Sega Astro City Mame

[yetterben]

Doing a mame/NullDc build in my astro. Do these ms8 crt's need a 1 volt or 5 volt signal line? Wondering if i need a jpac or a booster signal or if i can run a breakout cable right to crt. Trying to stay away from the arcadevga as well as the card is just under powered and over priced for what it is. Any help from those that have done this in a astro would be great.

Current mame rig is
q6600 clocked at 4.5 ghz
3 gig Gskill
9800gtx Tri-Sli
xp sp3

AS you can see there is nothing on the planet i cannot max out on my rig.

*edit i am aware the 9 series need a edid* i also have two 7950 here as well

[pubjoe]

You don't need an arcadevga. Soft15khz does the job with a compatible graphics card. geforce series 7 or below (or series 8 and above if you use a dongle purchased from sailor sat for 25EUR - or maybe you can make your own?) or any ati card.

Personally, I would use a jpac to get the signal to the jamma edge as then it sorts out controls too. But I wouldn't know how to run a breakout cable or anything like that.

And sheesh mate - that system. tri sli! What's that? 3x9800's running together? It's a tad overkill for a cab PC. One of those 7950's would do you fine imo. The processor will definitely be handy for emulators though.

[yetterben]

I like overkill systems under water cooling too when i test massive ovrclocks it goes under nitrogen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh4fShI2UT8

[pubjoe]

Fair enough. But I can't think of a single emulator where even one of your 7950s wouldn't be more than enough. Those GPUs (and your electicity) is being wasted in a naomi/mame emulation system ...especially only running a 15k screen. I've got an old £10 graphics card that runs those two emulators at max.

Keep them out for another purpose mate.

[yetterben]

Cool i was under the impression nulldc actually used the gpu. How does it run on your cab?

[pubjoe]

well it runs as good as it can. Nulldc is far from perfect though anyway.

I prefer makaron tbh. Runs a lot nicer - slightly higher cpu requirement.

Nulldc uses the gpu as in it needs more than a really old or really crappy integrated gpu. ...But not much more at todays standards! Same goes with macaron. It just needs to be directX9 compatible really and have it's own fastish ram.

My £10 7300LE with 128MB ddr2 ram ran nulldc fine, combined with a 2-point-something-gig CPU and a gig of ram. macaron ideally needs a dual core processor though - so I have that running on a slightly better setup.

Tbh, as you have a ninja system - if your motherboard has integrated graphics, I suspect that alone could well be good enough with a share of some decent ddr2 system ram.

As for mame. The graphics card is basically ignored (except for simple scaling options) ...With mame (and almost any emulator for that matter), It's all about the cpu.

[yetterben]

True i was aware of mame diverting 99.9 percent of routines to the cpu. I have a dfi mother board and there is not one you can buy with integrated video Almost blasphemy to buy a dfi and want on board video. I was worried more about hooking it up as i all ready have a i pac and a signal booster from ultimarc. So the need for a jpac is kinda null at this point. I did not want to alter any of the wiring in the astro except for simple button lines. the joys of a 40 ft ps2 and monitor cable allow me to keep it far apart.

[glocknyne562]

Sorry to the OP... not trying to hi-jack your thread but I am building a similar project.

I'm picking up an Atomiswave SD this Friday and was wondering if I was to buy a J-Pac... how would I get the cab speakers to get sound from the PC?

My current computer q6600 (not overclocked) with a ati hd 4850 ran MvC2, Hokuto No Ken, CvS2 perfect or almost perfect with very small glitches that is not really noticeable (at least so far). SFIV also runs perfect so your setup should be able to handle anything lol. I am also planning to use Hyperspin, Maximus Arcade, or MALA as the frontend (very hard to choose lol).

[yetterben]

Well got my jpac and it cant sink to my ms9 for spit. Sync led does not even light. ps2 cable routed the right way but notta. just a rolling screen with soft15 and my 7900gs

so here is what i did fire up soft15 click 15hz
set rez in quick rez to 320x240 reboot.

double screen on boot rolling.
windows fires up goes to 320x240 single screen still rolling
kill jpac power stops rolling massive tearing and comes out of sync.

I dunno what i am doing wrong but it only stops rolling when i kill jpac power.
sync lights on jpac never come on either of them.

[pubjoe]

Hmmm, you might have to try different (older) graphics drivers. It's a bit of a lottery which ones work. I found a thread somewhere where people (mostly sailorsat) had tested various graphics cards and drivers and posted if they worked. I just went for the most recent drivers mentioned on that page.

Also, what version of windows are you using?

PS: Sorry I would have looked for that page for you, but I'm on my phone atm so it's a bit of a pain. I'll look later on if your still stuck.

[emphatic]

I believe that if you have a DVI and a VGA on your card, you'll have to either get a DVI->VGA adapter so you can use the DVI (first monitor adapter) with your arcade monitor, or get a dongle that sets the BIOS to use the VGA port.

[yetterben]

tried cards with dvi vga. i have a dvi/vga adapter. MY sync light never even comes on its weird. but clearly xp is 320x240 when it loads as its huge just rolling like a mad man. Adjusting hold pots does nothing either so its a sync issue. like i said the only time i can get a clear picture is killing power to jpac but its smeared and twicthy.

[pubjoe]

I definately had the same issue before I tried different drivers.

[yetterben]

yeah but the sync light does not come on at all it should come on no matter what signal is going threw it. than the sync ok shoul dcome on once it gets to 15hz think my jpac is cooked,

[pubjoe]

Ok, but why not just try changing the drivers to confirm your suspicion?

[emphatic]

I'm currently trying to get an Nvidia 7600 GT card to work with Soft15kHz, but even when the picture is perfect @ 320x240, it keeps on rolling. If I really fine tune the sync pot on my monitor, I can get it just about stable. But it'll start rolling just a moment later.

I've tried several Forceware drivers for the card, installing/unistalling Soft15kHz etc, but I've just dug myself into a deeper pool of problems it seems. Thank god I put RealVNC on that computer and made a Norton Ghost copy of the install before attempting this. My latest venture lead me to try the Omega drivers, but as soon as I try to enter Windows (the computer boots straight into GameEX) the network drops out (no more RealVNC) and my USB keyboard seems to stop working.

I guess my next step is to go back to my latest working Ghost image and hope the card's not damaged or something like that. Next thing to try after that is the basic VGA driver for the card without any fancy Nvidia extras.

[yetterben]

running of 93.71 now nothing they are confirmed working. I am beginning to think i got a dud jpac. Andy said it should also have the sync led on no matter what sync is going to it then sync ok led after it is 15hz. I got notta. strange. I have a ms9 too.

[emphatic]

running of 93.71 now nothing they are confirmed working. I am beginning to think i got a dud jpac. Andy said it should also have the sync led on no matter what sync is going to it then sync ok led after it is 15hz. I got notta. strange. I have a ms9 too.

I've tried with two different J-Pacs and have problems as well. Do you have Jumpers set on your 24kHz and 31kHz pins on the J-Pac?

[yetterben]

15 and 31 like the web page says for 15. Is your sync in led on?

[emphatic]

15 and 31 like the web page says for 15. Is your sync in led on?

It's on if I remove all jumpers. You should try it, just to have a look if the lights/your J-Pac works or not. Also, do you have the J-Pac powered by USB, or what, and do you have the cable attached to the correct connector (the one farthest from the VGA connector)?