Need help setting up my mame machine

[kiwasabi]

Please help me with this if you can. I have a pentium 3 computer with
windows 98. It has an arcadevga inside of it and I also have the jpac.
I have a Sharp Image Electronics, inc monitor on my arcade machine. The
machine is a jamma(obviously). I installed the windows 98 arcadevga
drivers onto my computer.

Now when I hook up the computer to the jpac and the jpac to the machine
all I get is the gateway logo(first thing that pops up when you boot up
the computer) going up and down the screen. I've tried putting the jpac
into 15, 25, and 31khz modes and none of them seem to have different
results. I also made sure that my arcadevga is set to NTSC(I also tried
PAL) but it also has the same result. I see the gateway logo streaking
up and down the screen for a bit then that goes away and the screen
stays black. Any ideas what I can do to fix this? Any help is greatly
appreciated, thanks.

-Adam

[nobbo]

firstly, if you are using an arcadevga card then the jpac has to be set for 15KHz because that is the whole idea of having an arcadevga card

secondly, what resolution do you have windows set at, because if it is higher than 640X480 youre most likely going to have issues, so I would suggest plugging in a VGA monitor first, check your resolution settings and then try again. If you have installed the arcadevga drivers correctly then you should have a little spaceship in your system tray, and if you click on that you can set a resolution from there that is arcadevga friendly

[youki]

Hi,

I think it is just a vertical synchronisation problem.  You should have somewhere in your cab some variable resistor (potentiometer?) , you can turn (slowly) to set up sync of your screen.

Usualy , there one for VSync (Vertical Synchro)  , one For HSync (Horizontal one) , and there some other to adjust the width and the height of the screen.

I think you should play with the VSync one.

[kiwasabi]

Hey guys thanks for the input. I just realized that my machine does not seem to have enough ram to support the arcadevga! I only have 129mb of ram in there and it's the 128mb card. But would that cause it to just go to a black screen after the gateway logo? Also, should a computer with an arcadevga inside of it work on a regular computer monitor? Because I tried it with both my mame computer and my friend's computer and neither worked.

I did try setting the resolution to 640X480, but it didn't help. But of course I was only able to do that with the computer's original card and not with the arcadevga because I couldn't boot up on anything with it.

I'll try playing with the vsync, thanks.

[pointdablame]

Hey guys thanks for the input. I just realized that my machine does not seem to have enough ram to support the arcadevga! I only have 129mb of ram in there and it's the 128mb card. But would that cause it to just go to a black screen after the gateway logo? Also, should a computer with an arcadevga inside of it work on a regular computer monitor? Because I tried it with both my mame computer and my friend's computer and neither worked.

I did try setting the resolution to 640X480, but it didn't help. But of course I was only able to do that with the computer's original card and not with the arcadevga because I couldn't boot up on anything with it.

I'll try playing with the vsync, thanks.

System ram and ram on the video card have absolutely nothing to do with each other.  You have 128mb of ram ON THE VIDEO CARD, and you also have ram in your system.... that is not the cause of your problem at all.  There is no correlation whatsoever.

Check your VSYNC as mentioned.  Also, did you uninstall any video card drivers you had on the system before you installed the AVGA?  You should install the AVGA drivers on a system that has no video card drivers installed.

The AVGA will work with a regular PC monitor, but it is obviously better suited for an arcade monitor.

[kiwasabi]

Ok well that's good to know that it's not due to the ram.

I did not uninstall the video card drivers. Would that cause the arcadevga to not work? How do I go about uninstalling them?

And like I said before for whatever reason my machine with the arcadevga won't work on a computer monitor at all, not even the gateway logo. Any ideas about that? Thanks.

-Adam

[8way]

Ok well that's good to know that it's not due to the ram.

I did not uninstall the video card drivers. Would that cause the arcadevga to not work? How do I go about uninstalling them?

And like I said before for whatever reason my machine with the arcadevga won't work on a computer monitor at all, not even the gateway logo. Any ideas about that? Thanks.

-Adam

The AVGA will not work on a PC monitor because its sending out a 15KHz signal and that

[kiwasabi]

Thanks for the help. Yes I do get some error beeps coming from the monitor and possibly some leds as well(I forgot to check).

I never thought to check if the arcade monitor was still considered a monitor. I'll go into the bios and change that.

Also, yesterday I tried to the vsync and hsync on my monitor to try and fix the scrolling gateway logo, but that did not help. Is that most likely a frequency issue? Thanks again.

-Adam

[Kangum]

This is really random but true. I use the arcadeVGA card and when I had my netgear wireless card plugged in the screen would stay black when using an arcadeVGA card. its very weird but true.

I played around with this alot. Taking the netcard both in and out with the arcadeVGA installed and they refused to work together. This makes no sense to me whatsoever but I can repeat this problem easily. It only happens with windows 98 and that exact wireless nic card.

The chances that we would have had the same problem is very slim but it does make a good point. start off with just the basics you need to boot. so remove any uneeded pci cards.

also what was said earlier is true. its frequency is to low for standard lcd.


This is how I set up my arcadeVGA for my CGA monitor. Its how I did it and doesnt neccessarily mean its how it should be done. I booted into windows first using my old video card on a lcd monitor. once in windows I uninstalled its video drivers. Then reboot still using the lcd and old card. Once in windows it will ask you to install standard VGA driver. click yes. I put the computer at lowest resolution and refresh rate. then shut down. I removed all pci cards. network sound everything and then put in the arcadeVGA  and hooked up the arcade monitor. For me it boot into windows using 640x480 interlaced mode.

good luck with it.

[kiwasabi]

Ahha, very interesting. I'll definitely unplug the PCI cards. I have 2 or 3 of them, so it's possible they're interfering like with yours. Thanks a lot for all the input I'll have to try that out.

-Adam