Linux users don't need arcadeVGA or any special card for 15khz?

[bone2006]

I'm trying to put together a MAME system soon that I'll be picking up an arcade cabinet that has an arcade monitor.   I'm going to be using a debian based distro with sldmame, but I've only been using this system on an LCD with my keyboard so far.

I'm reading that I do not need aracdeVGA for the 15khz or 25khz mode, but I wanted to double check before I do something stupid.

To be a little more specific if I'm not mistaken the card is an nvidia geforce 5400

after the distro is installed I would just edit the xorg with vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf

make the modifications and start X?

[bloodyviking77]

 Haven't tried this myself (I let the smoke out of my arcade monitor and so have ended up with the dreaded LCD in my cab until funds present themselves!) I think you're right. 

Desmatic's lrmc is supposed to generate the modelines you can use for X.

One problem is that your BIOS/startup video modes still won't be 15khz-friendly and so will be unreadable until the X server starts. 

You can avoid this with a very "low tech" solution ... wait for X to start before you turn on your monitor! or else there are schematics floating around to build a relay that will turn on your monitor for you on a signal received over a parallel port.

Also, sdlmame runs without X on the framebuffer, so depending on what else you plan on running, you might not need X at all.  - I think you can generate appropriate modelines for the framebuffer to run in 15khz-friendly modes.

[MonMotha]

I have successfully generated standard res compatible modes in X on normal consumer hardware.  Not all video cards are capable, but most these days seem to be.  I'm told any nvidia device newer than a GeForce 4 Ti and any ATI 7000 series or newer will work.  All Matrox devices should work.

On some devices, you may have to double the horizontal pixel count and scale all your video 2:1 horizontally (this is a lossless operation - the resulting video will be identical when displayed on a monitor) due to pixel clock constraints.  I had to do this on my Matrox G100: I used 1440x480 interlaced to generate NTSC compatible video with DVD compatible pixel aspect ratios after a 2:1 horizontal scale.

There are various methods of generating modelines.  If you have need for specific modelines (i.e. to match specific games), the easiest way is to use a calculator like lrmc.  If you just want TV compatible video, there are several sets of "standard" modelines available, or you can calculate your own from the specs.

[bone2006]

Thanks for the replies
I checked my hardware on the terminal and it's GeForce FX 5200

I'm hoping to use either ubuntu or possibly ubuntu server without installing any of the LAMPS, to keep the resources low and then install a low resource desktop environment like JWM or something else similar.  If I'm not mistaken the default gnome release recommends 384mb of ram, while the server only requires 64 and I've ran JWM on an old laptop in which it really only used about 32mb of ram at most.  My system only has 512mb of ram and 1.2ghz amd single core system.   So I'm thinking I'm going to try and get the best resource out of it.

My thoughts are just to install the ubuntu server, not selecting LAMPS or any option so I'm getting a low resource system and at the terminal I'd type:
$ sudo apt-get install xorg jwm mc emelfm mouspad firefox htop gdm ubuntu-artwork synaptic vlc xfe sdlmame

Which would give me sdlmame plus all the dependences....................then I'm thinking of grabbing the Wah!cade
Wah!cade
http://www.anti-particle.com/wahcade.shtml

Only thing that would require work would be to modify the xorg file or any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated?

[bone2006]

Nobody can lend me any help on the xorg file?