Re: Questions for Prophet or any other AdvanceMAME "guru" (read on)

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: : Prophet, sounds like you have played a lot with the MV utility so I just have to grab the opportunity and ask you some questions :) : I love mv! After you get used to it, it's a HUGE kick to see what cool modes you can come up with. :) : : I use multi sync monitors too. I have an old Hitachi CM2085 in my cabinet with the following data: : : CRT size = 20", Dot Pitch = .31mm, Video clock freq. = 100MHz, H Freq. = 30-64KHz, V Freq. = 50-100Hz, 640x480 = 100Hz, 800x600 = 100Hz, 1024x768 = 79Hz, 1280x1024 = 60Hz. : Decent specs. You'll be able to make any resolution mode you want. The one limitation is the Vertical range tops out at 100Hz, so you may not be able to use the doublescan "trick." Then again, you might. I've seen some old monitors (like my 15" Nec that tops out at 75Hz) actually display doublescan modes perfectly! Apparenty they just see them as half rate, but they look just as good. I actually talked with Brian Lewis about that once. So u never know till u try. : : I use it with an old Diamond Viper V330 (nVidia Riva 128) PCI card. It has been a great combination because of the "arcade monitor look and feel" of the old CRT and the cards extensive VESA support. : : I still use my own compilation of MAME 0.36 final in my cabinet with AdvanceMENU as frontend. I am planning to switch to AdvanceMAME as soon as it is based on the MAME 0.37 final source code. I am also going to upgrade the cabinet hardware with a new processor, memory and a new motherboard with AGP. : Ack!!! I'm such a MAME nut... I always use the latest beta. I do my own Adv MAME builds. 37b10 is a nice beta, but the end of the cycle is near I think. : : Now, back to my questions... : : What video card do you use? : See the card.txt. :) nvidia Riva128 : : I have several PCI cards "on the shelf" that I can switch to using my current hardware. They are a Matrox Millennium G200, a S3 Vision964 and a Hercules Dynamite 128 (Tseng Labs ET6000) among others. AdvanceMAME supports both the Matrox and the S3 cards. Do you think that any of these cards would be better than the Diamond Viper card I use now? If so witch one? : I only have used my Riva128 card so far. But Andrea himself uses a G200. Note that my nvidia ONLY works by using SDD in Win or loading univbe in DOS. But it works great. : : I have a 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 AGP in my desktop PC. I was planning to use it with my new hardware. Looks like a quite optimal card for MAME when I read Andy Geez’s test with Mon-ARC Plus (http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/park/xng75/arcade/index.shtml). But that is Mon-ARC Plus with an arcade monitor and I don’t know if that is valid using AdvanceMAME and a multisync monitor. I have tried to run MV with it and I can’t get hardware scanlines because it looks like the doublescan option is disabled (hitting "x" doesn’t help). I also get several high pitch beeps every time I start MV, MM etc. I think I read somewhere in the AdvanceMAME docs that this should indicate an error but I can’t understand what kind of an error because AdvanceMAME should support the Voodoo3 card. Do you think that the Voodoo3 card is a good choice for an AGP card with AdvanceMAME or would you like to recommend any other AGP card? If so witch one? : Yes, I heard Voodoos can't use doublescan. And mv always does a PC speaker "buzz" when starting up. As for what card, I'll soon be asking the same as I'm getting a new PC next year. Personally I was hoping Andrea would code a GeForce driver... You should join the Adv MAME mailing list - you can do so at the homepage. I can't really help beyond that. : -P- : : Thanks in advance for any replies / EmuMannen : : : : : Whoah... too much to reply to... : : : I'm in no mood to go into details right now, but all I can say is that Advance MAME & therefore mv are very hardware dependent. If your hardware (especially video card) is not supported you may not be able to get good results. If it IS supported, it's amazing what it can do. : : : From your questions I get the feeling your a bit unsure how things work. Basic tips, ignore any form of vsync, they all suck. Just use triple buffers. As for using mv, read the docs and experiment - it's a complex program at first especially. Refresh rates are adjusted with "h" and shift, as well as with ctrl and the arrows etc. Horizontal scan rates are done with "y" etc. You simply have to experiment. Use f6 to grab an existingmode then go new one and mess around. Make sure you have your monitors scan ranges in mame.cfg. It becomes easy after some experience. And no, 53 - 60 Hz is no more bad for your eyes on a PC than an arcade - unless you're doing word processing or tech design CAD at that rate... : : : Also, in MAME, go to the TAB menu then to Information - it tells you the refresh for the game. You'll find a huge number of games running at non-60 HZ rates. And if you get things working, compare for example R-Type at 55Hz to it at 60Hz. Or any game at it's native refresh to 60 - it's baby smooth scrolls. : : : One last and VERY cool trick I use, but you must use a PC monitor with a high refresh range. In mv use "x" to doublescan the modes. So 60 -> 120 Hz, 53 -> 106 Hz etc. The result will be even better scrolls, and get this - REAl scanlines! Not crappy "skip-a-line" scanlines, but real looking ones with no loss of brightness in the display! That's what I use on my 27" XGA. :)

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