ArcadeVGA card and Console/Computer emulators

[Arasoi]

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[jonny5]

Hey all, another technical question from me.

I've decided I'm probably not going to be picking up PC88/98/X68000 computer systems for a while if ever, but I still would like to run these systems at original resolution on my XM29.

http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html

I know that the arcade VGA card is capable of doing many lower resolutions natively

Has anyone tried to use these cards with console or old computer emulators? How feasible would it be to get original PC88/98/X68000/Sharp X1/Game Gear etc running with original resolution on my XM29 with this card via emulator?

I'm guessing it will depend on the emulator itself heavily, but I'm not sure.

Any help appreciated (and always is for my constant questions)

- RCM

or use soft15khz with pretty much any ATI card or geforce 7series or older graphics card.....save you a few bucks....does the same thing...cuz really all an arcade VGA is is a radeon 9200(agp version) or a HD2600(pci express) with custom firmware/bios

as far as resolutions go, as long as the emu itself has options to switch to native res soft15khz(and the arcade VGA too i guess) will run it, providing the resolution is supported(most are)....and if its some odd resolution you can add modelines to soft15khz for custom res's....

[Arasoi]

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[jonny5]

ya man...thats the great thing with soft15khz...quite a few low-mid range mobos have onboard 6 and 7 series GPU's...which is more than adequate to run all but 3d games in mame....

might be able to avoid an external GPU altogether

make sure you grab quickres as well...not sure what OS you are using(im assuming XP)but you cant go any lower than 800X600 without something like quickres....

id also suggest going into the bios and giving the GPU as much ram as it will allow

[DC906270]

or Powerstrip , you need to use this with the radeon cards at least

[Arasoi]

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[jonny5]

I installed soft15khz, and installed the 15khz option. I then installed quickres.

Upon reboot, the only new setting I gained was 640x480, and lost all other settings higher than 1024x768.

Had to uninstall it, could it be the onboard chipset is budget somehow and doesnt support it?

install the 31khz option as well

should sort you out....although soft15khz is meant more as an option for PC's that are stricly being used to output to low-res screens....not sure how convenient it will be if you still plan to use the PC for res's above VGA

or Powerstrip , you need to use this with the radeon cards at least

powerstrip is an other option besides soft15khz...you do not need to use it with soft15khz...its an alternative...and much less noob friendly to configure...and doesnt support as many of the odd lo-res's....

not sure where you heard that you needed to use it with ATI cards...that is incorrect

[DC906270]

i used to use it with my radeon card about 2 years ago+, there wasnt any other options that i knew of at the time. havnt wanted to use any low res since, low res emulation on high res has kept me happy.

[Arasoi]

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[jonny5]

ya....you should be able to get it work....

i know even with soft15khz it can still run at higher res's....i was running a game that outputs at 44khz....and when loaded at normal settings, even with soft15khz installed it automatically switched to 44khz output unless i enabled lo-res in the config before loading....if the lo-res option is selected the game loads up at 15khz 480i

gotta love those XM-29's.... ....the onscreen input signal menu is a godsend for testing

[Jack_from_BYOAC]

This is definitely possible. I've been doing it for a long time with a variety of graphics cards and monitors.

I have successfully used Soft 15khz to play these systems in native resolutions

nes
snes
genesis/megadrive
master system/game gear
pc-88
pc engine/turbo grafx
neo-geo
MSX
MSX2

and a few others. It's just a matter of getting the custom resolutions installed in Soft 15khz and then selecting them from the emulators built in resolutions.

Sometimes this can be kind of a pain. For example, ZSNES does not support native resolutions by default. A number of Soft 15khz users had to petition the devs to release a version that included it. It was released on their forum, and if you weren't following the thread then you wouldn't find it. Sailor Sat now hosts it and a couple other Soft 15khz enabled emulators on her website. The URL is still obscure for some reason so here it is:

http://files.arianchen.de/zsnesw.zip

and arianchen.de for CABmame, her other project.

The PC-Engine was another pain. I prefer Magic-engine for my emulation, but it only supports native resolution in the previous version from the current one. So be sure to get that. I can't speak on HUGO or other pc-engine emulators since I don't use them.

When I have to program a custom resolution I download advancemame and use the ADVV utility that comes with it. This allows me to have a gui and a test display, along with many options to tweak the display while I am working on it. Once I have saved the resolution in advv I open up the advancemame configuration file advmame.rc and copy the resolution settings into the custom file custom15khz.txt for soft 15khz and install it.

A sample resolution would be this:

device_video_modeline CPS2 7.812 384 416 472 496 224 238 239 264 -hsync -vsync

This modeline is specific to my Mitsubishi AM-3501R monitor. For some reason when I use the default Soft 15khz resolutions all the images are pushed over to the right. I have to set all custom resolutions to get them to center properly.

You will also notice that resolution is exactly 384x224. By default Soft 15khz does not support this resolution. It uses a nearest neighbor resolution of 392x240. When you use this resolution you will get a little bit of a black bar at the bottom of the screen until you use monitor controls to adjust the image size for full screen. This will give you a "native" display. However, I believe this results in an inferior image, because it changes the distance between the lines of the graphics, and also changes the thickness. Maybe you would never know the difference, but I can. The exactly correct number of lines looks brighter and more "real". It also helps to use the exact refresh rate of whatever it is you are goin to run. This helps out a lot with the games speed and reduces tearing when side scrolling.

There are a few systems which have given me problems. Mostly handheld systems. Their resolutions are so low that I don't believe I can program a compatible resolution in soft 15khz. I have never really been able to get the Gameboy or Gameboy advance to work properly. However, they seem to work fine in 256x192 mode, and I can almost get them to fill the screen. It works for me.

[Arasoi]

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[wrdaniel]

Sometimes this can be kind of a pain. For example, ZSNES does not support native resolutions by default.

Isn't there an option for custom resolutions in the "normal" zsnes?

[Jack_from_BYOAC]

There is an option for it, but either it is a glitch or intentional that you cannot set full screen for native resolution. It always tries to stretch the image when doesn't have to. The version I linked to has this problem fixed.

Snes9x never had this problem BTW if you prefer using that.

[KoolKolo]

This is definitely possible. I've been doing it for a long time with a variety of graphics cards and monitors.

I have successfully used Soft 15khz to play these systems in native resolutions

nes
snes
genesis/megadrive
master system/game gear
pc-88
pc engine/turbo grafx
neo-geo
MSX
MSX2

and a few others. It's just a matter of getting the custom resolutions installed in Soft 15khz and then selecting them from the emulators built in resolutions.

Sometimes this can be kind of a pain. For example, ZSNES does not support native resolutions by default. A number of Soft 15khz users had to petition the devs to release a version that included it. It was released on their forum, and if you weren't following the thread then you wouldn't find it. Sailor Sat now hosts it and a couple other Soft 15khz enabled emulators on her website. The URL is still obscure for some reason so here it is:

http://files.arianchen.de/zsnesw.zip

and arianchen.de for CABmame, her other project.

The PC-Engine was another pain. I prefer Magic-engine for my emulation, but it only supports native resolution in the previous version from the current one. So be sure to get that. I can't speak on HUGO or other pc-engine emulators since I don't use them.

When I have to program a custom resolution I download advancemame and use the ADVV utility that comes with it. This allows me to have a gui and a test display, along with many options to tweak the display while I am working on it. Once I have saved the resolution in advv I open up the advancemame configuration file advmame.rc and copy the resolution settings into the custom file custom15khz.txt for soft 15khz and install it.

A sample resolution would be this:

device_video_modeline CPS2 7.812 384 416 472 496 224 238 239 264 -hsync -vsync

This modeline is specific to my Mitsubishi AM-3501R monitor. For some reason when I use the default Soft 15khz resolutions all the images are pushed over to the right. I have to set all custom resolutions to get them to center properly.

You will also notice that resolution is exactly 384x224. By default Soft 15khz does not support this resolution. It uses a nearest neighbor resolution of 392x240. When you use this resolution you will get a little bit of a black bar at the bottom of the screen until you use monitor controls to adjust the image size for full screen. This will give you a "native" display. However, I believe this results in an inferior image, because it changes the distance between the lines of the graphics, and also changes the thickness. Maybe you would never know the difference, but I can. The exactly correct number of lines looks brighter and more "real". It also helps to use the exact refresh rate of whatever it is you are goin to run. This helps out a lot with the games speed and reduces tearing when side scrolling.

There are a few systems which have given me problems. Mostly handheld systems. Their resolutions are so low that I don't believe I can program a compatible resolution in soft 15khz. I have never really been able to get the Gameboy or Gameboy advance to work properly. However, they seem to work fine in 256x192 mode, and I can almost get them to fill the screen. It works for me.

I also use soft15 with all these emulators.
I just love this little thing

Do you have a solution for Saturn Emulation?
I use the SSF Emulator, but it always uses 640*480i or 720*576i.
I really like to get a progressive image from it, as the most saturn games use this resolution and I am not a fan of interlaced in the first place, if this isn't the native resolution.

So, as i aksed before
Do you have a solution?

Kai

[HDgaming42]

Sorry to bump from the dead, but I really wish this list of native-rate capable emulators would have listed the actual emulators used! I found the ZNES build, but am somewhat clueless on the others. Anyone care to list which emulators can do native beside their respective systems?

nes
snes - ZNES special build
genesis/megadrive
master system/game gear
pc engine/turbo grafx - which build of Magic Engine?
neo-geo
PSX
Saturn

[Overkill]

Sorry to bump from the dead, but I really wish this list of native-rate capable emulators would have listed the actual emulators used! I found the ZNES build, but am somewhat clueless on the others. Anyone care to list which emulators can do native beside their respective systems?

nes
snes - ZNES special build
genesis/megadrive
master system/game gear
pc engine/turbo grafx - which build of Magic Engine?
neo-geo
PSX
Saturn

nes - FCEUX
SNES - ZSNES (i use regular build)
Genesis/Megadrive - Kega Fusion (need to edit INI file)
Pc Engine - Ootake
Neogeo - MAME, Final burn Alpha
PSX - ?
Saturn - ?

[antron]

I used to do this in DOS with arcmon.exe, those were the days.

[HDgaming42]

nes - FCEUX
SNES - ZSNES (i use regular build)
Genesis/Megadrive - Kega Fusion (need to edit INI file)
Pc Engine - Ootake
Neogeo - MAME, Final burn Alpha
PSX - ?
Saturn - ?

Keep in mind I'm running this out to a Sony PVM-2530 (my cable works, yay!). I'll provide more detail the next time I'm able to fire up the emulation rig again, but here are some of my initial impressions. Do I need to tinker further with settings (I've tried most variables already) or other emulators?

nes - FCEUX - got rid of the tearing, but now my audio skips. easy solution?
SNES - ZSNES (i use regular build) - what resolution do you use? I find it looks soft, and squished inward if I use the native resolution(s)
Genesis/Megadrive - Kega Fusion (need to edit INI file) - godlike. auto switching resolution is...amazing.
Pc Engine - Ootake - for the most part awesome, though it looks...shimmery? Like it's interlaced or something.

[Ed Oscuro]

ZSNES is outmoded at the moment. Byuu's BSNES is now some other wacky name as a multisystem emulator. Not a great frontend but more accurate by a good margin. Kind of annoying to use though.

[HDgaming42]

ZSNES is outmoded at the moment. Byuu's BSNES is now some other wacky name as a multisystem emulator. Not a great frontend but more accurate by a good margin. Kind of annoying to use though.

Yah, it's called Higan. I can't for the life of me figure out where all the control is. Menus are soooo simplistic and minimal--can't find an .ini file to edit. Full screen at 256x224 or 256x240 both exhibit scaling issues. Color me not impressed.

SNES is the last system I'm working on--genesis, NES and turbo are all acceptable to me at the moment. SNES issues still driving me nuts. Was about to try a newer non-240p modified version of ZSNES when I saw your reply. Will post my results...

[Overkill]

ZSNES is outmoded at the moment. Byuu's BSNES is now some other wacky name as a multisystem emulator. Not a great frontend but more accurate by a good margin. Kind of annoying to use though.

Everyday time passes, Byuu is getting BSNES more acurate, and i have a PC powerfull enough to play it in acurate mode, but i just can't get it display right in lowresolution, i just gave up on it. That's why im still using Zsnes on the PC. I know some new improvements are being made for the MESS emulating SNES, maybe that day i will use. Meanwhile SNES is on the list of "current inacurate system" to play on PC via arcadevga or similar ways.

So for SNES emulation i use my nintendo WII, with the emulators Wii_mednafen or snes9gx, running in original resolution

[HDgaming42]

ZSNES is outmoded at the moment. Byuu's BSNES is now some other wacky name as a multisystem emulator. Not a great frontend but more accurate by a good margin. Kind of annoying to use though.

Everyday time passes, Byuu is getting BSNES more acurate, and i have a PC powerfull enough to play it in acurate mode, but i just can't get it display right in lowresolution, i just gave up on it. That's why im still using Zsnes on the PC. I know some new improvements are being made for the MESS emulating SNES, maybe that day i will use. Meanwhile SNES is on the list of "current inacurate system" to play on PC via arcadevga or similar ways.

So for SNES emulation i use my nintendo WII, with the emulators Wii_mednafen or snes9gx, running in original resolution

Can I ask what resolution and settings you use for low-resolution ZSNES? I can't get it to either a) sharp or b) accurate dimensions.

[Overkill]

256x224, but check first if you have it available in quickres

[HDgaming42]

256x224, but check first if you have it available in quickres

OK, I got ZSNES to work by using a newer version and setting my own custom resolution. But the audio. Eeks. Emulating SNES audio has come a long way since ZSNES.

I actually got higan to work by switching to 256 x 240 first. Its audio is much more pleasing to the ears! Hooray!