Dedicated Vertical Cab (Vertical Monitor Setup Woes)

[strontium]

I can't understand this issue and I'm hoping some of the community may be able to help out.

I've reached out to Ves and Calamity (I know how busy they are) and I'm waiting for there input but in the mean time maybe some of the more experienced members of this forum may have an idea of how to fix my cabinet setup.

I have recently decided to update my old 2013 gentoo groovy arcade setup to the latest arch 2016 distro, nothing has changed in the cabinet apart from the software and this is where my problems started.

The software is installed and configured, monitor generic 15khz, orientation vertical, aspect 4:3. Front end attract mode.

All this works and I get a nice frontend showing configured with the verticools display, but when I start a game 90% of the games just display scrambled with what sounds like warped sound.

If I go back and change to horizontal setup in the options / mame.ini for orientation the games display fine but not full screen as you would expect as there vertical games, if I then in video options in mame select rotate 90 the same the screen scrambles.

I don't confess to be an expert but no matter how much I tweak the h or v frequency I can't even get close to a recognizable image.

Now the funny thing is if I plug my old HDD with the original setup on using groovyarcade on the gentoo distro every game displays perfect.

This has been driving me nuts, in my mind it should all work. My setup is as follows:

ATI X1550 (Just brought a 4350 in case it was an issue with the GPU which I doubt, which should arrive tomorrow)
j-pac
Hantarex MTC 9000

Guys I really appreciate any one that can help me get my head around this issue and crack it. Is anyone running a similar setup just for Vertical games, latest GroovyArcade distro etc.. Working? Issues?

I look forward to hearing peoples thoughts.

Strontium

[joeblade2]

Im just ticking things off the list here strontium so bear with me....

vmmaker set so vertical games are mean to be displayed native?

vmmaker monitor set to "GENERIC"?

mame set to arcade_15?

mame orientation set to rotate_r or rotate_l depending on monitor rotation?

just checking the obvious things first dude!

[strontium]

Hey joeblade2,

thanks for the speedy response, I'm using the Linux GroovyArcade distro so there is no VMMaker but yeah core options are set to arcade_15 and the orientation is set to vertical. I looked in the mame.ini for this line and it just says vertical under switchres options. The core rotation optoins just has rotate set to 1 and nothing else so I think rotate_r is not set.

I really have no idea what this could be, like I said it works with my old setup just not the new distro. The only thing I can think of is something has changed in the distro or the newer versions of switchres etc.. and it's making my Hantarex choke when I change it to vertical resolutions.

Any other ideas are appreciated, I'll be leaving work soon and going straight home to try and get this working again 3rd night at it tonight 

Thanks

Strontium

[joeblade2]

The only thing I can think of is something has changed in the distro or the newer versions of switchres etc.. and it's making my Hantarex choke when I change it to vertical resolutions

Yeah it does sound that way strontium...

2. orientation               horizontal

Change it to vertical if the monitor in use has vertical orientation. Change it to rotate_l or rotate_r if you're using a rotating monitor set (anti-clockwise and clockwise, respectively).

Note that Switchres manages rotation options internally, so anything in mame.ini regarding screen rotation will be overridden, since the priority of Switchres option auto-setting (Core Switchres Options in mame.ini) is just above mame.ini.

Im sure you've seen this already and may not even apply to you...just posting it anyways.

[strontium]

Yeah I'm hoping Ves or Calmity may have an idea. That second bit you posted I'm not clear on to be fair. I think the first bit refers to my setup with my monitor actually being physically rotated 90 degress and mounted that way but maybe I'm reading it wrong? What do you think?

[strontium]

OK a quick update on another observation. On the j-pac I have there is a sync led which is a solid green when the screen is displaying perfectly and there are no issues. There is definitely a sync issue as for almost all the games it now is not green and turned off. I have no idea what this could be.

[joeblade2]

Mmmmmh does sound like the sync has got fooked somehow along the way....

Is it worth ruling out hardware just to be sure? Do you have a spare jpac by any chance?

I take it the jumper settings on the jpac remain unchanged?

I know these are obvious strontium...just trying start with the easiest stuff first.

[strontium]

Hey, no there all good points. I do have a jpac  in another cabinet that I could borrow to just test I guess. I'm also expecting delivery of a HD4350 today that is in my other cabinet that I will atom flash and use. The jumpers are all configured correctly one on 15 and another on 31 for for higher resolutions.

The thing that makes no sense I guess is that on my original setup and older software stack this all works perfectly. I'm not sure what has changed at a low level with things like switchres but something has caused the sync to blow out.

I'll swap out the jpac and new gpu tonight and test again and then report back.

Thanks again.

[joeblade2]

Sounds good strontium, if it's any consolation I tried to update to crt 2.0 and the latest GM about 4months ago now and totally fooked my system to a point where it took me two more days to return it back to the previous setup...

[strontium]

Ok I just wanted to update and say that I got this resolved and fixed.

The issue turned out to to be the GPU x1550 I was using. I replaced this with a atom flashed HD4350 and I can get sync in every game in my vertical cab now no problem.

After all that work I have decided to stick with my original older version of GroovyArcade for now as I feel that more games seem to work ( I just can not get Galaga to play on the new 1.71 groovymame) and that the sound / volume is much better / louder.

Hopefully some people will get something out of this if they do come accross sync issues with vertical cabinet setups.

Thanks

Strontium

[joeblade2]

Awesome strontium, glad you got it all sorted in the end!!