Groovymame + Sony CRT + Midway Arcade Games = I need help!

[rancid]

Happy New Years Eve All,

I really could use some help and am turning to all the usual places I visit to see if someone knows what the heck is going on.

I recently built a Groovymame setup with an i7 4770 & R9 380X putting through a VGA > Component Transcoder and successfully installed Emudriver and made all the necessary super res modes for Retroarch and Groovymame. I have everything working as intended except the one set of games I built this thing for: Midway arcade games. I am getting a sync issue to my consumer Sony KV-24FS120 and I have exhausted all efforts to troubleshoot this myself as all the games run fine on my JVC PVM and the overall consensus is Midway games in general are a pain to get working on consumer TVs. Here is a thread I have over at Arcadecontrols that outlines everything I've done with log files (warning: It is long-winded): http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.p ... 160.0.html

Here is a video I made showing the issue: https://i.imgur.com/q0ofQdS.mp4

I've narrowed this down to a sync issue with this TV not able to handle a 54hz signal that the Midway games use. I've tried modifying my mame.ini with nearly everything I can think of but nothing is working, including making a separate ini for MK with various monitor settings (I created a midtunit.ini in mame/ini and in mame/ini/source. I also tried mk.ini just to rule out naming was the issue). I have re-done all my video modes upwards of 25+ times now and even tried adding modelines I found from another guy that had this exact issue with the exact model TV, except it doesn't work for me: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.p ... 803.0.html
To further troubleshoot this I also tried loading MK in retroarch utilizing the latest Mame core with the exact same issue.

Below is my pastebin for my mame.ini along, super user modes (setup in dynamic because of Retroarch), and Mortal Kombat log file when loading:
https://pastebin.com/cEMcZyB5
https://pastebin.com/JZinJP6W
https://pastebin.com/K8S00fEp


I built this machine to enjoy with my 10 year old son so I am extremely eager to get this working. I am willing to pay someone a $20 bounty via paypal if they can assist me in figuring this out as I am very appreciative of people's time these days.

TY for any help in advance!

[orange808]

MK outputs 256 active lines. There's your trouble.

[rancid]

MK outputs 256 active lines. There's your trouble.

Not following, there is a super res mode for 256 lines @ 60hz and 50hz. What is the recommended fix?

[rancid]

Set mode to NTSC in VMMaker, definitely reduced the sync bobbing but the resolution is squashed and still have vertical flicker: https://imgur.com/a/TFB9tfc

[cyborc]

EDIT: I just saw your post over on BYOAC forum and it looks like you already tried native resolution. I'm not sure what else to try Hopefully someone here or over there has some advice.


Strange. I've used groovymame + MK on a few different Sony consumer sets (including a wega) and other than the overscan it worked fine. Have you tried running the game at it's native 400x254 resolution? You'll have to add that resolution to your modelist.txt and re-run Vmmaker. You'll also want to force mk to run at 400x254 otherwise it will probably select the super resolution instead.

[rancid]

EDIT: I just saw your post over on BYOAC forum and it looks like you already tried native resolution. I'm not sure what else to try Hopefully someone here or over there has some advice.


Strange. I've used groovymame + MK on a few different Sony consumer sets (including a wega) and other than the overscan it worked fine. Have you tried running the game at it's native 400x254 resolution? You'll have to add that resolution to your modelist.txt and re-run Vmmaker. You'll also want to force mk to run at 400x254 otherwise it will probably select the super resolution instead.

Morning,

Gave it a shot again and no luck.

Morning,

Here is my modeline file if you want to take a look (I've since removed the native resolutions since it doesn't have any improvement over super res): Modeline.txt https://pastebin.com/XY3BCa1J

Mortal Kombat Mame Log: https://pastebin.com/07GEqwUV

D:\Mame>mame64 mk



SwitchRes: [mk] (1) horizontal (400x254@54.706841)->(400x254@54.706841)

Average speed: 99.99% (2 seconds)



D:\Mame>

[orange808]

Try a signal that's closer to a standard.

Here's one that should work on virtually any CRT. (If there's a solution, this is the best place to start.)

Horizontal Scan Rate: 15.756 KHz
Horizontal Active: 720 "pixels"
Horizontal Total: 858 "pixels"
Horizontal Sync: 64 "pixels"
Horizontal Front Porch: 41 "pixels"
Horizontal Back Porch: 33 "pixels"
(Horizontal Sync Polarity Negative)

Vertical Rate: 54.708 Hz
Vertical Active: 254 lines
Vertical Total: 288 lines
Vertical Sync: 3 lines
Vertical Front Porch: 8 lines
Vertical Back Porch: 23 lines
(Vertical Sync Polarity Negative)

Need a modeline? Google is your friend.

The modelines you posted certainly weren't carefully made to ensure compatibility, that's for damn sure.

[rancid]

Try a signal that's closer to a standard.

Here's one that should work on virtually any CRT. (If there's a solution, this is the best place to start.)

Horizontal Scan Rate: 15.756 KHz
Horizontal Active: 720
Horizontal Total: 858
Horizontal Sync: 64
Horizontal Front Porch: 41
Horizontal Back Porch: 33
(Horizontal Sync Polarity Negative)

Vertical Rate: 54.708 Hz
Vertical Active: 254
Vertical Total: 288
Vertical Sync: 3
Vertical Front Porch: 8
Vertical Back Porch: 23
(Vertical Sync Polarity Negative)

Need a modeline? Google is your friend.

The modelines you posted certainly weren't carefully made to ensure compatibility, that's for damn sure.

Thanks Orange, I will give it a shot and report back!

[orange808]

For fans of real hardware:

I fired up Smash TV and Mortal Kombat 2 boards on the supergun.

I have a Sony television that is almost identical to OP and I hooked it up.

I can reproduce the issue with the native signal from the boards.

I chained the output through the Corio2 and I my guess was right. My signal timing (posted above) is compatible with an NTSC late model Sony CRT. That is the starting point for troublesome 288p arcade boards.

You just need to do a little tweaking to get the frame rate as close to the source as possible, but I already covered that in another post. Probably need to change the front and back porches for centering as well. It's all trivial.

There is overscan and dealing with that requires diving into the service menu. I'm not opening that can of worms here. Google is your friend.


Corio2 solves it for real JAMMA boards and a mode line should handle MAME.

[rancid]

For fans of real hardware:

I fired up Smash TV and Mortal Kombat 2 boards on the supergun.

I have a Sony television that is almost identical to OP and I hooked it up.

I can reproduce the issue with the native signal from the boards.

I chained the output through the Corio2 and I my guess was right. My signal timing (posted above) is compatible with an NTSC late model Sony CRT. That is the starting point for troublesome 288p arcade boards.

You just need to do a little tweaking to get the frame rate as close to the source as possible, but I already covered that in another post. Probably need to change the front and back porches for centering as well. It's all trivial.

There is overscan and dealing with that requires diving into the service menu. I'm not opening that can of worms here. Google is your friend.


Corio2 solves it for real JAMMA boards and a mode line should handle MAME.

That is crazy impressive you took the time to do that, TY Orange. Calamity responded to me over at Arcadecontrols and had me re-create my mame.ini and I made a custom mk.ini which resolved the issue for 99% of the problem. Midway games are now displaying/syncing properly, but they look a lot more pixelated than they should be (scanlines are very faint to non-existent) so I will give your modeline a shot later today to compare. Switchres no longer works with the values he gave me for my CRT because it is out of range: monitor custom
crt_range0 15625.00-16200.00,55.00-65.00,2.000,4.700,6.000,0.064,0.192,1.920,0,0,192,256,448,576

Sidenote - I have a Corio2 based on your work and use it with my Laptop HDMI > HD Fury2 > PVM I have upstairs and it has worked so well compared to some of the other solutions I've tried. I also have an Extron Emotia and it is my go-to downscaler just because of the picture adjustments, I haven't figured out how to make the Corio save my presets for display optimization such as horizontal/vertical shifting. To get around this, I have it chained to an Extron DVS 304 which allows me to modify the RGB signal for vertical/horizontal adjustments more easily a.l.a knobs on the emotia.

Ty again and Happy New Year!

[orange808]

Try using an Extron RGB for horizontal and vertical adjustments if possible. It's faster and the output should look better than chaining through a DVS scaler.

[rancid]

Orange - Shot you a PM if you don't mind taking a look.

Thx again.

[orange808]

As requested, here is signal timing information (posted above) without references to vertical lines or horizontal "pixels"/"color clocks".

Pixel Clock: 13.519MHz

Horizontal Scan Rate: 15.756 KHz
Horizontal Active: 53.260 us
Horizontal Front Porch: 3.033 us
Horizontal Sync Width: 4.734 us
Horizontal Back Porch: 2.441 us
Horizontal Total: 63.468 us
Horizontal Sync Polarity Negative

Vertical Frame Rate: 54.708 Hz
Vertical Active: 16.121 ms
Vertical Front Porch: 0.508 ms
Vertical Sync Width: 0.190 ms
Vertical Back Porch: 1.460 ms
Vertical Total: 18.279 ms
Vertical Sync Polarity Negative

[Taiyaki]

Orange808> Does the Extron RGB 201Rxi (that is the one you were talking about right?) do vga in vga out (I thought the vga on the other side was for the remote or something only)? How would op set it up back to component? Anyway amazing work, I'll be saving this thread in case I encounter this issue too since I have a similar Sony crt to op.

[orange808]

Orange808> Does the Extron RGB 201Rxi (that is the one you were talking about right?) do vga in vga out (I thought the vga on the other side was for the remote or something only)? How would op set it up back to component? Anyway amazing work, I'll be saving this thread in case I encounter this issue too since I have a similar Sony crt to op.

The Extron RGB machines won't convert RGB to component.

They will accept component and output component using the Sync on Green option.

Of course, you can also feed RGB (RGBHV or "VGA" is one possibility) and output any flavor of RGB you want.

If you want to convert RGBHV to component, you'll need a different machine.

In this case, I suggested the Extron RGB as a convenient way to center the image.

[Taiyaki]

Yes I sort of understand what it does but what I meant to say is that op, myself, and most who connect groovymame from the pc to a consumer crt use a vga to component transcoders, so when adding in an extron it would have to fit ahead of the transcoder from the looks of it, and it's not going to come back out as vga I guess. So from my understanding it either needs an additional transcoder on the output to go back to vga or one has to get an rgb to component transcoder. That's a great idea for solving geometry though. Does the extron image repositioning save itself or does one readjust it every time?

[orange808]

Yes I sort of understand what it does but what I meant to say is that op, myself, and most who connect groovymame from the pc to a consumer crt use a vga to component transcoders, so when adding in an extron it would have to fit ahead of the transcoder from the looks of it, and it's not going to come back out as vga I guess. So from my understanding it either needs an additional transcoder on the output to go back to vga or one has to get an rgb to component transcoder. That's a great idea for solving geometry though. Does the extron image repositioning save itself or does one readjust it every time?

The Extron RGB can sit anywhere you want in the chain. The Extron can accept component and output component, so you could drop it in right before the display.

Yes. You have to transcode RGBHV to component to feed that consumer television. RGB and component use different color space.

The RGB units have knobs to adjust the image position. It's very intuitive. It remembers where it's set. Adjisting the image is very quick and easy.

[Dochartaigh]

The RGB units have knobs to adjust the image position. It's very intuitive. It remembers where it's set. Adjisting the image is very quick and easy.

I just wish there was a device (lagless of course for image WIDTH and HEIGHT too! I would be in heaven! (I say this all the time so I guess I'm a broken record lol)

[Taiyaki]

The Extron RGB can sit anywhere you want in the chain. The Extron can accept component and output component, so you could drop it in right before the display.

Yes. You have to transcode RGBHV to component to feed that consumer television. RGB and component use different color space.

The RGB units have knobs to adjust the image position. It's very intuitive. It remembers where it's set. Adjisting the image is very quick and easy.

Thank you. I don't see any component outputs or inputs on these so I'm going to assume I use a BNC to component adapter first right?
So if I understand this correctly I would need (as an example assuming the extron goes at the end of the chain):

vga > into transcoder > out as component > into extron > out as BNC to component and into a RGBHV transcoder > out again as component > consumer CRT.

Do the Extron devices stay on when no signal is being sent or do they hibernate? Does one plug them out to turn them off? I've never had one but had been intending to try one out for years ever since Classicgamer recommend it to me.

I just wish there was a device (lagless of course for image WIDTH and HEIGHT too! I would be in heaven! (I say this all the time so I guess I'm a broken record lol)

Me too. I believe the Extron does introduce a frame of lag or so from what I remember hearing some years ago. EDIT: No I checked it was the jrok which does this not the extron. So apparently the Extron adds no lag, which sounds great.

[Taiyaki]

Actually Rancid, I was looking through my message lists from conversations with classicgamer and found this:

"I like the Sony trinitron tv's for arcade monitors because they have a great image, they last a long time and they have a lot of image adjustments. The thing to watch out for is that some models can't sync to 53hz for games like mortal kombat which have a 253 line resolution instead of 240."

So he had warned me about this back in 2014. Glad I still have these conversations saved, even now they're like a trove of great information.

So if I understand correctly Rancid you were able to fix this issue in the end right?

[orange808]

Extron RGB units don't add any significant latency. Almost zero.

Here is a possible chain:
rgbhv > into transcoder > out as component > into extron rgb unit > out as component > consumer CRT

[orange808]

snip

delete double post

[orange808]

The RGB units have knobs to adjust the image position. It's very intuitive. It remembers where it's set. Adjisting the image is very quick and easy.

I just wish there was a device (lagless of course for image WIDTH and HEIGHT too! I would be in heaven! (I say this all the time so I guess I'm a broken record lol)

For an HD digital display, a DVDO can help with that. 6ms of latency is pretty low. You can go faster with a warp processor, but it's not cheap or user friendly.

On a CRT, I have no ideas for low resolution vertical scaling using an external processor.

[Dochartaigh]

On a CRT, I have no ideas for low resolution vertical scaling using an external processor.

Always looking for the CRT solution, and nothing like what I'm looking for exists unfortunately.

[Taiyaki]

Extron RGB units don't add any significant latency. Almost zero.

Here is a possible chain:
rgbhv > into transcoder > out as component > into extron rgb unit > out as component > consumer CRT

Thanks. I guess I'm already over my head here. I tried googling RGBHV to Component transcoder and came up with nothing. Are there any known recommended units that are around? Also the VGA cable can go into RGBHV with an adapter to scart or something I'm guessing?

[Taiyaki]

Orange> I think I realized how this works out now. I had these male BNC to female RCA connectors lying around, a whole bunch of them from my bvm days, so I realize all I need to do is hook those up to the yuv's both ends of the extron and that would be it, all I'd need to add is the extron 20xrxi itself and one additional component cables to get the job done. The extra converter I'd add to the chain would be an RGBHV to RGBs and from my understand that looks like it would be another extron device?

Thank you for shining light on this, I really wasn't aware that VGA had a different RGB from component until you brought this up. I went up to read more about RGBHV but I'm wondering if adding that additional converter would be worth it. Are the perceived colors really that different? I haven't even professionally calibrated my crt's or anything so I'm not sure I would notice much of a difference.

Rancid> Sorry for hijacking your thread and going on about the extron, but please let us now if you had further developments with getting MK right on your setup, I use a similar tv to yours as well and I'll definitely want to fix the MK issue as well.

[Taiyaki]

Ok so now I have my groovymame pc running too and the games I encountered problems on are also the Mortal Kombat games. I get the same behavior as Rancid as expected since I'm using consumer Sony TV's. Was any solution ever found that worked at making the games playable? I wouldn't mind even if it breaks accuracy a little bit so long as they can be played.