfect, even robocop (never got that working before) and final fight looks brill spot on for the screen.

Yes a slight hit on rtypre but it's hardly noticeable if you dont look for it, its a few lines top and bottom. Perhaps I can make a custom ini for that (If I can be bothered).

Thanks everyone forgot how good mame was in a cabinet !

[Calamity]

Hi venom, thanks for describing the process you followed.

Rebooted and Windows XP screen was fine but then screen picture unreadable as wrong frequency\settings.

That's because you probably didn't set 640x480 before rebooting.

Whoops forgot to set soft15K !

Just in case someone reads your post, Soft-15kHz is not a necessary step with CRT_Emudriver, as both do much the same thing. It won't be harmful anyway, in fact when combined with GM's ability to tweak the refresh rates the results can be pretty decent. It's just that by default it only installs 32 resolutions, vs the more than 100 that CRT_Emudriver will install.  You can re-run vmmaker at any point in the future in case you want to reinstall the resolutions.

[venom]

Merry Xmas.


aah I see that would make more sense as I could always see the XP screen until it went into windows,  so yep screen res rather than frequency.

Must admit as its now all working really well , I am probably just going to leave it as it is.  I did download arcadeos and vmmaker but to be honest never used them !

Is it worthwhile running the vMmaker or just leave as be ?

[Calamity]

Is it worthwhile running the vMmaker or just leave as be ?

If you're happy with it, don't touch it