Force CRT Emudriver to ignore HDMI output?

[pakoman]

Hi.

I don't have here any of my arcades so I'm using a laptop with hd5650 and it is working fine with the Emudrivers, but I have to physically unplug the HDMI cable for the drivers to detect the VGA output.

With standard Catalyst drivers I can emulate an 15 kHz EDID with VMMAker on the VGA output, and windows would detect 3 screens then: built-in LCD, TV-CRT VGA and TV-LED HDMI. And I can only use 2 of them at once, but I can select which ones without the need of unplugging any cable. However the 15 kHz support is quite limited.

On the other side, with the CRT Emudriver, of course 15 kHz support is great, but Windows will only detect 2 out of the 3 screens, and if the HDMI is plugged it doesn't detect the VGA so I have to unplug the HDMI each time y want to use the CRT TV.

Is there a way to avoid the HDMI output is CRT Emudrivers or to make it detect the 3 screens? The ideal solution would be to work like the standard drivers, but may be difficult to implement.

I don't mind eliminate the HDMI output for good for that windows installation as I'm using a specific windows on USB for Mame, but I'd prefer not having to unplug any cables every time.

Regards.

[Calamity]

Hi Pakoman,

CRT Emudriver doesn't do anything special about the outputs regarding monitor detection for HD 5000+ cards. It's just the default behaviour. So that's probably how the situation was back on Catalyst 12.8.

My understanding is, HDMI takes preference and overrides the VGA. This is very lame from the drivers design point of view, so I'm not surprised it has been fixed since then. The thing is these cards usually just have 2 built-in crtc controllers, so they can only drive 2 heads simultaneously.

Have you tried selecting Analog_1 instead of Analog_0? Does it make any difference?

[pakoman]

Hi.

I finally got time to try and I manage to get it working without unplugging the HDMI TV. I think as you pointed out that it is only related to the way Catalyst drivers are designed.

But the user interface for that version in very confusing: it never shows the 3 available screens at once, like version 15 does. I had to cycle through several screen combinations -duplicated, extended desktop, etc- and disable screens until screen 3 -the VGA TV- appeared as a selectable option. As by default windows only shows screen 1 and 2 with catalyst 12.8, and not every situation shows the 3rd screen, even the EDID is correctly emulated for the VGA port.

Catalyst 15 shows screens 1,2 and 3 from the beginning.

Have you tried selecting Analog_1 instead of Analog_0? Does it make any difference?

It doesn't. You have to select the one of the VGA output. The problem is on Catalyst part. VMMaker and your patches are fine.

[Calamity]

Are you on Win 10? It could be Catalyst 15 supports a newer WDDM model which Windows 10 benefits from and thus the difference. I haven't tested this on 10 myself.

[pakoman]

Yes I'm on Windows 10 64. Catalyst 15 under my normal daily use installation on internal harddisk, connected to internet and with all windows updates installed.

Emudriver under a clean windows 10 64 persistent intallation booting from an USB harddisk without internet access nor any update. I use the same computer but this installation just for groovymame.