Problems using ATI Radeon X300 and X600 PCIe Cards

[mjm]

Greetings,

This is my first post to the forum. 

I've only recently discovered GA-Arch and I am very impressed.  It is perfect for what I want to do (Linux-based MAME in a 20" upright and a 20" cocktail using the original 15KHz CRTs, running a small number of classic arcade games from the early 1980s).

My setup is:

• Dell GX280 P4 3.0GHz desktop with 512MB ram
• GroovyArcade-Arch2013.02.24-i686  (32-bit) installed on HD
• X300 (low profile), X600 (low profile) or ArcadeVGA (full height) PCIe video card
• J-PAC interface
• Nano KB240331C 15KHz 20 inch arcade CRT monitor (from the 1980’s)
• LAI 20” Lowboy Upright (from the 1980’s)
• Monitor mounted Horizontally

When I use the ArcadeVGA card, all my video issues are resolved.  I think this is a great card, but I really want a solution that uses a low-profile PCI card, as the ArcadeVGA card is a "full height" PCIe card, and therefore won't fit in the small-form-factor cases that I want to use in my arcade cabinets.

So I am trying to get the X300 or X600 configured as an acceptable replacement for the ArcadeVGA.

Because I am using a J-PAC interface, I can get an acceptable "side by side" display of the BIOS boot messages and the GRUB menu (when the X300 or X600 is still in 31KHz VGA mode, before Linux switches over to 15KHz mode).

My issues wth the X300 and X600 cards relate to Horizontal Hold and Vertical Hold settings on the monitor.

Here is a description of the Horizontal Hold and Vertical Hold problems I am experiencing...

Horizontal hold problem

With the X300 or X600 card installed, it is not possible to set the Horizontal Hold Control (HHC) to a setting that will simultaneously stabilise the console text display (CTD) [eg – to display Linux boot and shutdown messages], the AdvMENUPlus (AMP) display, and MAME games.  For example, if I set the HHC so that the CDT is stable, then I get a noticeable and unavoidable “foldover” on the right-hand side of the monitor in AMP and MAME.  By this I mean that the green scroll bar in AMP is folded back over the AMP display by about 8mm, and when I run Rally-X in MAME, about 8mm of the RHS of the display is folded over.  On the other hand, if I re-adjust the HHC so there is no foldover in Rally-X, then the top couple of lines in the CDT (such as the Linux “system-fsck” boot message) are “torn” to the left and are unreadable.

If I run a vertical game on the Horizontal monitor, the HHC needs to be adjusted further, and this results in an even more pronounced “foldover” problem in AMP and in Rally-X.

If I remove the X300/X600 and use the ArcadeVGA instead, this horizontal foldover problem is resolved.

Is there a solution for this problem?  For example:

• Is there an option I can set somewhere to alter the video timing to avoid the foldover?
• Is there another low-profile PCIe card that is known to not have this problem?
• Should I try a different arcade monitor?

Vertical Hold problem

With the X300 or X600 card installed, it is not possible to set the Vertical Hold Control (VHC) to a setting that will simultaneously stabilise the BIOS/GRUB display (on the one hand), and the CDT/AMP/MAME display (on the other hand).  It seems that these two cases output a slightly different vertical refresh frequency.

If I remove the X300/X600 and use the ArcadeVGA instead, this vertical hold problem is resolved.

Is this a known problem with the X300/X600 cards?  If so, is there another low-profile PCIe card that is known to overcome this problem?

If these problems can't be resolved, I will still stick with GA-Arch.  It will just mean that I will have to de-case the PC (to accommodate the ArcadeVGA), which I am not keen to do.

Thanks.

[adder]

If these problems can't be resolved, I will still stick with GA-Arch.  It will just mean that I will have to de-case the PC (to accommodate the ArcadeVGA), which I am not keen to do.

if it comes to that, perhaps a pci-e riser card or pci-e riser card flexible extension cable will save you having to de-case.

[ufoufo512]

I don't know the exact reason for your problems, but here are some suggestions:
* I would try to try shrinking the picture horizontally and / or vertically with the monitor controls to see if the folding goes away. Maybe a combination of shrinking it with hardware controls and enlarging it with software controls could do the trick. I vaguely remember having similar problem (folding), but I can't recall the solution.
* Is there a reason to have boot / GRUB screens enabled? I use JPAC myself and normally I have only 15 KHz jumper enabled so BIOS screen is not displayed at all.
* You should be able to alter horizontal resolution of the AdvMenuPlus modifying advmenu.rc. Maybe another resolution would be more stable?
 

[Calamity]

Hi mjm,

Well this is quite odd. I think I understand what can be going on with your monitor. Maybe it's a very old model with very narrow ranges for Vfreq/Hfreq. You didn't tell us which monitor preset you're using. I think you may have better luck with the generic_15 preset.

The part I don't really get is why the X300/X600 should behave so different from the ArcadeVGA. I mean, it's normal to get slightly different results when you switch cards, even with the same calculated timings. This is because the drivers need to program the cards in the low level and these have different clock settings which the drivers must deal with, so we just feed the drivers with the modeline but they need to do the hard work of programming the plls and stuff and this is hidden from us.

I think the folding could be just a matter of horizontal shift between the modes used by the kernel and the ones used by GM/Advmenu. So maybe you just need to push the modes to the left a little bit. This can be done by editing the crt_range line, in mame.ini. The default for generic_15 is this:

 crt_range0  15625-15750, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

In order to shift the modes to the left a bit, try this:

 monitor custom
 crt_range0  15625-15750, 49.50-65.00, 3.000, 4.700, 7.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

Let me know this helps. Post some pics, they usually help a lot to figure out things.