Opinions of ArcadeVGA

[OldSchool79]

I am tempted to purchase one of these ArcadeVGA cards.

http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html

Are there many people on this forum who have them?

Are they as good as Ultimarc says they are?

Are there hidden faults with certain setups?

[menace]

They are a very quick way to get your arcade monitor up and running.  The built in setups and windows compatability make installation a snap and with the mamewah arcadevga resolution tool, configuring the games is a real breeze.  If you have the cash, then I highly recommend going this route.

[JMDickson]

ArcadeVGA is a great product.  The look of the picture on 15khz games is authentic, unlike running a high-resolution moitor.  I also have a high end using a scan converter, but ArcadeVGA still gives a better picture.  It's much easier than trying to program custom timing on a standard VGA card, with very little chance of running the monitor out of range.

The only problem I had was my monitor could not be adjusted to get the whole picture on the screen... I'd lose a few pixels off of each side, most noticeable on vertical games where the score/lives are on the top or bottom of the screen.
A little hacking on the horizontal size coil fixed that though 

[OldSchool79]

Menace:

I should RTM but is Mamewah for configuring an arcade monitor for use on mame32?

I currently run DOS on my cabinet (eventually linux). Windows requires way too much maintenance for a cabinet IMO so I'd like to hear from anyone with AdvanceVGA on these platforms too.

Has anyone got a scrolling desktop to work in Linux?


JM:

Do you think the geometry problems are AVGA or monitor related? The impression I get is that the AVGA should emulate the original arcade video signal perfectly, and that any geometry problems are monitor problems.

I currently run a highly tweaked normal VGA with custom cable. I can get perfect geometry, however I cannot get exactly 60Hz refresh on most of the modes. I assume this is because I can't tweak my card to exactly the right horizontal frequency for standard Arcade modes, and a compromise is made. This does result in some horizontal sheering in some games (Wonderboy is one of the best examples). I am still uncertain as to whether the horizontal sheering is due to the slightly different refresh rate, or the speed of the CPU I am running AdvanceMAME on. I do recall that on some games, the horizontal sheering was present on a 400Mhz PII, but not on a 900Mhz AMD. This was not for all games though, which is why I concluded that it was the VGA card's fault, unable to do exactly 60Hz.

Eagerly awaiting peoples thoughts on this, and maybe it has already been discussed somewhere.

[AndyWarne]

Yes shearing would be caused by not running at exactly the vertical refresh rate of the game. It is very difficult to acheive this. The modes on the ArcadeVGA which are billed as 60Hz are accurate to 2 decimal places. But of course not all modes can be 60Hz since higher resolutions need more time to draw the screen so the vertical refresh goes down.
Also, not all games ran at 60Hz, there were some 53Hz (catered-for in ArcadeVGA) and other oddball ones.

[wpcmame]

Yes shearing would be caused by not running at exactly the vertical refresh rate of the game. It is very difficult to acheive this.

Yes it is very diffcult to get the monitor to run at exactly the same speed as the game. That is why mame do it the other way around, i.e. run the game at the same speed as the monitor. Just use the "-syncrefresh" option and the tearing should disappear (if it isn't an emulation bug).

If the monitor runs at 59.9Hz the game will run 1% slower than the original game but such small difference isn't noticable.

[OldSchool79]

Ok so the ArcadeVGA is 60Hz give or take 1Hz? With a hacked VGA the modes are different up to maybe 3Hz (eg 57Hz - 63Hz).

Thanks I will try the -syncrefresh option.

Did the original arcade boards work in the same way? That is, did they actually run at exactly 60Hz?

[wpcmame]

Ok so the ArcadeVGA is 60Hz give or take 1Hz?

No 60Hz mode is 60Hz +/- 0.01Hz or so.

With a hacked VGA the modes are different up to maybe 3Hz (eg 57Hz - 63Hz).

Don't know what you mean with hacked VGA. Anyway, there is no difference between a normal Radeon 9200 and AVGA when it comes to refreshrate accuracy.
(Maybe you are referring to advmame. Advmame only allows syncrefresh if the monitor's refreshrate is within 3Hz of the game but normally the advmame modes has the same accuracy as AVGA)

Did the original arcade boards work in the same way? That is, did they actually run at exactly 60Hz?

Same way as what? The video circuit on original arcade boards is similar to normal VGA cards. Timing varies between components and age but my guess is that modern graphic card is more stable.

[dweebs0r]

What about using an arcadevga card with a monitor other than a CGA res monitor such as the 19" SVGA Horizontal Mount Monitor 49-1337-VP2.      LINK

Does the arcadevga provide a better picture when its not a true arcade monitor?  or would I be just as happy with a standard vga card.

Thanks,
-Dweebs

[divemaster127]

I have the arcadevga kind of a pain to setup but it works great, the arcadevga only works on arcade monitors, it will not work on any computer monitor
thanks

[wakerlet]

What about using an arcadevga card with a monitor other than a CGA res monitor such as the 19" SVGA Horizontal Mount Monitor 49-1337-VP2.

[dweebs0r]

Thanks for the info,

I have already ordered the Happs SVGA monitor and I didn't want to spend the extra money on the arcadevga unless it was really going to make a difference.

I'll go the CGA monitor/arcadevga route next time, for my first cabinet I wanted the easiest approach "out of the box".

-Dweebs

[OldSchool79]

Don't know what you mean with hacked VGA.

Hacked as in hacked timing (non-VGA timings), hacked VGA cable, just plain hacked. Yes, I'm using AdvMame. The 'standard' modes did not work on my arcade monitor, and I had to slightly adjust the PCLOCK on nearly all of them to get a picture. Is this normal? I can post my AdvMame video configs I suppose.

device_video_clock 5-90 / 14-18 / 45-70

device_video_modeline ntsc_256x224 6.16773 256 304 328 392 224 238 239 262 -hsync -vsync
device_video_modeline ntsc_320x224 7.04882 320 336 416 448 224 241 245 273 -hsync -vsync
device_video_modeline standard_384x224 8.55168 384 440 480 544 224 235 238 259 -hsync -vsync
device_video_modeline standard_320x240 6.79104 320 352 384 432 240 240 243 266 -hsync -vsync
device_video_modeline standard_256x240 6.53952 256 256 352 416 240 252 253 279 -hsync -vsync
device_video_modeline standard_256x240 6.288 256 304 328 400 240 247 250 275 -hsync -vsync

as what? The video circuit on original arcade boards is similar to normal VGA cards. Timing varies between components and age but my guess is that modern graphic card is more stable.

I mean vary greatly from 60Hz. I guess no. I'm not actually sure what the result frequency in ADVV is.

EDIT: Let me rephrase that, I'm not sure what the "Resulting Frequency" means in ADVV, the AdvMAME video setup program.