New cab. Qs about TV/PCmonitor dual setup.

[hyde]

Hey fellas,

I'm brand new to the forum and am building a cabinet as we speak. I've read through quite a few posts in this group topic and the main forum as well but found no one else with a similiar situation. Basically my dilemma is this:

I want to use my normal everyday, 3d gaming PC as my emu pc. I do already, _but_ now I want to pump video to a cabinet with a proper stick setup - in otherwords, no dedicated emu PC, but a dedicated cabinet. Currently the emu output is on my primary monitor on my computer desk (how the urge for a cabinet is fostered . My cabinet will be about 3 feet from my desk and I want to send a video signal to the cabinet when games are being run. Here's what I've taken from my search for an answer:

First off, I have a 9800Pro. I've followed most every discussion I could about what TV to get, component or s-video, arcade monitor/pc monitor/tv debate, etc. I'm after a TV solution but am open to a second PC monitor as well. Here's the issue - It seems that when people discuss TV out - the TV becomes your primary and only display because they have a dedicated emu PC. Can you dual monitor with a TV so to speak? In otherwords, on your PC mon you've got your emu open, but when it runs, it sends, or can send the game vid signal to the TV, or even both at the same time. How does this work? Again, my goal is a shared resource PC. If the signal goes to the TV fine but is also on my PC mon, that's no problem as long as aspects/etc are correct. I don't mind loading games from my PC mon then stepping back to the cabinet if just the game signal gets pumped out the dvi-out (no frontloader yet).

I read about the DVI to component adapters for ATI cards but WeinerDogs issues with the 5% overscanning was unacceptable to me. Powerbars/Super bars, etc are kind of important to have on screen ATI's latest FAQ says their Catalyst drivers out now fix this issue - is this true?

Is considering a TV in this case even an option? The simple, yet more clunky, less authentic route would be to simply dualmon another PCmon and drag the emu window to the second display (boo), or perhaps get a signal switch box and redirect the entire output to that monitor when I want to use it then run full screen. While the easiest, it's not the most elegant. A TV is infinitely more practical long term.

What are my options? Can this be done? Did the latest Catalyst drivers fix the overscan issue?

I absolutely appreciate any advice/tips/links/you-name-it you can shoot my way. I used to play a lot of SF and MK in the day and recently me and my friends have kicked up the smack talk regarding who was best back then  - I'm dyin' to complete my project so I can school them

If I was unclear or anything, please ask me for specifics. I've done as much research as I can but am missing the key I'm looking for.

Take it easy all,

-Tim

[paigeoliver]

First off, do you have Windows XP? If so, then you can change which monitor is the primary monitor on the fly, thus allowing you to use 2 video cards and just run a VGA monitor on the desk, and another in the cabinet.

Or, you can just get a VGA splitter and run two VGA monitors off one video card.

I don't have a TV solution for you, as I have never been happy with TV out, too many resolution issues, and too many other assorted difficulties.

[tmasman]

Can you dual monitor with a TV so to speak?

Yes.

If you've got Win98 or up, you should be able to set (Depending on the drivers available) which monitor is the main monitor, or even to just mirror the image to the 2 screens. I've done this multiple times with and ATI 128 Rage pro and an NVidia MX440 (andTi4200).

My ATI 128 Pro (actually the All-In-Wonder 128 Pro) has "schemes" you can change to on the fly. This should allow you to set everything up properly for your desktop in 1 scheme, and everything for your TV in another.  Then all you'd have to do is select the appropriate scheme and play to your heart's content.

Just get an SVideo cable hooked up to whatever TV you've got right now & play around with it to see if you'll be happy with the output. From what I understand ATI is supposed to have better SVid output than NVidia, but I've never seen a big enough difference to worry about it.
Then again, I'm dumming mine down to RCA & it's good enough for me. So maybe I'm not the best resource for "Best Image Possible" advice, but you shouldn't have any problems getting your desktop mirrored to both your monitor & TV.

Good luck!
Let us know how it all works out.

~ tmasman

[hyde]

Thanks for the replies all - I tinkered with some ideas, and through assumption thought that this would be harder than it turned out to be. On my 9800Pro, there is an Svid out. The card came with an Svid to composite adapter and a composite extension. I hooked up an old 19" TV I had - but initially got nothing. The card didn't see the TV. I fiddled around with the connection on the back and shut down/restarted windows and magically, I had Dos booting on the TV! Needless to say I was happy. So I setup the display. The picture was pretty good, if not a little washed (spoiled by crispy monitor picture and at a much lower saturation than I would of guessed. More fiddlin' on the TV and PC side and I got a pretty good picture out of it. It's cloning my desktop to the TV which is what I wanted so my setup is dual purpose until I decide to go dedicated.

Anyway, the only issue I have is it's sending a 1024x768 image to the TV (well, initially) and I run an odd 1152x864 on my PC monitor. This causes the cloned image to have a scrollable desktop to fill the difference, so it's not fixed. When I full screen an image on my PC, it's bigger than the visible area on the TV so the borders get cut unleess I scroll to the edges on my PC mon. The only way I saw to fix this was to step down my PC res to match it's output after which I could blindly run full-screen or maximized with no problems. I don't particularly want to do this so I decided to run windowed with a custom res on the game that was near 1024x768 and just 'move' the window to the upper-left corner per game. Yeah- it's not smooth, but it works for now. It's for this reason that I may go the 21" monitor route but not before trying a true Svid throughput just to see what it looks like.

Anyway, indeed I accomplished my goal and was all too giddy when  I did Now to iron out some key blocking issues I've run into in Kawaks (but Mame has no issue with).

And if anyone feels like answering - what is a GREAT front end for Mame that feels like a windows app, has plenty of options (ala kawaks) and is a breeze to setup on a per game cfg basis? Seriously - I would prefer a front end identical to Kawaks as it's a joy to use but obviously is limited to NG/CPS.

Thanks for your help guys!