How to get the frequencies for my TV?

[SmartBomb]

I'd like to use AdvanceMAME for my emulator.  It needs to know things like horizontal freq, vert. freq, pixel clock (?).  These are not listed in my TV manual and I've Googled it to hell but can't find them.

How can I find this info?  It's a 27" Philips Magnavox if that helps.

[ericball]

Assuming you are talking NTSC (North American standard):

Vertical refresh : 59.46 Hz (interlaced)
Horizontal refresh: 15.734 kHz
Pixel clock ~3.5795 MHz

[wpcmame]

Horizontal freq should be around 15.75KHz. Monitors are analog devices so some variation should be fine e.g. 15.7 - 15.8. Many monitors supports a wider range but TVs are more picky.

Vertical frequency is 60Hz for NTSC and 50Hz for PAL. Note that supporting both NTSC and PAL doesn't mean that the whole range 50-60Hz is supported. You might need more than one line in advmame.rc to describe the monitor in that case.

Pixel clock is a property of your graphic card, not the monitor.

[SmartBomb]

Aha...so the horiz. and vert. frequencies are more a function of the standard (NTSC) than of the TV itself?

I will try the values given...don't worry, I won't hold anyone responsible if it damages the TV!

[wpcmame]

Aha...so the horiz. and vert. frequencies are more a function of the standard (NTSC) than of the TV itself?

No, the monitor probably supports a wider range of both horizontal and vertical timing but since it isn't stated in the manual you don't know where the limits are.

Running the monitor outside its limits will damage it or at least decrease its lifetime so the only safe range to use is the NTSC standard.

[SmartBomb]

Thanks for the help.  I'm a software guy at heart, and I feel very ignorant about all this monitor/TV stuff.

I guess a bigger question here is, for a normal 27" TV, is it really worth all the extra hassle to use AdvanceMAME rather than, say, Mame32 ?

Anyway, here's what I tried - so far, I'm ready to pull out my non-existant hair over this.

1) Unzipped AdvanceMame files.
2) Run advcfg.exe, and get a DOS-like menu.
3) Select TV / NTSC (60 Hz)  (each time I have to use space bar to select, even though the prompt says to use 'enter')
4)  Tried "GENERIC NTSC TV (USA)"
5) Get another menu.
6) Whichever of the three calibration modes I select on the this menu, I get an error dialog saying "Calibration mode unsupported.  The video mode is incompatible with the monitor limitations."  advcfg then exits.
7) Start again with advcfg, except this time I select "TV / NTSC" then "custom".
8) I try to enter the values provided in this thread, but it won't accept a slash, despite it telling you to enter one.  (Same problem as this guy here: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1236293&forum_id=313511 )
9) I try starting advcfg again, and go directly for "custom" as the first step.  Then it starts asking for stuff I've never heard of like "horizontal front porch".  I went into the yard and measured it but the value didn't fit. (kidding)

I decide to try the manual route. 

1) I delete the existing rc file
2) run advmame -default to generate a default one
3) open it in a text editor. 
4) fix the 'roms' path. 
5) I install the 'svgawin" driver successfully. 
6) I  add the following line based on ericball's values above:

device_video_clock 3.5795 / 15.734 / 59.46

I know what interlaced and non-interlaced are, but I don't know how they apply to my TV so I used the values he provided.

7) save the rc file
8) run advmame <some game> from the command prompt -> "no video modes available for the current game".

Is there a way to generate video mode for some / all games?  What do I do next?!  I've tried reading through the 'man'-style help but it didn't really help me (http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-advdev.html)

I'm not sure if this belongs in the "software" or "monitors" forum, since it kinda straddles both, but I'm sure you guys know plenty about AdvanceMame anyway.

In case it's relevant, the TV is a Philips Magnavox 27", model TS2779C1, and I'm using S-Video.  My video card is a GeForce4 440MX, 64MB I think.  Everything works fine with Mame32.

Thanks for any help.

[desmatic]

Thanks for the help.  I'm a software guy at heart, and I feel very ignorant about all this monitor/TV stuff.

I guess a bigger question here is, for a normal 27" TV, is it really worth all the extra hassle to use AdvanceMAME rather than, say, Mame32 ?

Anyway, here's what I tried - so far, I'm ready to pull out my non-existant hair over this.

1) Unzipped AdvanceMame files.
2) Run advcfg.exe, and get a DOS-like menu.
3) Select TV / NTSC (60 Hz)  (each time I have to use space bar to select, even though the prompt says to use 'enter')
4)  Tried "GENERIC NTSC TV (USA)"
5) Get another menu.
6) Whichever of the three calibration modes I select on the this menu, I get an error dialog saying "Calibration mode unsupported.  The video mode is incompatible with the monitor limitations."  advcfg then exits.
7) Start again with advcfg, except this time I select "TV / NTSC" then "custom".
I try to enter the values provided in this thread, but it won't accept a slash, despite it telling you to enter one.  (Same problem as this guy here: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1236293&forum_id=313511 )
9) I try starting advcfg again, and go directly for "custom" as the first step.  Then it starts asking for stuff I've never heard of like "horizontal front porch".  I went into the yard and measured it but the value didn't fit. (kidding)

I decide to try the manual route. 

1) I delete the existing rc file
2) run advmame -default to generate a default one
3) open it in a text editor. 
4) fix the 'roms' path. 
5) I install the 'svgawin" driver successfully. 
6) I  add the following line based on ericball's values above:

device_video_clock 3.5795 / 15.734 / 59.46

I know what interlaced and non-interlaced are, but I don't know how they apply to my TV so I used the values he provided.

7) save the rc file
run advmame <some game> from the command prompt -> "no video modes available for the current game".

Is there a way to generate video mode for some / all games?  What do I do next?!  I've tried reading through the 'man'-style help but it didn't really help me (http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-advdev.html)

I'm not sure if this belongs in the "software" or "monitors" forum, since it kinda straddles both, but I'm sure you guys know plenty about AdvanceMame anyway.

In case it's relevant, the TV is a Philips Magnavox 27", model TS2779C1, and I'm using S-Video.  My video card is a GeForce4 440MX, 64MB I think.  Everything works fine with Mame32.

Thanks for any help.

I wouldn't recommend using Windows 2000 or XP, they're experimental.  Test your setup first on either DOS, Windows 98SE, or Linux.

So far as I know, AdvanceMAME won't work through TV-out.  You'll need to hack a vga to tv connection of some sort.

You're using the wrong pclock values,  try 8-25

As far as the quality is concerned, the difference mostly depends on your TV.  If it's really picky, you'll end up stretching all of your modes anyways, in which case you're probably better off with mame32 and tv-out.  If your TV's got a bit of slack built into her, then 224-240 line games will look radically better (though 224 line games will have a small border).