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Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: SirPeale on April 25, 2013, 04:35:00 pm

Title: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: SirPeale on April 25, 2013, 04:35:00 pm
I'm working on an emulator cabinet that will use a widescreen monitor.

So far the aspect ratio is fine, but the screen displays garbage on the non-video areas.

For example: if I launch Dig-Dug, the game will display fine in the middle, in perfect aspect, but to the left and right there is video garbage.

It's not just Mame; other emulators do it, too.  But, not all of them.

Workarounds?  Thoughts?
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: keilmillerjr on April 25, 2013, 05:53:34 pm
Picture?
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: Zero_Hour on April 25, 2013, 06:56:36 pm
I run multiple emulators on my widescreen display, and have never encountered anything other than black bars (or various artwork files when configured in MAME), when running 4:3 games. Got a spare widescreen to swap out and see if you get the same results?
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: Howard_Casto on April 25, 2013, 07:18:19 pm
Note that some games just have garbage in the margins.  Neogeo comes to mind. 

Mame typically crops it though.  Older versions of mame were bad about not doing this so make sure you are using a recent version.
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: rpgposer on April 26, 2013, 08:11:18 am
I have seen garbage as described.  Are you using Linux as your OS and mednafen as one of the emulators?  Do you have an ATI graphics card with the propietary drivers installed?
One of the reasons why I went back to win XP for my game PC.
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: SirPeale on April 26, 2013, 03:32:08 pm
I have seen garbage as described.  Are you using Linux as your OS and mednafen as one of the emulators?  Do you have an ATI graphics card with the propietary drivers installed?
One of the reasons why I went back to win XP for my game PC.

Yes!  It's running Ubuntu 10.10, with an ATI card.  Mame is the emu for arcade games, I haven't noted the issue with snes9x or FCEU.
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: Howard_Casto on April 26, 2013, 04:41:06 pm
Yeah Linux is weird man... you never know how things are going to render. 
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: SirPeale on April 26, 2013, 08:51:56 pm
Curses!  All the other emulators appear to work fine.  Well, snes9x won't escape upon pressing esc, but that's a separate issue.

Perhaps another Mame version, like mame.sdl, or something...
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: Howard_Casto on April 26, 2013, 09:10:22 pm
What version of mame are you running?
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: SirPeale on April 27, 2013, 11:21:45 am
It appears to be stock Vanilla Mame.  It's the version that I can pull down via the Software Center.

Mame .139.

I'm going to try AdvanceMame and see if it's better.  I got the "static" to be stable.  But, there is a serious issue with the sound.  It's really staticy.  It isn't as much with video files, but it's still there.  When you pause a video that's playing, the "static" persists for a few seconds, almost like it's being queued somewhere.  The same seems to happen with Mame, also.  Not sure about the other emulators, yet.


At first I thought it was because I was playing the sound via the HDMI thru the TV, but it does the same thing via the speaker jack, using headphones.  I'm confident that it would do it using regular speakers, also.
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: SirPeale on April 27, 2013, 11:33:20 am
Here's a screenshot.  You can see the "tv static" on the outer edges.  The stuff that's surrounding Pac-Man is Robotron: 2084.

Something is happening so that the video RAM isn't being cleared, properly.

The TV static did have a "bar" that ran through it, but once I started to play with the video settings I got it to disappear.
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: Howard_Casto on April 27, 2013, 11:52:42 am
I've never seen that particular issue with mame, even a Linux flavor of mame.  That isn't the garbage I was referring to in my replies (thus why it's always best to post a pic).  It could be the version of mame, I would try to put a newer version on there as revisions sometimes have quirks, but this looks like a video card issue and seeing as how it's Linux...well....good luck with that. 

sdl mame is certainly an option, but boy is it slow. 
Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: Haze on April 28, 2013, 10:00:12 pm
if you're running any recent version of MAME on Linux it probably *IS* SDLMAME, SDLMAME is the official linux target in the official sources and has been for many years now.

really looks like a video (and sound?) driver issue or something tho.

Title: Re: Emulators on a widescreen monitor - garbage on sides
Post by: rpgposer on April 29, 2013, 08:49:38 am
Sorry, had a busy family weekend.  It is my belief that this is caused by propietary ATI linux drivers.  If I were to test further, I would try swapping video cards to NVIDIA and maybe try a different distro.
Got pretty frustrated with linux and ATI, so for my cabinet PC, I switched back to XP and and NVIDIA video card.