Future of Groovymame Win 7 or Linux?

[planexcvs]

So I screwed up and bought a Haswell machine not realizing that there was no XP support for it. I noticed that CRT_Emudriver for Win7 is in the works, but I imagine it's a PITA to make fully-working drivers for with all the limitations.

I'm leaning towards Linux. My question is, I have an arcadevga 5000 card coming, but I should still be able to get more modelines than what Andy's drivers provide in Linux right? Since any ATI card is supported in Linux.

The reason I'm using an arcadevga (and not any card) is that I'll dual boot to Win7 to play melty blood pc version and touhou games on my 15khz monitor. If I could use Win7 for everything in the future, I would prefer to. How is the progress on Win7 CRT emudriver?

With XP running its course in a few weeks, should new GM setups look towards Win7 or Linux?

[cools]

I'm curious about this as well, especially since seeing some recent criticism about input lag under Linux. The only reason I've stayed away in the past has been the dearth of a decent frontend (on both Windows and Linux), but now that's solved I'd like to go with a Linux setup.

[blontic]

I prefer the linux groovyarcade better now that the beta has attract-mode support as a frontend. Once we get some more people to make themes I wouldn't go back to windows. The configuration in windows xp was horrible. Groovyarcade I can get installed and configured in about 10 mins now.

I have 2 cabs one with groovyarcade/attract-mode and the other with XP/Hyperspin. Always fixing the XP cab.

[Calamity]

Hi planexcvs,

I'm leaning towards Linux. My question is, I have an arcadevga 5000 card coming, but I should still be able to get more modelines than what Andy's drivers provide in Linux right? Since any ATI card is supported in Linux.

Don't assume the new AVGA will work under Linux, it probably won't. We needed to add a specific patch to the kernel in order to make the older AVGA 3000 work under Linux. And that was because Chris (bitbytebit) had bought an AVGA 3000 initially and could do all the required tests to support it.

The reason I'm using an arcadevga (and not any card) is that I'll dual boot to Win7 to play melty blood pc version and touhou games on my 15khz monitor. If I could use Win7 for everything in the future, I would prefer to. How is the progress on Win7 CRT emudriver?

When CRT Emudriver for W7 is finally available (as a reminder, there's a beta version already that I can share by pm on request, my only condition is to report back which unfortunately is only done by ~50% of users), it won't support AVGA 3000/5000, because these use custom bioses. Only HD 2xxx, 3xxx & 4xxx are supported. However, I *believe* Powerstrip has still good support for the HD 5xxx chipsets, this means the AVGA 5000 could be supported too and allow using some GroovyMAME features through the Powerstrip API for these cards, without requiring special drivers.

With XP running its course in a few weeks, should new GM setups look towards Win7 or Linux?

Well, this depends. First, for current setups I see no critical reason for upgrading from XP to W7, of course I might be wrong but the idea of all cybercriminals in the world attacking my XP cabinet just because the support is over sounds like ---That which is odiferous and causeth plants to grow--- to me. Then, you have the situation of a new build with new hardware, and here, I'd recommend the W7 route, once the drivers are ready. This is partly because I'm a Windows man, and all the new development in GroovyMAME is done for Windows first. So new features like -frame_delay etc. are tested in Windows before. Things as basic as multi monitor support are not possible on the Linux build yet.

The strengths of Linux (Groovy Arcade) are: easier setup, the OS allows for better custom video support (this doesn't mean it looks better than Windows, it means it's harder to setup an equivalent Windows system), and support for newer GPUs. The main weakness (**IMHO**) is something few Linux people will tell you and is that hardware support, specially for new hardware, tends to suck, and I don't blame the developers of course but the manufacturers. So you may be in the situation where your brand new box audio or wifi card refuses to work and you'll be on your own. Usually things are fixed after a while but at the time your box is not brand new any more.

I am quite worried about how people will accept CRT Emudriver for W7, and deal with the new family of annoyances. This is because I consider the XP setup was extremely easy in comparison, and despite that you just need to check the forum to realize that people encounter a lot of problems. I'm working to make an easier VMMaker. The second important missing part is documentation. In the end, if the W7 route proves to be too problematic I'll consider moving to Linux as the main platform, but maybe we'd need new blood for that.

[Sledge]

When CRT Emudriver for W7 is finally available (as a reminder, there's a beta version already that I can share by pm on request, my only condition is to report back which unfortunately is only done by ~50% of users)

Has anything changed from when i tried it? Any updates?
IE: Anything that might have changed for my issues, which may need testing again?

[planexcvs]

When CRT Emudriver for W7 is finally available (as a reminder, there's a beta version already that I can share by pm on request, my only condition is to report back which unfortunately is only done by ~50% of users), it won't support AVGA 3000/5000, because these use custom bioses. .

Ah I see, no multi-monitor support and cool's mention of input lag for Linux at this time would hold me back from going that route.

Oh for sure, when it's available for W7, I would switch over to the 4850 card I still have. I will PM you about the beta version and some questions.

[ufoufo512]

Groovy Arcade Linux is very good in my opinion and I don't think hardware compatibility is such an issue. Sure, I have seen that myself too with some WLAN cards, but as Calamity said Linux gets new drivers all the time. If there only was something we could do with the presumed 3 frame lag on Linux ;-)

[Calamity]

Has anything changed from when i tried it? Any updates?
IE: Anything that might have changed for my issues, which may need testing again?

The files I've got are the same ones you tested. IIRC your issues were an error message on install and your HD 4350 "forgetting" its 15 kHz mode. Other users haven't had problems with this.

[telengard]

So I screwed up and bought a Haswell machine not realizing that there was no XP support for it. I noticed that CRT_Emudriver for Win7 is in the works, but I imagine it's a PITA to make fully-working drivers for with all the limitations.

I'm leaning towards Linux. My question is, I have an arcadevga 5000 card coming, but I should still be able to get more modelines than what Andy's drivers provide in Linux right? Since any ATI card is supported in Linux.

The reason I'm using an arcadevga (and not any card) is that I'll dual boot to Win7 to play melty blood pc version and touhou games on my 15khz monitor. If I could use Win7 for everything in the future, I would prefer to. How is the progress on Win7 CRT emudriver?

With XP running its course in a few weeks, should new GM setups look towards Win7 or Linux?

I literally just went through this.  I bought an ArcadeVGA 5000 and after weeks of trying to get it to work unsuccessfully on Windows 8 w/ its drivers (grrr), I figured I'd try out GroovyArcade, and it seems to be working quite well.  I did have to tweak the distro a bit, but nothing major (console keymap, and a long timeout @ boot waiting for swap, issues w/ the splash screen, a couple of other small things).  If you are OK with Linux I recommend it, boot time is quite fast.  Another thing that made the transition easy was I have been using AdvanceMenu all these years and that is the default frontend on GroovyArcade.

So far the AVGA 5000 seems to be working just fine w/ that setup and I imagine in this situation it is just another ATI card and not utilizing any of the AVGA's special features.  I haven't tested all of the video modes yet.  One thing that is good about using that card is I don't get out of range or no signal during the UEFI post.

[Calamity]

So far the AVGA 5000 seems to be working just fine w/ that setup and I imagine in this situation it is just another ATI card and not utilizing any of the AVGA's special features.

So you mean your AVGA 5000 just worked out of the box with Groovy Arcade? These are great news! Thanks for reporting this. Yeah having the boot screens at 15 kHz is certainly a very good thing and if you can run Groovy Arcade without additional hacks then the AVGA 5000 sounds quite appealing to me.

[telengard]

So far the AVGA 5000 seems to be working just fine w/ that setup and I imagine in this situation it is just another ATI card and not utilizing any of the AVGA's special features.

So you mean your AVGA 5000 just worked out of the box with Groovy Arcade? These are great news! Thanks for reporting this. Yeah having the boot screens at 15 kHz is certainly a very good thing and if you can run Groovy Arcade without additional hacks then the AVGA 5000 sounds quite appealing to me.

It seems to, yes.  I'm mostly going by the look and checking out the game information and seeing SwitchRes w/ the correct resolution in the dialog box.  I should validate by doing some logging to ensure it is doing everything correctly.  I didn't do anything special at all to get the video card to work, just tweaks to the OS to get it booting and working OK in general.  I'm a very happy camper that the card works, great stuff!   

I can start another thread if necessary, but I had a few questions about my setup:

- I have a WG D9500 but didn't see an option for that so I chose the D9200 (also a multi sync).  Everything seems to be working OK, is that fine to continue using?
- How do I go about updating GroovyMame itself if I want to, I'm hoping I can just drop in a new binary/binaries and not have to upgrade the entire OS, I guess the same question applies to a GroovyArcade update, where I could just update the kernel/kernel modules and not have to re-install.

Thanks so much for the work you've done with GroovyMame!  I've been reading other threads and I'm very impressed with the amount of time and detail you put into the supported features (video modes, input lag, etc).