Arcade monitor for MAME

[BaldiGit]

HELP....!!!

I'm trying to run my WG K7000 25" monitor in a JAMMA Street Fighter 2 cabinet on a PC for MAME. I have it connected through a J-Pac and a GBS-8100 video converter @ 640 x480 resolution. It's all sync'd up ok and I have a picture (of sorts)....
But the picture quality is atrocious…. It’s bright and very foggy (high contrast). Colours are bleeding through and look wrong, it’s just awful.
 I have tried tweaking it with the GBS-8100 menu and the monitor controls and have improved it, but not much. I have also brought up a picture with red, green and blue on. And they are in the correct order with no colours missing. I've tried it in 32 and 16bit colour, which makes no discernable difference..
Is it maybe the combination of the J-Pac and the GBS-8100 video converter? As with the SF2 game board the picture quality is great.

Does anyone have any advice they could give me?

Many thanks

[lordkahless214]

I'm thinking the 8100 is the problem in your set up since you say that the picture looks good on the SFII PCB.
I haven't had good luck using those Chinese converters for much of anything.

I have a PC based cabinet myself and it too is based on the JPac, but I don't use any converter in my setup, I installed a free software solution called soft15khz, which will tell your video card directly to run at arcade resolution.
Many video cards are compatible, but if you have one that isn't then I would suggest the ATI 4350, an older card that is now pretty cheap.

[BaldiGit]

I did wonder about that. But I can only find people online who are quite happy with it... Maybe I've been to the wrong sites..... I was thinking maybe it was because both the 8100 and the J-pac have video amps.

I have tried Soft 15Khz with a couple of video cards with no luck. But I'll keep an eye out for a 4350, that's probably the way to go.

[lordkahless214]

I think you are correct with the video amps interfering with each other, there is definitely a conflict on that circuit.

I suggested the HD4350 partially because it's what I've been using in my setup for the last 5 years without issue and because they are like 14.99 on ebay last time I looked, so they won't kill your wallet.
One more tip, if and when you do get a 4350, be sure to use the main DVI port with a VGA cable adapter to pipe video into the Jpac, It never worked for me trying to run the cable from the 4350's built in VGA port.

Good luck with your project! 

[BaldiGit]

Thanks for the tip. That's the sort of simple thing that drives you mad trying to sort it. And only works when you've tried a dozen different things, but your never sure which one did the trick...!!!

I've managed to pick up a Sapphire HD 4350 on the bay for £11.99. We'll see what happens..

Love the avitar BTW. He was my favourite Doctor Who...

[lordkahless214]

Yeah I chased that issue for weeks trying to figure out why it wasn't working, finally I tried the adapter and suddenly it worked.

I heard it's because the system treats each output separately and only installs the 15khz driver on the one port but not the second, and supposedly this also happened on the ArcadeVGA cards in the past. I wanted to put it out there because I didn't want it to trip you or anybody that reads this up.

Let us know how it works for you.

Thanks for the comments on the avatar, I am a big Doctor Who fan and the Fourth is my favorite doctor too

[BaldiGit]

Hmm.. got the card, it's a Saphirre one, nice and compact (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272093580949?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT). Installed ok with what seems to be the last ATI driver and test ran on windows games to be sure it wasn't a dud. Turned down the resolution to 640 x 480, ran Soft15Khz and enabled the 15Khz, rebooted and nothing but hash.....

The J-pac gives me a split screen for the BIOS as expected and then sync is lost and hash.. Tried both DVI and VGA sockets but it seems soft15Khz settings don't stay. As each time you go into the program it offers to install...

Is there maybe a specific driver revision?

[lordkahless214]

Yeah, don't use the latest one I had problems when I attempted to update, I use catalyst 11.2 If I remember correctly.
Make sure you install soft15 with admin privileges if you are running vista or win 7

once you are sure it installed correctly, look at your Jpac, is the "Sync OK" light lit when Windows boots?

[BaldiGit]

Thanks for that. I'll look for that driver and give it a go later.

And yes the sink light was up while I had the split screen of the BIOS then went out when windows booted. At which point I realised it wasn't working.... Doh...

[lordkahless214]

I'll do what I can to get you sorted and playing games 

The strange thing here is that the sync light is going out completely, it should stay a constant split screen if soft 15khz isn't installed.
We'll see how it behaves when you install the older driver and soft15 again.

[BaldiGit]

WOW, got it working  . 

Initially the picture was rolling, but a quick fiddle round the back and that stopped it. The pictures not half bad if a bit flickery (but I suppose that's to be expected at 15Khz). But when in Windows, the bottom of the screen is missing, ie, no task bar... Hmmm...

Just checked online. The Wells Gardner K7000 25" native resolution is 640 x 200. I wonder if this is where my task bar has gone..

[BaldiGit]

Actually looking at it... I can just see some of the icons on the task bar but there all squashed flat. Like the picture at the bottom is crushed up. 

Maybe monitor adjustment?

[lordkahless214]

try to adjust it out, if you can't get it looking good then it may be time for a cap kit, as one of the symptoms of needing to be recapped is crushed image on the bottom (left side if mounted vertical)
Glad you got it working, it should look better when you are running a front end or a game. Windows always looks odd in this low res state.

[BaldiGit]

Actually I have just recapped it and fitted a new flyback. And fiddling around the 50/60Hz pot sorted the bottom being squished. Odd that the Street Fighter Jamma board picture was perfect....!! !!  But now I can't get the picture to fit top and bottom....!!!

Is 640 x 480 the correct resolution..??

[lordkahless214]

Glad that the adjustments cured your issue with the squishing, it's not that surprising that they have slightly differing adjustments because many arcade PCBs have sync signals that are different from one another. If you ran for example, a Mortal Kombat PCB, then it would need to be adjusted again from where it is now.
Newer monitors compensate for this automatically where as the K7000 does not, and has to be done manually.

I use 640x480 and it works on my setup. I booted up my Mame cab today to check for you and it's cutoff a little bit like yours is, but I can still figure out what to do, I imagine that is normal.
You say it's not fitting top and bottom, Did you adjust the V.Height (on some monitors it's called V.size) adjustment? I'm assuming so but if not do check that.
You can try 800x600 and see if that works better for you, I'm also fairly certain that you can set it to 1024x768 and that will work also, but I haven't tried this one myself.

Once you get your front end set up, you won't likely notice it too much, I don't.