Arcade Monitor Question

[shayter]

REPOSTED from MAME.net
---------------------------------

This is my first post here, but I've been a MAME user since about '97 (so I'm not a noob).

I finally decided the other night that I was tired of MAMEing from the keyboard, so I decided to start my build. I pulled out a Dynamo HS-27 cabinet that I had earmarked to turn into a Neo Geo and reallocated it to become my initial MAME machine. It has a WG 25K7191 in it.

MAME's configured, screen's wired up, a video card that could sync was installed (who said the ATI Rage cards work properly with real arcade monitors? I *had* to use NVidia -- granted both ATI cards did work fine with ArcadeOS, but MAME caused 'em to freak).

Anyhow, all's well on that front (although sound under DOS was a bear to get working) but I've sort of come to what I consider to be a roadblock...

ArcadeOS comes up *perfectly*. It's beautiful. A couple of games (mostly vector) come up fine as well, but for the most part, the games are displayed skipping occasional horizontal scanlines and the images don't use the entire screen. I could ramble for an hour and not explain it properly, so please check out the pix here: http://www.m42c.com/pix/thumbnails.php?album=13

(You can zoom in on each pic to the original rez of 2048xsomething. It's clear enough to visibly see what I mean.)

Black Widow is an example of a working vector game. Robotron (both screenshots) is typical of every raster game.

Using the various tweaks has *no* effect (although "stretch" does widen the display).

Is this normal? I've been reading for years that using an arcade monitor is the only way to go, but to be honest, a 19" SVGA monitor with flicker and scanlines turned on looks a lot more authentic...

Any help/notes would be appreciated.


Steve

PS: I've looked *everywhere* over the past couple of days, and haven't found any useful information, except for documents saying "get an ArcadeVGA card from Ultimarc". I'm trying to do this with stuff I have in the house, and don't want to drop $80 this close to the holidays.

PPS: I'm using dmame.exe (0.64), and ArcadeOS 2.50 -- mostly because I like ArcadeOS and I have a full romset for 0.64. Am I going to need to redo this using AdvanceMAME?

[SirPeale]

Have you tried playing with your monitor settings?  Although if it's coming up fine in AOS you shouldn't have to.

Using -stretch is a good start, you might want to try some other resolutions. 

Vector games do *not* look good on a raster monitor.  You may get them to a playable state, but they'll never look as good as a true vector.  You can get a decent vector-ish picture on a high resolution VGA monitor.  But like I said, vector games have no place on raster monitors.

[shayter]

Monitor settings are fine.  Results of -stretch are noted in the original posting.  Changing resolutions (from within ArcadeOS at least) has no effect whatsoever.

I'm going to try launching MAME from a command line and I'll specify some specific resolution info at that time -- it *could* be that ArcadeOS simply isn't passing along the appropriate info to MAME.

Steve

[menace]

just out of curiousity--i've never even tried dmame on an arcade monitor--how well do the tall games look--i.e. pacman, ms. pacman--I have had pretty good luck using advmame getting everything to work--there are a few screwy resolutions that don't look nice (yet) but its tweakable.

[shayter]

Pretty much the same as the Robotron images (at least in my case).  But it's clear that my stuff isn't working 100% properly at the moment, so perhaps someone else's reply would be more authoritative.


Steve

[dabone]

Yeah, get and install advcab, advmenu, and advmame.

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net


It lets you adjust all your video modes and tweak them to the monitor/video card combo you have.


Later,
dabone

[desmatic]

REPOSTED from MAME.net
---------------------------------

This is my first post here, but I've been a MAME user since about '97 (so I'm not a noob).

I finally decided the other night that I was tired of MAMEing from the keyboard, so I decided to start my build. I pulled out a Dynamo HS-27 cabinet that I had earmarked to turn into a Neo Geo and reallocated it to become my initial MAME machine. It has a WG 25K7191 in it.

MAME's configured, screen's wired up, a video card that could sync was installed (who said the ATI Rage cards work properly with real arcade monitors? I *had* to use NVidia -- granted both ATI cards did work fine with ArcadeOS, but MAME caused 'em to freak).

The ATI rage pro thing dates back to before mame 36 final.  It's stone-age out of date info, written back when an SVGA 4MB card was cutting edge.

Anyhow, all's well on that front (although sound under DOS was a bear to get working) but I've sort of come to what I consider to be a roadblock...

ArcadeOS comes up *perfectly*. It's beautiful. A couple of games (mostly vector) come up fine as well, but for the most part, the games are displayed skipping occasional horizontal scanlines and the images don't use the entire screen. I could ramble for an hour and not explain it properly, so please check out the pix here: http://www.m42c.com/pix/thumbnails.php?album=13

(You can zoom in on each pic to the original rez of 2048xsomething. It's clear enough to visibly see what I mean.)

Black Widow is an example of a working vector game. Robotron (both screenshots) is typical of every raster game.

Using the various tweaks has *no* effect (although "stretch" does widen the display).

Is this normal? I've been reading for years that using an arcade monitor is the only way to go, but to be honest, a 19" SVGA monitor with flicker and scanlines turned on looks a lot more authentic...

Any help/notes would be appreciated.


Steve

PS: I've looked *everywhere* over the past couple of days, and haven't found any useful information, except for documents saying "get an ArcadeVGA card from Ultimarc". I'm trying to do this with stuff I have in the house, and don't want to drop $80 this close to the holidays.

PPS: I'm using dmame.exe (0.64), and ArcadeOS 2.50 -- mostly because I like ArcadeOS and I have a full romset for 0.64. Am I going to need to redo this using AdvanceMAME?

You'll need to use advancemame to solve your problems, for a long-winded, poorly written guide go to
http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/html/monitor1.htm

in short your problem all boils down to this: on a typical arcade monitor with advancemame, you must choose between either all of your games running in vsync (with a slight border on half your games, this is how arcadevga works), or all of your games out of vsync running at full screen.

DMAME uses tweaked vga modes, which is severely limiting.  AdvanceMAME uses a full fledged graphics driver, either vbeline (original mame drivers), svgalib, or kernel fb (linux only).  This grants full access to your monitor's capability.

[shayter]

Thanx for the input.

[menace]

I don't suppose you are using a jpac are you?  to protect the monitor from >15khz signals it will divide your signal and split the screen--this means you don't have an appropriate video driver running the monitor at 15khz.  You'll have to install monarc+ or other some such driver to get your video signal to 15khz before it will display properly-

if you don't have a jpac--i'm outta guesses...

[shayter]

Nope, no jPAC -- I wired the cab myself (am using an iPAC though -- that thing is wicked-cool).

But...  Success! (kinda)

I've now got ArcadeOS/AdvanceMAME configured so they exist happily together.  ArcadeOS will no longer display correctly on the WG7100, but *games* now display correctly.  The picture (Tetris, for example) is almost as good as it was on an actual machine -- not quite, but *almost* (I had a Tetris upright for 3 years before selling earlier this summer).  Definitely better than what I was getting with dmame, and my wife doesn't see the things I'm being picky about (and I fully admit I'm being picky now). 

Is there any *good* documentation for AdvMAME around?  It's clearly a configuration issue -- and using the EasyCab CD was what has been causing me grief since Friday -- as soon as I killed the external TSR (vga.exe) I was able to start getting a handle on things.

There's still a ways to go, but at least I'm making progress now.

Anyhoo -- off to bed.  More mucking about tomorrow.


Steve

PS:  Thanks all for your assistance/advice.  If you can point me towards decent docs, it'd be mucho appreciated.