Help with arcadevga 3000

[Changis]

Ok, i guess i can't fix everything myself and have to ask someone, and this seems like the best place 😂
First time poster, long time lurker.

A good while back i bought a converted pc-mame arcade cabinet. (Running winxp)
Then, the ram got bad and i figured i might as well upgrade the old athlon cpu, so i got a cheap celeron (plan was to upgrade it to an i3/i5 if it wasnt up to the task) and new computer hardware.

Ever since, this has been a pain in the neck to get mame working again with proper resolutions

The setup:
* Gigabyte H81m-spv2 mainboard
* 8gb ddr3 ram
* Celeron cpu (don't remember specific model, but it had very good reviews as a good cpu for the price)
* 128gb ssd for operating system (i have 3 disks now, uding one at a time and keeping the origibal installatuon in a offline disk cloner, so clean setups are pretty fast and painless if needed)
* 5tb usb3 seagate hdd (this houses hyperspin, rocketlauncher and all roms, tools etc. Independently set up so it should work in any supporting pc just have to set drive letter)
* arcadevga 3000 (dvi on upper) 512mb gpu (bios modded ati hd 2600 series)
* 24" Grundig TV with RGB Scart
* ps2 Jpac (this is only used for cabinet controls and audio passthrough)
* Windows 7 x64 OS
* Hyperspin frontend, set up with rocketlauncher



My issue is getting arcadevga to work nicely with mame, setting proper resolutions. I use the newest drivers from ultimarc, and have tried all three settings in trisync. Standard gives me 640x480 in windows desktop, and 15-31 and 15-38 gives me 512x512 and it doesnt really seem to change in mame whatever i try.

I have tried the following:
* All three trisync settings
* Using emu crtdriver = not compatible with arcadevga 3000.
* Forcing emu crtdriver to detect arcadevga and install drivers that way = black screen
* kicking it = foot hurts
* tried newest mame version, groovymame and currebtly using mame 0.185 (i have the 0.185 romset) = doesnt seem to change resolution or changes it wrong as games have minor graphical issues, especially with text (typical symptom of running wrong resolution)
* editing mame.ini using info from ultimarc arcadevga installation page and several other places, including some here. = never gotten the nice crisp image it had when i bought it, and doesnt seem to change resolutions properly or at all.
* screaming loudly at it = angred neighbor
* avgres tool (generates ini files for each mame title, edited mame.ini to use these files) = no change

Not an option:
* Buying a new gpu (cant find used reasonably priced ati cards in my area, besides, the arcadevga works fine, as long as i can get it set up. (I don't need more horsepower for the games i play, and I'm limited by the crt (fez for instance didn't like anything under 720p)
* replacing the crt with a lcd
*Upgrading computer hardware (this is alreqdy tested and working fine independently and together)

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

[Changis]

After long nights and lots of  , i found an older prebuilt version (0.186) that seems to work, though only the standard one, haven't gotten d3d9ex version running.

I set up pal as monitor type and the arcade15 settings in crt_range0
This seems to work well in games, no resolution corruption or similar..

However, how can i check that it is actually running native resolutions, and not just scaling to 640x480 or something like that?

[buttersoft]

If you're running GroovyMAME and using Switchres, and you leave infoscreens on in mame.ini, when you load a game it should come up with two resolutions, the game's native res and the one switchres has picked (modified to use native refresh). If you have set scaling options right in mame.ini (vertical integer scaling, and partial horizontal scaling) and the vertical size picked is the same as or slightly above native (drawing some blank lines top and bottom in the latter case) and the horizontal size is either indentical to native or much much, much larger (super resolutions) then you're getting a 1:1 image.

TBH i think switchres only works right with crt_emudriver though, but you could give it a shot.

The other thing you could do is create a game_rom_name.ini file (like ffight.ini - just copy mame.ini into the ini folder and rename) and type in the resolution for yourself. Then see if it looks the same, i guess? Bad example because CPS1 games are 384x226 which you'd have to install specifically, but you get the picture.