low resolution modeline calculator for arcade monitors

[desmatic]

It's finished.  It can be dowloaded from http://lrmc.sourceforge.net/

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
su
make install

I tested it out on several monitors and on several different video cards.  Hopefully there aren't any serious bugs.  Please let me know if you find any.

There were a couple of really nice suprises.  First of all, Nvidia cards worked flawlessly in X11 (propriatary driver).  I tested both a PNY Geforce FX 5200, and a PNY Geforce 6 6600.  Both cards produced absolutely beautiful interlace modes at 15kHz, better than anything I've seen, even noticably better than ArcadeVGA's.  They were the first I've seen to be of TV quality.  I also tested Ultimarc's ArcadeVGA 9200 and it worked flawlessly in X11 using xorgs ati driver.  I'll probably post a list of modelines for different monitor types to make X11 setups very straight forward.

All the 15kHz stuff was tested on a Wells-gardner 19" K7200.  I tested all the PC stuff on a bunch of PC monitors.  A modeline list is already available for that, but I'll update that list shortly as well.  The current list uses a VGA sync time, which turns out to be less than perfect on a couple of monitors.

[wpcmame]

Tested it on PC. Couldn't get the makefile to work with mingw but "gcc lrmc.c" works fine.

Seems like a very good tool. Will try it with powerstrip in my cabinet later.

Got a few comments.

1. My Hantarex POLO Arcade monitor supports 15.25 - 16.25KHz. It seems like the tool only supports a single frequency.

2. The calculations often becomes 8pixels/1 line off. e.g.
720x576x50Hz (normal PAL DVD) becomes 728x577x50Hz.

3. The aspect ratio option is missing in the man file.

4. Miss an option to specify visible lines on the monitor. -cga correctly scales to 240 lines and -pal scales to 288 lines but what if the monitor is adjusted to 256 lines.

[desmatic]

Tested it on PC. Couldn't get the makefile to work with mingw but "gcc lrmc.c" works fine.

I haven't tried to compile it on Windows, yet.  The package right now is 100% GNU/Linux stuff.  I've got a partition on my hard drive open that I've been meaning to install windows on, just haven't got a round to doing it.  Thanks for the tip though.

Seems like a very good tool. Will try it with powerstrip in my cabinet later.

Got a few comments.

1. My Hantarex POLO Arcade monitor supports 15.25 - 16.25KHz. It seems like the tool only supports a single frequency.

Right now you need to edit the source.  Change the Horizontal clock min/max or whatever for the monitor you're using.  I intend on adding a configuration file, but have't got a round to it.  It'll be either similar or identical to advancemame's syntax.  The calculations are setup so that lrmc can directly use device_video_format as input.  The feature just hasn't been implemented yet, but will be in the next release.

2. The calculations often becomes 8pixels/1 line off. e.g.
720x576x50Hz (normal PAL DVD) becomes 728x577x50Hz.

I'll have to get back to you on that one.  I suspect it's due to a 0.5 line rounding error in interlace modeline calculations.

3. The aspect ratio option is missing in the man file.

Thanks.

4. Miss an option to specify visible lines on the monitor. -cga correctly scales to 240 lines and -pal scales to 288 lines but what if the monitor is adjusted to 256 lines.

Yeah, again, custom monitor settings will require a configuration file, which I'll implement soon.  All the code is in place for this sort of elaborate stuff.