Questions that do not deserve a thread

[NWrain]

I got my Japanese PS2 today, and was finally able to play Espgaluda. I noticed that in yokotate mode that it outputs 240P. Are all yokotate games on the PS2 240P such as Dodonpachi DOJ, Ibara, and Mushihimesama?

[Fudoh]

No, DDP and ESPGaluda are the only ones. Ibara & Mushihisama need to be patched to 240p. After that they look ok in tate.

[japtor]

I was looking in the back of the marquee area of my Astro measuring out the speaker mounts and noticed what looks like a bulb or fuse or something:




What is it and does it look like it needs to be replaced?

[Fudoh]

That's a preheat fluorescent lamp starter. It needs replacement when the fluorescent flickers for a prolonged time furing startup before lighting up.

[kludd70]

Well, awlright. Got the Super Emotia GX up and running. So I can confirm the power supply worked.

Looks like I need to get some adapters for the component/composite output but at least I can use S-video. Tried it with a PC and it seems to work. Although lines of pixels are missing when I output a 320x240 signal, and 640x480 seems to be even worse. I tried stretching a 240p game to 800x600 and it looked just about perfect though. I'm guessing this has something to do with how my video card handles the scaling.

[Fudoh]

If you're running an emu (MAME etc) you have enable perfect linedoubling, e.g. 224 to 448 with the remaining 32 lines padded black. In MAME you can do this by using DirectDraw instead of D3D. Everything else (like 600p into the Emotia) will give you misaligned scanlines on your 240p image.

[Lord of Pirates]

How does the mini SLG compare to the SLG 3000?

[kludd70]

If you're running an emu (MAME etc) you have enable perfect linedoubling, e.g. 224 to 448 with the remaining 32 lines padded black. In MAME you can do this by using DirectDraw instead of D3D. Everything else (like 600p into the Emotia) will give you misaligned scanlines on your 240p image.

Most of the stuff I was testing should have perfect linedoubling. The problem seems to be that the PC output is always scaled regardless of the resolution (and yeah, 600p wasn't really any better, it was just less noticeable in the game I was testing), i.e. if I'm running in 320x240 or linedoubled 640x480 it doesn't output a correct 240p image, it's squashed slightly. At least I hope it's the PC doing that and not a faulty Emotia.

[Fudoh]

Underscan/Overscan switch on the Emotia, maybe ?

[Ed Oscuro]

Maybe this will eventually become an involved conversation, but hopefully not:

Suggestions on a good EPROM programmer? Mainly interested in reading ROMs off arcade boards, so the standard EPROM families.

[Fudoh]

For years I used a Batronix unit. Not the cheapest ones, but support is great, list of supported Eeproms is massive and the bundled software is excellent.

[Ed Oscuro]

The Batronix BX32 Batupo II looks slightly more expensive than the MicroMall GQ-4X. It looks much better made and might have better software, although it is limited to 32-pin DIPs, whereas the GQ-4X can take 40 pin packages. Going up to a BX40 Bagero II would bump the price all the way to $285, ouch. Guess I'll go count some package legs then. Apparently there are adapters that get even 42-pin packages working in a 32-pin programmer, though.

[japtor]

That's a preheat fluorescent lamp starter. It needs replacement when the fluorescent flickers for a prolonged time furing startup before lighting up.

Interesting, thanks. My lamp seems to start up fine so I guess it's still ok.

Another Astro City question, for the cam locks can you use whatever generic bases with the original cam pieces? I've been using the generic stuff for the doors (both base and cam) but never locked the control panel locked down, and just noticed that I have what seem to be the original cams but not the base parts.

[kludd70]

Underscan/Overscan switch on the Emotia, maybe ?

It turns out that was part of the problem. I was using underscan (which squashes the picture) since whenever I tried overscan the image became super blurry. However, going in to the gfx card settings and moving the display down by 1 pixel fixed everything. Looks gorgeous now, it's AMAZING. Thanks for all the help.

My iScan Pro should be arriving soon, so hopefully there won't be any issues there.

[Fudoh]

However, going in to the gfx card settings and moving the display down by 1 pixel fixed everything.

"must-do requirement" I'm talking about on my website. I know it's possible in MAME, but here it sounds that you were able to fix this in a more general way using the graphics driver ??

[reimu-silvergun]

I bought ikaruga for jp DC but I have a eu/pal DC so it wouldn't play it, 5 years later I learned to burn a boot disc and could run it which is great but then to save from damaging the nice disc I thought of getting a rip and burning that to play.. but that is much much faster.

Do you think I have been playing it in slow motion or is the burn too fast? what should I do if I don't want to use the original disc?

[kludd70]

However, going in to the gfx card settings and moving the display down by 1 pixel fixed everything.

"must-do requirement" I'm talking about on my website. I know it's possible in MAME, but here it sounds that you were able to fix this in a more general way using the graphics driver ??

I'm using my old PC with an Nvidia 7300 card and there's an area in the settings called "move CRT screen position". Using that, anything that's linedoubled 480p looks perfect. I still have some trouble with native 240p sometimes though.

[RaidenViper]

I've made a decision to obtain the XRGB 3 next week. However, some PSU related questions:

Is there any PAL power supply I can use without the need of the original with a stepdown converter?

if not, I recently got this small stepdown converter for use on my famicom:

Is this compatible with the XRGB 3?

[Fudoh]

Is this compatible with the XRGB 3?

it certainly is.

[RaidenViper]

Is this compatible with the XRGB 3?

it certainly is.

Thanks again for your help Fudoh

[NWrain]

I just recently got a XRGB 2. It works really well with official Japanese RGB cables, however after a while the picture cuts out completely and never comes back until I leave it alone for half an hour. Does anyone know why it is behaving this way?

Never mind. It looks like it was a loose cable in my scaler chain.

[Ed Oscuro]

PS2 Slim questions: I've got a 90001 JP and a 75001 US. The JP has always been very quiet, but I haven't played anything but PlayStation 1 games on it. The US 75001 starts up its fan in Resident Evil 4 after 30 minutes or so. Would a 90001 US be quieter? I did notice the JP slim doesn't have a power brick, just a power cable. (I'm sure I can get an idea if it will be quieter when playing PS2 games by checking the power requirements on the back, bu I'd like some ideas).

Another question - Resident Evil 4 on PS2 outputs a kind of letterboxed 16:9, despite my having checked all the settings. It's not "widescreen," it's set normally, and I manually set the console away from "normal" aspect to "4:3." Any ideas?

[Fudoh]

I would suspect the 90001 to run even hotter due to the internal power supply.

RE4 is just 4:3 letterbox, just like the GameCube version.

[Ed Oscuro]

Yeah, I've just forgotten that RE4 on the 'Cube was letterboxed. Shame, but I didn't think it was realistic to make it run fullscreen anyway, with the system already getting rather warm running letterboxed.

Happy surprise in finding out that the JP 90001 and the US 75001 have the power inputs listed in a completely different way...a bit rusty on my units, so I'll have to look up some conversions. 35W on the 90001, 8.5V and 5.3A on the 75001. A quick conversion shows that the 75001 looks to be consuming 45W, which is a fair bit warmer. However I have no idea how much of that is clawed back by an internal power supply. It probably still comes out close. If there is anything the 90001 does to be quieter, it's going to be related to the design for heat dissipation / the actual fan used.

Some online discussions point to an original PS2 Slim without a fan, one with the fan (I assume this means the 75001), and then a newer revision (I guess the Slim; post was written in 2009).

[Zapf]

Is gradius rebirth supposed to be 4:3? contra and castlevania rebirth are (and have appropriate bars on the side when the wii is set to widescreen). Gradius does this weird thing where it is stretched somewhat past 4:3 on the horizontal, but not the full width of the display. This happens on both the wii and wii u. Is this intentional or did they just fuck up the scaling to compensate for the anamorphic widescreen on the wii (this was their first rebirth title, but it didn't change when they eventually did an update).

Whats also weird is that, while you can stretch it vertically ingame (I guess most games, including the wii menu, were designed to fill up the overscan area by default?), you can't take it any further horizontally (increasing the x stretch in gradius rebirth's settings just makes it go behind a black border).

Has anyone messed with this? Just tryin to figure out the appropriate x / y stretch ratio to make it 4:3 again.

[headlesshobbs]

Fudoh: You did a comparison between the Optoma and FrameMeister awhile back to compare the dithering effects between the two. Can you tell me more about this and if the XRGB handles any dithering at all?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Anyone have any experience with these?:

http://www.elgato.com/gaming/game-capture-hd

They're a bit pricy, but if they're worth the investment, I'm interested in getting a good videogame recorder for Xbox shmups (at least midrange quality).

[matrigs]

can anyone tell me, which of those cpu's might be better for a mame / doujin / emu pc?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/26?vs=188

[Fudoh]

what makes you think that the Phenom would be better for any application, when the Athlon wins hands down in EVERY benchmark ?

[matrigs]

what makes you think that the Phenom would be better for any application, when the Athlon wins hands down in EVERY benchmark ?

my god i am SO DUMB: i was convinced that all the bars are "higher = better".

the summary benchmark bar just right below "bench results" confused me, as it is lower for the athlon which now makes idd sense.