Connecting PC/360 to New Astro City

[superpretendo]

Hello all, I have a Sega New Astro City with a Nanao MS9 monitor. I'm looking to connect a PC (MAME and Doujin Shmups) and 360 (Cave Imports) to it with a 15khz picture. I have an Extron Super Emotia, a J-PAC for controls, a PC with an ArcadeVGA, and an Xbox 360. Somewhere along the line of researching (I used a lot of info from Emphatic's site, thanks Emphatic!) I lost my way, haha. Any help with the following questions would be much, much appreciated.

1) How would I hook up the Emotia to the monitor? I understand it can be soldered to a JAMMA fingerboard, but I use a J-PAC for dual-control of both the 360 and PC (Any alternatives with be welcomed), and do not understand how I would connect both to the JAMMA harness.

2) Is the Emotia my best bet for hooking up both the 360 and PC in 15khz? Would there be something else that works better?

Thanks so much in advance. I'm super lost!

[antron]

1) You should be able to send the video from the emotia through the J-PAC. You just need a BNC to DB15 (VGA style) cable, like this. The only problem you may have is that the J-PAC expects seperate H and V syncs, and the emotia only has composite sync. It might not like it.

2) I now use an emotia with a a PC and I don't think it looks as good as my ArcadeVGA did. It could be my unit, but any extra electronics always adds more noise.

But how do you use the J-PAC for Xbox 360 controls? Do you use this: http://www.ultimarc.com/xbox360.html?

If so how well does it work?

[Fudoh]

I now use an emotia with a a PC and I don't think it looks as good as my ArcadeVGA did. It could be my unit, but any extra electronics always adds more noise.

it should look just as good. What do you see ? If the output seems blurrier to you, then you have to shift the picture vertically by 1 line before going into the Extron.

[antron]

the output seems blurrier to you, then you have to shift the picture vertically by 1 line before going into the Extron.

that's exactly how it looks. how do I shift it?

[Fudoh]

In MAME you can shift internally (tab during running game). To generally shift the whole output you need a RGB interface with vertical shift between the PC and the Extron. Same applies to the UVC by the way. Makes a hell of a difference once you shift 1 line up or down !

PS: Same on the 360, but there most of the shoot'em ups can easily be shifted up or down in their own options.

[superpretendo]

1) You should be able to send the video from the emotia through the J-PAC. You just need a BNC to DB15 (VGA style) cable, like this. The only problem you may have is that the J-PAC expects seperate H and V syncs, and the emotia only has composite sync. It might not like it.

2) I now use an emotia with a a PC and I don't think it looks as good as my ArcadeVGA did. It could be my unit, but any extra electronics always adds more noise.

But how do you use the J-PAC for Xbox 360 controls? Do you use this: http://www.ultimarc.com/xbox360.html?

If so how well does it work?

I will try passing the video from the Emotia through the J-PAC, thanks! It was my understanding that the J-PAC doesn't pass the video through quite as well as hooking it directly to the monitor. Though I don't know how I would do that. As far as the 360 control adapter, it's currently on its way to my house. I have used the PS2 control adapter in this same line in the past, and it works great.

Also, does anyone know of any options besides the UVC for 25k video?

[superpretendo]

Also, Antron, how are you connecting your emotia to your display, out of curiosity?

[antron]

Also, Antron, how are you connecting your emotia to your display, out of curiosity?

I made a BNC to SCART cable and used viletim's JAMMA adapter.

[superpretendo]

So, an alternative solution could be...

PC---\

VGA Switcher --- Emotia ---BNC to SCART --- Viletim's Console Adapter

360---/

Would this work, in theory? Also, bypassing the JPAC in this situation, how would I wire my 360 and PC at once?

[superpretendo]

Also, Fudoh, thanks for adding to the conversation. You are a legend

[antron]

So, an alternative solution could be...

PC---\

VGA Switcher --- Emotia ---BNC to SCART --- Viletim's Console Adapter

360---/

Would this work, in theory?

It works in practice. All you are adding it a switch. I also had to modify the BNC to scart cable I bought, as it wasn't wired with a sync going to the c-video scart pin.

Also, bypassing the JPAC in this situation, how would I wire my 360 and PC at once?

you mean controls? I guess you will need a USB switch. How did you plan on doing it with the J-PAC?

[superpretendo]

So, an alternative solution could be...

PC---\

VGA Switcher --- Emotia ---BNC to SCART --- Viletim's Console Adapter

360---/

Would this work, in theory?

It works in practice. All you are adding it a switch. I also had to modify the BNC to scart cable I bought, as it wasn't wired with a sync going to the c-video scart pin.

Also, bypassing the JPAC in this situation, how would I wire my 360 and PC at once?

you mean controls? I guess you will need a USB switch. How did you plan on doing it with the J-PAC?

So, what I think I will try before getting Viletim's console adapter is thus:

PC/360 - VGA Switch - Emotia - BNC to JAMMA Fingerboard. Any suggestions?

The JPAC has two different output connections, and can be used simultaneously with each other (IE - PC and 360, PS2, DC, etc). My original plan was to wire the controls to the JPAC, and connect one output to the pc, and one (two players) to the 360. I'm thinking, however, that doing a pad hack might be a better course of action. It hadn't occured to me that the PC also takes 360 controllers as inputs. I could just use a USB switch, like you said, and connect the PC/360 that way. Anyone know a better way to go about doing this?

[antron]

I now use an emotia with a a PC and I don't think it looks as good as my ArcadeVGA did. It could be my unit, but any extra electronics always adds more noise.

it should look just as good. What do you see ? If the output seems blurrier to you, then you have to shift the picture vertically by 1 line before going into the Extron.

thank you so much, this makes so much sense, but it just never occured to me to do this. I guess the same goes for xbox 360 games that have "arcade" mode graphics like deathsmiles. no wonder it always looked better in "360" mode even through the emotia. I need to shift it too!

[Fudoh]

glad it worked! There are a few selected Emotia units (certain firmwares) which don't need the shifting, but most do and so do all the UVC units.

[antron]

glad it worked! There are a few selected Emotia units (certain firmwares) which don't need the shifting, but most do and so do all the UVC units.

wow, how would they know? wouldn't it have to look for similar adjacent lines and choose them to average? or do they just shift one line blindly?

[Fudoh]

both the Emotia (in 240p mode only though) and the UVC just blend the lines blindly. And for some reason they don't start with lines 1+2, 3+4 and so on, but use 2+3, 4+5 etc. And if you hit the wrong offset, two different lines are merged into one. That's causing the blurry edges. If you check this with a 360 and a title like Deathsmiles, Futari or ESPGaluda2 (with the arcade graphics mode) and you shift the picture you'll notice a HUGE difference with every step you take. Blurry / clear / blurry / clear and so on...

[fagin]

I now use an emotia with a a PC and I don't think it looks as good as my ArcadeVGA did. It could be my unit, but any extra electronics always adds more noise.

it should look just as good. What do you see ? If the output seems blurrier to you, then you have to shift the picture vertically by 1 line before going into the Extron.

Did some interesting "testing" yesterday with MAME, Emotia and BVM.

As suggested anything that can be line doubled up to a maximum of 480p is good for the Emotia and pixel perfection on the scanlines. This starts to go wrong with CPS though..... however I have managed to find the perfect "mame internal" scaling figures, to adjust what is being fed to the Emotia for pixel perfection on the scanlines for CPS. If I can be arsed I might see if I can work out a formulae to work with any other 15khz resolution.

[Fudoh]

We had a thread on this quite recently. The horizontal resolution has to be a minimum of 2x the game's resolution, so if you use an output resolution of 854x480 you should be fine. MAME's auto scaling should adjust to this just properly as long as DirectDraw is used for the video output.

What's your solution to this ?

EDIT: this was the thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43976

[fagin]

Maybe I was missing a trick when I read the other thread previously...... I'll give that a go and report back on the results.

[fagin]

Struggling with this one....

How am I supposed to choose a resolution of 854x480 as it's not available within the "pick list" of resolutions? Is this a case of using modelines to specify a new resolution?

[Fudoh]

depends on your setup. On Windows with a Nvidia card, you simply add all the resolutions you want/need in the Nvidia control panel. After that they're available in MAME as well.

[fagin]

ATI (HD7970) I'm afraid..... but I've found a way of adding resolutions for each screen by hacking a registry entry. Going to give this a go.... wish me luck!

[fagin]

Genius..... it worked by hacking the registry. I'll do some proper testing tomorrow night and perhaps start a specific thread on this going into the detail about the resolution hacks etc.

[Fudoh]

excellent! Make sure to test Ketsui as well, as the double-resolution trick didn't work on this one (see other thread). A even higher resolution was neccessary to run this one.

[superpretendo]

Alright guys, I've decided to scratch using the JPAC all together, and use two Xbox 360 Pad Hacks with a USB switcher. That way I can have dedicated controls for both the 360 and PC (As 360 joystick). That being said, how do I send the video from my Emotia directly to the JAMMA connector? I have a Nanao MS9, if that helps.

[fagin]

Alright guys, I've decided to scratch using the JPAC all together, and use two Xbox 360 Pad Hacks with a USB switcher. That way I can have dedicated controls for both the 360 and PC (As 360 joystick). That being said, how do I send the video from my Emotia directly to the JAMMA connector? I have a Nanao MS9, if that helps.

Easy.... wire straight to a fingerboard for RGB and Sync.

Just look on the web for the JAMMA pinout.

[antron]

^ There are some devils in the details here. You will surely get a usable picture this way. I imagine the signal levels coming out of the emotia resemble that of SCART RGB (but with raw sync). When I connected SCART RGB to my MS8, I got black levels that changed with screen content. It turnes out the MS8 does not have a clamp circuit, and I needed to add one in between. Nothing like that existed until viletim made his SCART to JAMMA adapter, which solved the problem.

This being said I once connected my JAMMA Genesis to my friend's New Astro and it worked fine. That was a straight console RGB to JAMMA connection that had the formentioned problem on my MS8. So maybe the MS9 has a clamp circuit unlike the MS8 and you will be fine.