Windows Boot and CRT Sync

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Hey Calamity, big thanks for the latest drivers and vmmaker, a bit of testing to do but I think groovymame is running fine now.

My question now is this. When my pc is booting my arcade monitor keeps clicking at the Windows boot screen, it can't sync I presume.

My monitor is a trisync m3129. I have vmmaker monitor type set to Vga as I had intended on running 31khz but I really don't want the loud clicking on boot.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[cools]

ATOM-15, flash bios 31khz modded.

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Super. Thanks cools. Will try that tonight

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Thanks cools. That worked a treat!

[cools]

Say thanks to Calamity, I bet that ATOM-15 has been a tougher task than CRT_Emudriver was

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Say thanks to Calamity, I bet that ATOM-15 has been a tougher task than CRT_Emudriver was

Yeah, I can only imagine how complex it was. It worked first time for me anyway on my 4890, for reference. Thanks Calamity! 

I have one or two more different questions to come so you're not off the hook yet cools! 

[lettuce]

So is ATOM-15 a direct replacement for CRT_Emudriver, what's the difference between the 2 please?

Also to the OP be careful of multisync monitors and Mame, they weren't intended to change sync on the fly as frequently as Mame is going to ask them to so your displays life will be greatly decreased.

It's probably advised now 15khz only monitors are more or less impossible to get is to just keep multi sync monitors at 31khz in mame even for 15 or 24khz games for the sake of the monitor

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Encountered an issue this evening, not saying it's related.

Trying to boot up and the pc keeps hanging on the Windows starting boot screen.
I tried a number of different things to unstick it but only one thing does it.

If I safe boot I can get on to the desktop. If I then disable my 4890 gfx card in device manager I can reboot to Windows desktop without getting stuck at the boot screen.

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[cools]

Flash your backup BIOS back and see if it cures it.

[Calamity]

So is ATOM-15 a direct replacement for CRT_Emudriver, what's the difference between the 2 please?

NO, of course it is NOT. I thought this was clear enough in the docs.

Bear in mind that the modifications applied to the firmware only operate during the BIOS post and the operating system loading process. Once the operating system device drivers take control of the display card it will behave exactly the same as any normal card. This means that you will need to use system specific methods in order to customize the video output from the operating system itself, provided these methods are available.

[Calamity]

Encountered an issue this evening, not saying it's related.

Trying to boot up and the pc keeps hanging on the Windows starting boot screen.
I tried a number of different things to unstick it but only one thing does it.

Do you mean it worked before and it's not working anymore? Have you changed anything in the middle? BTW, once you disable the card from device manager, how are you geting any video output?

[lettuce]

So is ATOM-15 a direct replacement for CRT_Emudriver, what's the difference between the 2 please?

NO, of course it is NOT. I thought this was clear enough in the docs.

Bear in mind that the modifications applied to the firmware only operate during the BIOS post and the operating system loading process. Once the operating system device drivers take control of the display card it will behave exactly the same as any normal card. This means that you will need to use system specific methods in order to customize the video output from the operating system itself, provided these methods are available.

Gotcha....so the J-PAC i bought a while back to filter out 31khz signals during bootup is no longer needed if i use ATOM-15?

[twistedsymphony]

Gotcha....so the J-PAC i bought a while back to filter out 31khz signals during bootup is no longer needed if i use ATOM-15?

J-PAC also acts as a Video Amp which is necessary for most non 31K monitors.

[adder]

J-PAC also acts as a Video Amp which is necessary for most non 31K monitors.

good point that, i forgot about that
a small standalone video amp board is avail from ultimarc by the way if anyone didnt know/is interested:
http://www.ultimarc.com/vidamp.html

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Turned on the pc tonight while hooked up to my LCD monitor.

Windows went into the repair process and I'm booting up ok. It possibly did a system restore as part of that process even though it's practically a new build!

Need to hook it up to the cab and test. Hopefully everything is ok but I notice that on my LCD that Windows and other programs are centered and fill the screen nicely. When I open up games in groovymame, the image size looks ok but it's pushed about an inch yo the left but a black border running down the right.
99% sure last time that wasn't the case.

[Calamity]

Gotcha....so the J-PAC i bought a while back to filter out 31khz signals during bootup is no longer needed if i use ATOM-15?

Remind that ATOM-15 only works outside of the operating system (Windows/Linux). And I wouldn't consider it bullet proof at all (it's experimental). Once Windows loads and detects your card, it will fed it automatically with its stock drivers, so it will start outputting some nice 48 kHz in many cases, until you have the chance to install CRT Emudriver or whatever. So having a J-PAC will always be a good thing (apart from the video amp, etc).

[twistedsymphony]

I would highly recommend people install some form of VNC and ensure it works properly before messing with any 15K stuff.

I find myself in a weird situation where I accidentally ended up with a mod line that my arcade monitor couldn't display nor could my LCD monitor and it was set as my default upon boot. ...it took some doing to fix the situation. after that I installed VNC and as long as the windows booted ok I could remote into the machine to play with the graphics setting to fix everything. It also made things MUCH easier to test and go between high resolutions and low resolutions without having to switch monitors every time.

I think adding 15K during boot process would make this an even more vital step as it would preclude you from accessing the bios without the use of an arcade monitor.

[Calamity]

Well, indeed modding your bios should be the last step once you have a fully working cabinet. It is good to have a DOS-bootable pendrive with autoexec.bat set to restore the original bios if required, without the need of a monitor.

Having remote desktop enabled is known to cause lots issues by getting in the middle of the video drivers.

[cools]

FWIW, I use RDP on my Win 7 install with no issue whatsoever.

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Ok, so I think I'm back up and running. Not sure what happened during the Windows repair process so I just started a new vmmaker folder and am hooked up to my arcade cab. I reflashed the original bios for now just to eliminate the modded version.

Groovymame starts fine, switchres kicks in and games running at 100%.
I did the toki and snowbros test and scrolling is smooth. the fight ladder scrolling on mk2 is silky smooth too.
All horizontal games fill the width nicely with only minor adjustment on the vertical required.

The Windows desktop and games are all in alignment with no black bar running down the left when groovymame starts.

So if all the above sounds like a working version of groovymame I can only spot one or two other issues which hopefully don't indicate a half assed setup.

i have my monitor set to horizontal and When I run vertical games they rotate as expected. However they all are very dark like a filter is over them.
Secondly, every vertical game I've tried runs at 100% except for Raiden which runs at 94%

[Calamity]

However they all are very dark like a filter is over them.
Secondly, every vertical game I've tried runs at 100% except for Raiden which runs at 94%

The dark filter issue probably happens because you're running with software scanlines. Try disabling those with a vertical.ini file and see if it fixes the problem.

Regarding Raiden running at 94%, a log is required to see the issue.

[cools]

You're running 31k with fake scanlines, right?

Stuff a text file called vertical.ini into the ini folder, contents:
effect none

Alternatively, if you want to be a real deviant - rotate the scanlines.png in the artwork folder by 90 degrees, save it as scanlines_vertical.png, and create that same vertical.ini text file but with contents:
effect scanlines_vertical

[Calamity]

Alternatively, if you want to be a real deviant - rotate the scanlines.png in the artwork folder by 90 degrees, save it as scanlines_vertical.png, and create that same vertical.ini text file but with contents:
effect scanlines_vertical

Would that work even with super resolutions?

[cools]

I see no reason why not.

[Calamity]

I see no reason why not.

Because of bilinear filtering on the horizontal axis.

Unless you mean that the resulting effect will be horizontal scanlines (90º + 90º rotation)?

[cools]

The latter, deviant effect.

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Thanks lads, yeah running 31k and fake scanlines.

Will give those a shot tonight.

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Quickly tried to vertical.ini with no scanlines option. Works perfectly.
Will try the deviant version soon too.

Any thoughts on why Raiden is running at 94%?

[Calamity]

Regarding Raiden running at 94%, a log is required to see the issue.

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Regarding Raiden running at 94%, a log is required to see the issue.

Apologies I Missed that comment first time around.

Raiden log attached

[Calamity]

The problem is it using 512p to get vertical integer scale for 256, but at 512p it can't reach 60 Hz. GM is trying to enable -triplebuffer but this only works with -multithreading on. Old versions of GM had -multithreading on by default but this was disabled for stability reasons. You may try to enable it in mame.ini and if it works fine for you, just leave it enabled. It will help in situations like this one.

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Thanks Calamity for the detailed reply. I've test 20 or more games so far and its the first to run at less then 100%.
I created a raiden ini and enabled multi there. Now running at 100%.

Glad this was a simple fix as I was worried my gm installation was messed up!

[Calamity]

I guess you'll get the same problem with 1942. Another possibility is to force those to run at 2560x480.

[ReelTechnoFreek]

Yeah. Tried 1942. Same issue. I created a 1942 ini and set the resolution there.
Got illegal resolution error on launch.
Used multi threading instead and got 100% no problem.

Clamity, are these issues due to my installation only or will anyonewith the same setup as me encounter the same problems?