GroovyArcade working almost fine with mobility radeon HD 5650

[pakoman]

Hi.

I've tried Groovyarcade (linux) 32bit USB live in a laptop with mobility radeon HD 5650 1gb dedicated GPU and it seems to work perfect and generate perfect resolutions, 100% speed, no sound issues, etc. but...

the only problem is that when using the vga output, text modes display in both external and built-in screens, but when using graphic modes, they only display in laptop LCD screen, although with correct refresh and resolution at 15 khz (or whatever I video configuration choose, it seems my laptop is multisync).

Is there a way to override built in screen and just use the external output? There are no options in Bios, should be done in linux.

I think that already has been said to be impossible... at least mobility radeon HD series seem to work with Groovymame under linux.

Regards.

[Doozer]

Hi Pakoman,

The build-in screen might be running at 31kHz even if you have forced it to 15khz mode. I doubt internal LVDS logic could accept 15kHz, this would be the first time such a specification is encountered. Could you kindly give us your laptop type and model reference?

In order to for the bios to switch to the external VGA output, you can try to leave the laptop lcd cover closed during boot. You can swap screen on VGA output to see the text during boot process and then hook your 15kHz screen.

Cheers

[pakoman]

Yes, most probably it's running at 31khz, and it does some scaling... Several years ago I customized some 15 khz resolutions with powerstrip in another laptop and they were displayed. So I guess that laptops LCD screens may upscale or convert them by some trick. Or don't take much into account what the video driver says...

The old laptop was an Ahtec pentium 4 with a 1600x1200 4:3 screen. The one I'm using with Groovyarcade is a PackardBell EasyNote LJ75. Core i5 m430, 4 gb, 500 gb, radeon hd 5650 1gb.

The fact is that Groovymame seems to switch and pick perfect resolutions and it is behaving exactly as when you use a CRT with pixel perfect resolutions, but with LCD visuals, of course. Even so does "game information" state. But maybe I should try more games than default ones and test if the scrolls are smooth without tearing to check if that "game information" is true.

I'll try leaving LCD cover closed.

Cheers

[pakoman]

Hi.

The comupter refuses to boot with the LCD cover closed. I may open it to boot and inmediately close it, but that has no effect, same behaviour as before.

When using the LCD screen, the "game information" is fake, scrolls are smooth but forced to 60hz despite of what "game information" says. Although pixel resolution seems to be ok and fit the screen in Groovymame (most probably scaled but without any blurryness nor artifacts). 15 khz text modes don't fill the screen on the LCD.

In the other hand, I managed to get 15 khz on the VGA output (by setting VGA-1 15khz at the start menu), but just in text modes, AdvanceMenu and LXDE. It's a duplicated image with the LCD screen. But works. Only problem is that Groovymame does not send any signal to the VGA output, just to the LCD screen. If that is just a mame monitor output configuration problem, then it would be possible to use Groovyarcade with a laptop by configuring properly the mame.ini.

Does anybody know how to select a monitor in mame/linux?

Maybe something here:

Code: [Select]

#
# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS
#
screen                    2
aspect                    auto
resolution                auto
view                      auto
screen0        auto
aspect0        auto
resolution0    auto
view0          auto
screen1        auto
aspect1        auto
resolution1    auto
view1          auto
screen2        auto
aspect2        auto
resolution2    auto
view2          auto
screen3        auto
aspect3        auto
resolution3    auto
view3          auto
Cheers

[Calamity]

This guy managed to get GroovyMAME output to a secondary display: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,145757.0.html

(I never managed to get it working)

GroovyMAME has a -connector option which was supposed to allow xrandr point to the right device in order to create the new modes. However you also need to setup MAME's standard options so that it actually picks the right monitor, and this is the point I did never get working because at the time SDL 1.2 didn't support multi-monitors.


This is trivial to achieve in Windows by the way. A shame that we don't have support for newer cards, but it is a matter of time that we have it.

[pakoman]

Thanks for the link, I've already saw it but I don't know enough linux to understand it...   but if you didn't get it working I think I better shouldn't even try

Yep, in windows is pretty straight forward, just "screen \\.\display2".

It's a pitty becouse GA seems to work with mobility radeon, apart from the second display mame issue, as non mame is working.

Problem is that I cannot get the display name in linux, using groovymame -verbose  gives non readable info, something like "found connector '##############'", and those # are square ascii characteres.

I should use "groovymame -connector DISPLAY_NAME" and in mame.ini edit "screen  DISPLAY_NAME"?

I guess I'll have to wait for new Groovymame and GA versions...

[pakoman]

With the latest beta of groovyarcade (64 bit), I managed to get it working at 15khz with the VGA output and a scart tv. Advancemenu worked perfect, and games that use 640x480i, but other games displayed the image shrinked to 1/4 of the screen.
I think that it is needed to plug a VGA monitor at first in order to the laptop detect de external monitor, and then swap with the VGA-scart cable.
I have to do more tests.
It's a start, at least.

[Calamity]

Great!

With the latest beta of groovyarcade (64 bit), I managed to get it working at 15khz with the VGA output and a scart tv. Advancemenu worked perfect, and games that use 640x480i, but other games displayed the image shrinked to 1/4 of the screen.

Then try using dotclock_min 8.0 in mame.ini.

I think that it is needed to plug a VGA monitor at first in order to the laptop detect de external monitor, and then swap with the VGA-scart cable.

If that's case maybe adding a custom edid to the kernel line might work too. You can create a custom edid.bin file using switchres with the --edid option. In order to use the custom edid created by Switchres:

In the kernel line, replace:

video=VGA-1:640x480...

with:

video=VGA-1:e drm_kms_helper.edid_firmware=VGA-1:edid/edid.bin

Then place the edid.bin file here:

edid.bin ->  /lib/firmware/edid

Finally, run mkinitcpio adding the edid file to:

mkinitcpio.conf, FILES = "blablabla /lib/firmware/edid/edid.bin"
mkinitcpio -p linux