CRT - GroovyArcade detection issue

[SCT74]

Started playing around with the new cabinet and CRT

Booting the USB bring up the main screen.  No matter what I seem to do, i cant get a stable res out of it.

The closest i came to was Intel and NVIDIA 15khz but that just flips over and over.  In the old days there used to be a horiz sync screw you could jerk with and sort that out.

Considering is up and running with the internal WinXP IDE hdd and basically works, Id rather start with a fresh install.

Checking the windows installaion is difficult because its all blurry as hell and again .. dont want to start mucking with settings just yet.

When letting it autodetect, says nothing is found, the crt is plugged in.

The mobo is a K9N6PGM2-V
VGA Output connected to some circuit in the cabinet .. cant find any details on it
The OS has GameEX and SwitchRes installed
Seems there is NVIDIA GEFORCE drivers installed with some funky settings for a crt, which I assume is why its blurry on a lcd
There arnt many numbers on the Monitor

Its a Toshiba 9509 A66JLH92X03 4MDOO9B2 are the only numbers on it but cant find any real details

Worst case ill have to either duplicate the HDD to another so I can change the res so its at least visible
Best case is i can figure out why the flipping and see whats going on.
I guess I could always do a fresh XP+GA install and see what happens, trying to avoid XP tho.

I have tried a bunch of the settings at the first GA screen but nothing seems to work

Any help would be amazing, thanks again

Attached photo of circuit
Attached photo of screen .. that just cycles badly from top to bottom

[Substring]

I'm lost, your explanations are confusing. Please detail your hardware first.

[Zebidee]

First thing to know is that you have a Sharp Image multires monitor. It is printed there clearly on the neckboard in one of your photos.

It has a marked connector with both 15khz and 25khz positions - so make sure which it is. I can see part of the connector (in red) in one of your earlier photos on another thread. Your rolling screenshot earlier might be explained by it being in 25khz mode. Make sure that you disconnect monitor from power before touching the connector, don't touch it while monitor is running. To get you going for now in Groovyarcade, use the 15khz position.

Sharp Image multires monitors are actually really quite good. As Fursphere said on the other thread, that CRT monitor is the best part of this cab. They were built late 90's/early 2000's so are both more modern and less worn out than most other arcade monitors. Also, because of their era, in most cases they haven't had to work hard in hot smoke-filled environments (like me when I was younger), so that helps.

They were designed for use with recycled tubes, which is why your CRT (that is the tube/screen itself) is labelled "Toshiba A66XXXXXX", because it has been taken from an old TV. To find meaningful information about the actual SI monitor you'll have to look at the chassis itself (the main board with all the electronics). We call it "chassis" because it is the main part of the monitor, everything else (including the CRT) is peripheral, just like the chassis of a car is the main part of the car.

I've used a few SI multires monitors before, but don't have any now. There is a repairer in Western Australia who specialises in SI monitors (Jomac), but AFAIK he's mostly pretty busy and doesn't take repair orders from overseas  - so take care with it.

VGA Output connected to some circuit in the cabinet .. cant find any details on it

Look more closely at this - and post more photos as appropriate. if the sync isn't getting through properly, then this is probably where the problem lies.

[SCT74]

Fantastic info!  I've never really owned a CRT cabinet before but its definately fun.

Funny you should mention West AU, thats exactly where I am located and we sound of the same vintage, minus the smoke filled, Timezone was always packed in Freo.

I went on a hunt thinking where IS this connector and eventually I found the gigantic sticker saying 15/24 (staring me in the face the whole time) and can confirm its seems to be in the 15 socket.

Which is interesting that GA couldnt find it with the default 15khz option but kinda worked with the Intel and Nvidia 15k setting.  (maybe the onboard video card needs presets, hence why the current setup in winxp)

Diving deeper into the cabinet, there is a mini control board.  Im wondering if adjusting the h-hold and see if the scrolling slows down, I can mark its position with a pen to ensure it can go back.

[Zebidee]

Funny you should mention West AU, thats exactly where I am located and we sound of the same vintage, minus the smoke filled, Timezone was always packed in Freo.

Yeah I suspected you were AU based, as Joey/Jomac was selling them "locally" for a while and I got a couple from him around 2010-ish for some bespoke cabs I was building (he sold out a long ago, though possible he might have a refurbed one). I still have a 20" SI chassis from him, but it's not multires like yours. It needs a new vertical deflection chip which I've sourced, but never gotten around to replacing.

I put myself through uni in mid 1980's to early 90's doing all kinds of jobs, but much of it was in hospitality doing bar/waiting work in the era before smoking was banned in public places and bars/eateries. I didn't smoke myself, but went home every night smelling like an ash tray. I even worked as a banking clerk in one of the big clubs and the lady teaching me would chain smoke right next to me. I don't know how we tolerated it. I almost became a poker machine technician at one of those places, even applied for the license, before I moved on to something better which utlised my uni degree. This is interesting to consider when seeing what I do as a hobby now (arcade cabs/repairs are very similar skills to what a poker machine tech would have).

Diving deeper into the cabinet, there is a mini control board.  Im wondering if adjusting the h-hold and see if the scrolling slows down, I can mark its position with a pen to ensure it can go back.

Tweak the V-Hold to correct screen rolling vertically (up/down).

I can honestly say that the best 15khz arcade monitor image I've ever seen was when I married one of Joey's SI multires chassis with a Philips bonded yoke 29" tube from a 2000-era European TV. That went into a 4-player TMNT-style cab I built for a mate and his family.

[Zebidee]

Its a Toshiba 9509 A66JLH92X03 4MDOO9B2 are the only numbers on it but cant find any real details

A66JLH92X03 - A means A-grade and the "66" is screen size (centimetres) measured corner-corner. Great size for arcade cab. The rest of it is manufacturer gobbledegook or at least stuff you don't need to worry about.

The "9509" is likely the manufacturing date: September 1995. It is fairly early for a bonded yoke CRT.

That only relates to the tube - the SI chassis was made much later by another company.

[SCT74]

Smoking just dropped off from places when I was out and about.  How times have changed and lot less smelly these days. 1981 is when I got my Atari 2600, total game changer as a kid!

Must say, your knowledge on this subject is outstanding.

So, couldnt help myself and gave the cabinet a tweak, so yep, changing the vhold certainly stopped the scrolling, but the screen is garbled and somewhat duplicated between the top and bottom half
Im starting to think I need some specific res to make it clear.  Ill do some more reading and try and isolate this out.

So either I have to figure out exactly what res this needs and manually set this in GA or pop on Windows and set it there with some tools.

[Zebidee]

Im starting to think I need some specific res to make it clear.  Ill do some more reading and try and isolate this out.

So either I have to figure out exactly what res this needs and manually set this in GA or pop on Windows and set it there with some tools.

I  don't know much about GA, but trust that it can get you to a basic boot screen at 15khz with compatible hardware. You get half a screen, which is encouraging, but half is missing. Your monitor seems good. So, unless there is some GA/GPU/hardware issue I don't know about, I'd guess something is wonky with your video connection between PC and monitor. Photos!

Would be good to know how they had it working originally.

[Calamity]

Hi SCT74,

You mentioned you have an Nvidia card in that PC. Unfortunately support for interlaced modes is missing on the the Nvidia open source driver, at least for most of its hardware. That split screen should be a proper interlaced mode. You can however try using progressive modes only. On GA's boot installation menu there's an option called "EDID progressive". Alternatively you can force a progressive mode on boot, like 320x240.

[SCT74]

Thanks for the info
I had a gut feeling it was down to the onboard video + GM  Found a tool online that does a full hardware inventory on boot, so its a NVIDIA GeForce 6100 nForce 430.

I powered up the system as I had it and it has the Gamex frontend running on WinXP
I did try and mess around the EDID but didnt have any luck with it.

So i'm back to the drawing board at this stage, I guess my options are to get another card that is compatible or jump back to Win7.  Im not sure groovymame will work with this card but will read more
I still have to figure out how the old system is automatically switching the res
Soft15khz and quickres are installed .. just need to pull apart the config properly and do more reading

This can turn into a rabbit hole at times .. trying to get everything to everyone in one cabinet is not feasable, so I have to readjust my expectations, which are now
- An update, make sure everything is updated, grab Win7 and give it a cleanup
- tidy up all the internals as they are everywhere
- rewire the controls with iPAC
- add two big buttons on the front for coin or whatever, just to cover the holes
- obtain more knowledge on what to expect out of the monitor resolution wise
- change the marquee and speakers
- Investigate a sexy frontend for it, whether stick with gamex, retroarch or something else

At the end of the day, its really just for the oldschool kinda games, streetfighter, mortal kombat, sunset riders, cabal, all that old goodie stuff
I appreciate the comments, sometimes I feel a bit thick with this but every nugget of information definately helps

[Zebidee]

A quick search tells me that your MSI motherboard has a PCIex16 slot. So install Win7, buy yourself a CRTEMU compatible video card for around $20-$40. Make sure it has analog RGB out via VGA or DVI-I or DVI-A.

Then install the latest Groovymame and a snazzy frontend (there are other threads on that). Modern FEs even have scrapers for the artwork, so you'll always have the most complete sets.

[SCT74]

Excellent suggestions!  Now to wade through the 100s of video cards that are possible, pick one and purchase, uugghh more reading

On the plus side, my iPAC arrived today ... things are heating up, cant wait to finish this one up now.

[Zebidee]

Yeah... you'll need to trawl the online ads. I have a few old systems built around late core2duo systems running Win7 and using HD6450 cards - I like that they are much simpler and more compact than the previous HD5XXX series, still cheap, plenty of grunt for MAME, mine all accepted Atom-15 (for 15khz at boot) and they have a VGA head (so no adaptor required). In a pinch, they'll also fit into a short form factor (SFF) case. Installing CRTEMU is effortless.

[SCT74]

Its been a while and a ton of testing later
Took the advise and proceeded to get this underway.

Ended up finding a 6870 and flashed it with ATOM.  It took longer to create a msdos boot disk than to actually flash the card.
Installed win7+gm on 3TB SSD.. also grabed another 3tb SSD and installed GA
Played around with the windows drivers and VMM and gave a few games a whirl.

I noticed I had a gap on the right hand size in Win7+GM .. that gap also existed on GA ... and after flashing the card, it also exists on the bios screen.

So I thought, it must be the dials on the back and proceeded to play around

Suffice to say, I have made things infinitely worse.  I get WIN7+GM looking sweet, only to have something else flying up and down the screen. 

So I have done a ton of reading and gotten no-where ... I seem to have a sweet bend on the right hand side and the top seems to overlap itself, things like galaga, the highscore at the top is cut in half.
I think I need to get some kind of test pattern to the screen where I can jerk with all the dials to get it right first .. then get Win and Groovy to play nice.

Ive seen the other posts about the monitor specs for the ini file and I think I can create profiles in Win through the video card software.
Ill keep playing around

This forum is amazing, so much info, makes things a lot easier to destroy