Using mame with a dual monitor set up for the first time

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Thu May 21, 2009 6:28 am

Okay so I'm sitting here trying to get vertical shit to run in MAME at full screen on my 17" vertically placed CRT sitting next to my 20" LCD monitor. I hooked them both which set it to 2048x764 or something close to that, rotated the game 90" (which looks fine if I'm only using one monitor at a time), but the game tries taking over both screens at once. I could run it in a window just for the left one (the CRT) but I'd rather not.

I don't really know anything about resolutions apart from the HDTV stuff I learned in the 2 months I had a job selling oversized tvs to clueless white parents. No dual monitor knowledge at all. Help me out here guys.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Thu May 21, 2009 9:11 am

Pretty sure this is going to come down to the driver of your video card plus settings in Mame. I know the AVGA is made to do this (DSUB out to an arcade monitor, DVI to a PC monitor) but even then you can hit snags, In Mame32 there's a "Display" setting in one of the tabs. Might want to cock around w/ that a bit and see what happens.

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Thu May 21, 2009 9:30 am

My nvidia drivers will let me stretch my screen across both monitors, clone both monitors, or just use one. I went with stretching, which is fine except when in MAME it shows half of the game on one monitor and half on the other. You would think selecting "set up for 1 screen" with "first screen" with "1024x" and 90 degrees would actually do what I want but no, it just spreads it across both screens which is impossible to play with.

Also I think you mean Screen and not Display, since Display doesn't have anything I could use in this situation apart from rotating the game. I'm using a CRT monitor via VGA and my LCD is DVI to PC.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Thu May 21, 2009 9:54 am

Yeah, I know it's one of those tabs. I would suggest continually messing around in Mame itself. At least try a few things (including google).

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Thu May 21, 2009 8:41 pm

Yeah I can't find anything right now. Looks like I'll just use one monitor at a time instead.

captpain · Post by **captpain** » Thu May 21, 2009 9:57 pm

With NVIDIA, use NVIDIA Dualview. Set each monitor as you'd like in the NVIDIA Control Panel, with independent resolutions and so on. Do not stretch across two screens.

Then, configure MAME to use either SCREEN1 or SCREEN2, whichever you'd like to run games on. You can match your resolution in the MAME settings if you don't want the windows on your other monitor to be disturbed.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Thu May 21, 2009 10:06 pm

captpain wrote:With NVIDIA, use NVIDIA Dualview. Set each monitor as you'd like in the NVIDIA Control Panel, with independent resolutions and so on. Do not stretch across two screens.

Then, configure MAME to use either SCREEN1 or SCREEN2, whichever you'd like to run games on. You can match your resolution in the MAME settings if you don't want the windows on your other monitor to be disturbed.

beat me to the punch

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Fri May 22, 2009 12:08 am

Amazing. This is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Can't get Raiden to run at full screen without unenforced aspect ratio but I'll go with it anyway. Thanks for all your help.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Fri May 22, 2009 12:20 am

i love the desktop.....

hats off to ya....

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Fri May 22, 2009 2:41 am

Let us know how it works. The border between the screens would annoy the shit out of me.

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Fri May 22, 2009 3:05 am

If I disallow enforced aspect ratio in MAME (under properties -> display) and configure the second screen (properties -> screen) so that it runs in full, I seem to have no problem apart from a "ripple" effect while playing. It seems to be because the aspect ratio isn't enforced. Apart from that, it works fine on everything, including Batrider.

The only problem with these nvidia drivers is that they're outdated. Which is hilarious because I'm using a fucking geforce 6600 video card, and even that's outdated by miles. I just hope it won't mess up using Steam occasionally. The screenshot is a bit confusing though; physically the CRT is on the left and rotated, while the LCD is on the right.