ArcadeVGA install question (yes, another)

[nathan118]

So I installed my arcadeVGA card with my new Kortek 27"....but I can't help but feel it's not installed entirely correctly. First odd problem is that it's installed twice in my device manager. I booted into safemode and it persisted that I had two vga devices, so I installed the ultimarc vga drivers for both. It worked, but that still seems odd.

Second question is, how do I know for sure that it has all the special arcade resolutions installed? Several things lead me to believe it's not setup right. I tried running mamewah at 640x288, but it makes a really high pitch sound at that resolution and doesn't fit on the screen well. I tried killer instinct, and that also didn't fit on the screen and made a high pitch whine, like it's running in an uncomfortable setting.

When I look at my display properties and go into the advanced modes, i click "list all modes" and it doesn't show all the arcade resolutions. Only thing that leads me to believe it is installed correctly is that it shows the 800x600 47hz interlaced mode.

Any ideas? It's hard to find info on this. The ultimarc faq makes it sound like you install it, and then mamewah will just magically use all the right resolutions. Thanks guys.

[nathan118]

One small "update".....

Some games work and play magnificent. Notably capcom games, and lots of older games like galaga and pac man. However, mortal kombat (which I know is a weird one) neo geo games, and the killer instincts all have problems.

Now I'm thinking maybe this isn't an install problem, but a setup problem.

And lastly...what should be the driver version on the newest cards? My driver version has a .7000 at the end of them...but it's a 9200 card. Could Andy have sent me the old drivers?

[mwoody]

I also have two "video controller" devices with the new ArcadeVGA.  One I installed as ArcadeVGA, the other I just disabled, as I couldn't get it to recognize the device as anything.  I hadn't asked because I assumed I'd set up something wrong in Windows XP, but in retrospect it was a pretty clean install.

However, beyond this device manager oddity, I've not had the problems you describe.  Some notes, though:

 * Do NOT use Windows' display properties to change resolutions.  It will screw it up.  Use the little Galaga taskbar icon instead; that will choose appropriate resolutions.
 * To stop the flickering at high resolutions in windows (640x480, 800x600) install the "Wells-Gardner D9200 Utility" linked to here.
 * To tell MAME to use the proper resolutions, get the ArcadeVGA Resolution Tool from here.  There's another tool that does more or less the same thing, but I like this one better.
 * No reason to run MAMEWah at 640x288.  800x600 looks just fine.

Note that I'm a newb myself; I may be wrong on one or all of these.  But I've just gotten the same setup working on my end (Slikstik cab comes on Thursday!) and, with the exception of some monitor problems that I've decided, after getting it replaced once, to just live with - Kortek's QA department must serve free booze or something - things seem to be working fine.

[nathan118]

Alright, those suggestions solved basically all my problems.

My last question is about midway games like mortal kombat, nba jam, etc. I know arcadevga has a special resolution just for these games, but I can't get it to work. I use the mame resolution tool for mamewah, i select the the special mortal kombat resolution, generate the ini successfully, but it still gets 1/4 of the image cut off. However, if I set the resolution to 640x480 or 800x600 it works....but it's not the true arcade settings.

Anyways, just need to figure out the wacky mortal kombat setting now.  

[big daddy]

Have you tried using the monitor controls to control horizontal placement, etc.?  I believe that placement can be different for each resolution so games at 1 resolution could be centered and correct on your screen, but games at another resolution could be off.   Least that was my experience

[AndyWarne]

The best way to check that the ArcadeVGA drivers are installed correctly is to go to the "Galaga" (quickres) icon on the taskbar on Xp/2000 and make sure you have lots of extra, low, resolutions, shown, not only 640 X 480 , 800 X 600 etc. If all the low resolutions are missing the drivers are not installed.
In W98 you can use the "blue monitor" tackbar icon, and this displays 640 X 288. BUT there is a bug in the 98 drivers for the new card (R9200) which prevents this extra resolution from displaying in this icon (all resolutions actually do work in MAME though). I will be uploading a newer version of the drivers to www.ultimarc.com/avgadrivers.html which enables the icon to work properly. This will be done before 7 November.