Betson with AVGA2 help (a couple of problems)

[XtraSmiley]

OK, running a new Betson with a new AVGA 2 (PCI version) on Windows XP.  Going to be using a front end made for cabs down the line, but for now I am running WinXP at 800x600 and using MAME32 to set things up.  I have used the settings on Ultimarc's web site in MAME32, downloaded and installed the tri-synch utility as well as the Gavin Benson utility to create the correct resolutions.  Here are the problems I am having:

1.  Color issues, the auto degauss button does not work and here is what I cannot get rid of in the corner.  Is this a serious problem or will a manual degauss tool fix this?

2.  The left side and the top are badly curved in such a way that I cannot get them to display straight.  Is this more than it should be for the error or am I being to picky?  Please special attention to the address bar, see how much it curves down?  I can see this in fighting games where the health bars bow down.

3.  Street Fighter II is bordered by HUGE black area's and when I try to expand the image it makes the distortions even bigger.

4.  Some games, like for example Mortal Kombat II, when scrolling (like the stage select) or Ikari Warriors, the screen seems to scroll with a wave or a jerkiness to it.  How can I fix this?

Thanks for the help guys, it has been a massive pain getting this up and running correctly!

[MonMotha]

The degauss is one of my only complaints about the Betson/Kortek.  It downright sucks.  My monitor does the same thing, though if you turn it another direction it sometimes moves corners.  If you get a degaussing coil, you should be able to get rid of that.

As for horizontal stuff not being straight, I can't think of any particular setting to try to fix that.  Larger flat-ish tubes (like this one) tend to exhibit some of that no matter how hard you try to tweak it out, though mine isn't that bad.  You might try playing with the trapezoid setting a little bit.  That sort of thing also starts to appear with excessive overcompensation with the corner controls.  The corner controls are for fine tweaking the corners ONLY.  All edge and center geometry is best adjusted using the trapezoid/parallelogram/pinbalance/pincushion settings.  Do not underestimate the importance of trapezoid and parallelogram.  Pincushion/pinbalance is usually the most obvious adjustment to make, but it may not be the correct one.

The geometry on this thing at 800x600 is always a bit suspect.  Have you tried it at 640x480?

Of course, they also always come set up way wrong for some reason.  Make sure you turn the contrast and brightness down to sane levels while you're tweaking up the geometry.  Your monitor will last much longer and won't burn NEARLY as quickly: modern monitors barely burn at all when correctly adjusted, especially in home use scenarios.

The edge geometry looks like it can be fixed: adjust pinbalance left, fix the middle with the pincushion setting, square it up with trapezoid and parallelogram, then tweak the corners (LAST!) with top/bottom corner.  Be aware that getting both perfect edge geometry and center geometry is near impossible, but you can do very well with some work.

The service manual (available on retroblast) has a procedure for the order to adjust the geometry settings that will help to minimize the interdependency between them all (since there is quite a lot).

SFII not filling the screen looks like a software problem.  Can't help you there.

Bottom line: do not expect perfect desktop geometry on this thing.  It's way too big for that and not designed for it anyway.  Almost all arcade games are also designed to be just ever so slightly overscanned to eliminate oddities at the edges.

[XtraSmiley]

Thank you so much for your input.  Some of those errors can not be fixed at all.  I have tried for about 2 hours.  I don't think it can be fixed.  The SFII thing is bugging me a lot as well.

Betson says that I can send the monitor back (at my cost) for another one, but I don't know if that is something to do when it has these errors.  Do they look bad enough to warrant it?

[MonMotha]

The SF2 issue is almost definitely software, so that's not the fault of the monitor.  It looks like it's leaving the video mode at 800x600, then rendering the graphics at native resolution in the middle of the screen.  Check your emulator settings.

Everything but the bowing of horizontal lines should be reasonably easy to fix with the controls.  The colors will eventually degauss away without manual degaussing, but it may take a few weeks.  I would suggest trying to fix the edge geometry issues and seeing if that also takes care of the bowing along the horizontal.  It's certainly worth doing that before sending the monitor back.

[ahofle]

Have you tried going into the service mode and doing a factory reset?  That looks pretty bad (much worse than my betson).  The Retroblast article has a link to the service manual for the monitor.  Do the same problems occur at low resolutions in MAME?  You should be able to tell if you are in the correct low resolution by bringing up the betson on screen display after you start a game.  It should say something like 15 khz or so.  If it says 38 or 31khz you are not running a CGA resolution.  If you are still seeing that horrible geometry in other resolutions, I'd seriously consider returning it.  That really sucks that you have to swallow shipping. 

[tetsu96]

I personally don't think it looks that bad in your case, maybe you're being picky.  We'll go thru the play by plays together.

1.  Color issues, the auto degauss button does not work and here is what I cannot get rid of in the corner.  Is this a serious problem or will a manual degauss tool fix this?

That can be a problem, but almost always happens when rotated / angle is adjusted.  Degaussing a few times should take care of it.  If it really won't go away, you can play with the purity settings or a manual degauss.

2.  The left side and the top are badly curved in such a way that I cannot get them to display straight.  Is this more than it should be for the error or am I being to picky?  Please special attention to the address bar, see how much it curves down?  I can see this in fighting games where the health bars bow down.

Left and right are pincushion adjustments.  You can adjust that out but some resolutions may have slight variances.  The top / bottom ones would be tougher to get rid of and may be worth calling betson for some advice, but curved CRTs tend to bow in a little in the middle for top and bottom.  If it was a flatscreen monitor you'd have a bit more to be annoyed about, but it's par for curved CRTS (at least most I've used including the Betson).

3.  Street Fighter II is bordered by HUGE black area's and when I try to expand the image it makes the distortions even bigger.

That's your setup / software.  I don't use the AVGA personally, but all games should be full screen unless the orientation is wrong, and those should be taking up 1/2 of the screen.

4.  Some games, like for example Mortal Kombat II, when scrolling (like the stage select) or Ikari Warriors, the screen seems to scroll with a wave or a jerkiness to it.  How can I fix this?

Again, that's the emulator and your settings.  Jerkiness happens when you don't run at the same refresh as the emulated game.  Really all there is to it.  Got a lot of MAME and MAME variant reading to go before you come to a solution that works for you.

Hope that helps.

[XtraSmiley]

Thanks for the tips guys.  The software stuff (SFII and MKII) I am not blaming on the monitor, I just tossed it out there for an answer if you have it.

For the hardware stuff, I'm not sure.  It is not the same problem I've seen on normal monitors.  I talked to the Betson guy and he says the color thing could be a sign the monitor was bounced around to much in shipping and could be damaged.  I've never heard of this problem relating to the degauss, but hey, who knows.

The curves and whatnot, I just CANNOT get to work out.  I've adjusted like crazy and it is not going away.  The stuff on the side is only on one side so any adjustments I make, messes up the other side.

I don't mind overscanning the image to cover this up, but it still results in things like the power bars in SFII or MKII to be curved down.  The more I stretch/zoom or oversize the images, the more the errors become more obvious.

I'm just thinking about sending it back and biting the cost.  DAMN!  If anyone else has thoughts I'd be glad to hear them.

[Scottk]

I have a Betson + AVGA PCI Express as well.

> 1.  Color issues, the auto degauss button does not work and here
> is what I cannot get rid of in the corner.
> Is this a serious problem or will a manual degauss tool fix this?

To be honest, from the pictures, it reminds me of when I put a set of old non-shielded speakers
right next to my old TV both to the botton left and bottom right.
It looked like a "degauss" issue, but after I moved the magnet away, the screen got better
after a time...

> 2.  The left side and the top are badly curved in such a way that I cannot get them to display straight.
At 800x600, I have a slight curve, but nothing to write home about.
I have chalked it up to the fact that really, no TV/arcade monitor should be used at these sizes and resolutions.

> 3.  Street Fighter II is bordered by HUGE black area's and when I try
> to expand the image it makes the distortions even bigger.
Every once and awhile, the Gavin Benson tool picks the wrong resolution.
You probably need to tweak this one "after the fact", and pick a different resolution.
Have you compared the resolution that MAME reports should be used for the game, with what was
picked by Gavin's tool?
(I have run into a couple games where it was just plain and completely wrong, and I had to manually adjust it...
It just goes with having an arcade monitor)

> 4.  Some games, like for example Mortal Kombat II, when scrolling
> (like the stage select) or Ikari Warriors, the
> screen seems to scroll with a wave or a jerkiness to it.  How can I fix this?

This one I know about. 
Are you setting the "triplebuffer" option?
Anytime I have issues with scrolling not working/looking right, triplebuffer *always* fixes it.

[XtraSmiley]

Thanks.  SFII is like 388 by 224 and that option is not in MAME32's drop down menu, that is why I have the black area's.  Not sure what is closest to the real deal yet.  What do others use?

The triple buffering did not help with the ripple effect in MKII or Ikari Warriors.  Any other ideas?

[ahofle]

Have you tried 384x288 or 392x240?  You will still get borders because of the aspect ratio of that game though.

[XtraSmiley]

Have you tried 384x288 or 392x240?  You will still get borders because of the aspect ratio of that game though.

Yeah, it looks better, but just not how I remember.  The red parts (like in the power bar) look weird.  Like I can see the pixels or something.  I don't have the real deal to compare side by side though.

Now MKII and MK3 I do have and they look perfect, EXCEPT for the damn tearing/rippling effect!  Argh!

I'm going to try MAMEWAH next, maybe I'll have better luck with it.

[ahofle]

My guess is it's probably because you are running a game designed for a 19" monitor blown up on a 27" screen.  I sized down my picture a bit (both horizontal and vertical size) and that helped with the excessive scanlines you get at full size on the 224/240 line games.

[Circo]

I had all of the exact same issues with my betson, after dealing with it for a year, I finally sold it and bought the billabs.  The betson did not look near as good as my previous d9200 (although points given for being more reliable).   There are quite a few threads here of people with the same complaints.  I never could get the color problems fixed no matter what I did.  But after a while that was the least of my issues, the linerity of that monitor was crap.  And as far as I know, there is no way to fix it.  Betson is just crap in my book.  Wish you the best of luck.4 

[XtraSmiley]

I had all of the exact same issues with my betson, after dealing with it for a year, I finally sold it and bought the billabs.  The betson did not look near as good as my previous d9200 (although points given for being more reliable).   There are quite a few threads here of people with the same complaints.  I never could get the color problems fixed no matter what I did.  But after a while that was the least of my issues, the linerity of that monitor was crap.  And as far as I know, there is no way to fix it.  Betson is just crap in my book.  Wish you the best of luck.4 

So out of all three do you recommend the Billabs?  (can you link to it?).  What about the D9400?  Maybe I should have bought it!

[MonMotha]

I have only two qualms about my Betson (mind you I got a hell of a deal on it, so that may be coloring my judgement some): The degauss sucks, and it doesn't like some composite sync signals.  The former you are noticing.  There's no easy way around it except to get a real degaussing coil and use it when necessary.  I should point out that some arcade monitors have no degaussing built in and require this no matter what.  The latter isn't something you are experiencing (and has only shown up so far for me with playstation based stuff), so don't worry about it: it should never be an issue with a PC as they can use separate sync.

The rotate function would be nice to have, but it doesn't tend to change any, so if you get one that's bad immediately ask for a replacement, and you're fine.

I should point out that IF you have linearity issues, there is a horizontal linearity adjustment in service mode (hold UP on the remote board while plugging in the monitor - be careful in this mode as there is no restore to factory defaults since you're setting the factory defaults!).  It does sometimes need tweaking, but I haven't noticed any drift.  There is no vertical linearity adjustment, but that seems to be much less of an issue with most monitors.  Also, what appear to be linearity issues are often just issues with trapezoid and parallelogram: make sure these are set correctly.

I've heard nothing but bad things about the WG 9000 series digital monitors, and the experiences I've had with them at a local arcade working with the owner haven't been overly compelling (they were at least working).  They are apparently very unreliable. 

I have heard great things about the Billabs, but it apparently has a smaller dot pitch, leading to a slightly less "authentic" picture on low-res games.  On the up-side, it does go up to 768 visible lines @ 60Hz progressive (so you can do 1024x768, and with the smaller dot pitch this might look decent), while the Betson (Kortek) can only do about 600 lines progressive at 60Hz (it is capable of displaying ATSC 1080i, but not 720p, according to the specs, but I've not tried).  There have been some issues in the past with the Billabs blowing up shortly after initial power-up, but Billabs was always very helpful to the person to get the issue resolved.  The WGs have been known to do this too, evidently, and WG is a fair bit less helpful.

Other than the horizontal bowing, it sounds like everything you're seeing is a software problem.  No monitor can fix these - it's just displaying what it's being sent.