The Rombox thread.

[munchiaz]

So I'm an idiot. I wasn't aware of the vhold pots on the back of my PVM 8044q. I adjusted that and it fixed my screen issue. So now i just need to work on getting groovymame fully setup.

EDIT:

So i have groovymame up and running, but i have encountered a new issue. I have the games displaying on my PVM 8044q. Before the game boots there is the screen that shows the title of the game the CPU and all that jazz. Well under switchres i get 640x480i 59hz 15kHz. its this way for every game i try. I must have not done something correctly, but i'm just not sure what. Is it the mame.ini file, or did i do something wrong when installing CRT emu. Any help is appreciated

 

[munchiaz]

Ok, so i fixed the issue with the resolution. In VMM i forgot to send the settings to groovymame.exe. Now that i have that taken care of, when i boot games (cps2) i am seeing 2560x240p 59.630Hz 15.623khz as the resolution (Mmmmmm scanlines). But of course, i solve 1 problem only to encounter another. So now the screen size seems to be off, and theres some extra space to the left of the screen. http://imgur.com/Nvz5TRc Sorry for the piss poor pictures, but it gets the point across. So now i will try and fix this. Probably will before anyone responds, then ill have another issue on my hands im sure

 

[Yodd]

That's pretty normal.

It's one of the reasons I am not a fan of PVMs for groovymame setups. Any time you need to make screen geometry changes, you have to at the very least dive into menus and more often than not go into service mode to adjust it. Or god help if you have an older monitor, open it up and adjust the screen manually. And virtually every different game that runs at a different resolution and refresh rate will require tinkering to adjust the screen correctly.



Soooo, nothing wrong with that. You just need to adjust the geometry on your monitor.

 

[munchiaz]

That's pretty normal.

It's one of the reasons I am not a fan of PVMs for groovymame setups. Any time you need to make screen geometry changes, you have to at the very least dive into menus and more often than not go into service mode to adjust it. Or god help if you have an older monitor, open it up and adjust the screen manually. And virtually every different game that runs at a different resolution and refresh rate will require tinkering to adjust the screen correctly.



Soooo, nothing wrong with that. You just need to adjust the geometry on your monitor.

Ahh ok. I have a similar issue with console games, but its not as bad as this. Yodd, you use an older PC monitor right?

 

[Yodd]

Yeah, I do a 31khz display with scan lines. PC monitors are so easy and quick to adjust.

 

[munchiaz]

Yeah, I do a 31khz display with scan lines. PC monitors are so easy and quick to adjust.

I may have to look into this as an option. Thanks for the input

 

[MtothaJ]

deleted - double post.

 

[MtothaJ]

Ok, so i fixed the issue with the resolution. In VMM i forgot to send the settings to groovymame.exe. Now that i have that taken care of, when i boot games (cps2) i am seeing 2560x240p 59.630Hz 15.623khz as the resolution (Mmmmmm scanlines). But of course, i solve 1 problem only to encounter another. So now the screen size seems to be off, and theres some extra space to the left of the screen. http://imgur.com/Nvz5TRc Sorry for the piss poor pictures, but it gets the point across. So now i will try and fix this. Probably will before anyone responds, then ill have another issue on my hands im sure

Adjusting the monitor geometry on a per game basis is an excersise in futility and not the way to approach this problem.
You need to properly set up you monitor in the mame.ini file. In this particular case you need to decrease the 'H back porch' variable from default value of 8 to c.a. 6.5.

Basically in this line:

15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

change the 8.000 to 6.500

Once you get that sorted, you can then tinker with the video setting sliders in Groovy Mame on a per game basis for those games which need adjustment to get the geometry just right (supposedly its not the pro aproach, but works well enough and far easier than editing the ini files).

 

[Yodd]

Adjusting the monitor geometry on a per game basis is an excersise in futility and not the way to approach this problem.
You need to properly set up you monitor in the mame.ini file. In this particular case you need to decrease the 'H back porch' variable from default value of 8 to c.a. 6.5.

Basically in this line:

15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

change the 8.000 to 6.500

Once you get that sorted, you can then tinker with the video setting sliders in Groovy Mame on a per game basis for those games which need adjustment to get the geometry just right (supposedly its not the pro aproach, but works well enough and far easier than editing the ini files).

Ohhh, very nice. Will need to check that out.

 

[munchiaz]

Adjusting the monitor geometry on a per game basis is an excersise in futility and not the way to approach this problem.
You need to properly set up you monitor in the mame.ini file. In this particular case you need to decrease the 'H back porch' variable from default value of 8 to c.a. 6.5.

Basically in this line:

15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

change the 8.000 to 6.500

Once you get that sorted, you can then tinker with the video setting sliders in Groovy Mame on a per game basis for those games which need adjustment to get the geometry just right (supposedly its not the pro aproach, but works well enough and far easier than editing the ini files).

Thanks. Much apperciated. Will tinker with this later on, and post results

 

[munchiaz]

Thanks. Much apperciated. Will tinker with this later on, and post results

So i changed the number to 6.500 and it helped, changed it to 5.00 and it helped even more. Now i have a different issue, and im not sure if its MAME related. when im in groovymame, after a few minutes the computer will minimize the program and go back to my desktop. I made sure that my power settings were all correct, and its not trying to go to a screen saver or anything like that. Not sure whats causing it

EDIT: So i still don't know what caused the issue, but i tested some more, and i played about 10 minutes of a game without being kicked back to the desktop. while running mame i checked to see if other programs may have been jiving for CPU juice, and nothing. So im kindof at a loss. There really isn't much on this computer besides, groovymame,winrar,chrome, and AMDs video card program. I guess i'll just keep messing around




EDIT:

So i found some programs on the PC that looked odd to me. Turns out they were rootkit malware. I cleaned up the PC, and groovymame has been running fine.

 

[MtothaJ]

Ohhh, very nice. Will need to check that out.

It will work no problem, and once you set it up you should not really require any adjustments for 95% of games.
Using my advanced MS Paint skills I had a go at modifying a diagram I found on the net for the geometry adjustment variables in groovymame.ini , might come in useful:

 

[GohanX]

I recently removed my VGA monitor from my game setup in the office, which means I no longer have access to gaming on my Pi since it can't output low res RGB. Does anyone know what the best way to get a rombox working on a SDTV is going to be these days? The Wii is good enough for most of the consoles, but it doesn't do Mame. I'm thinking a Groovymame rig with a vid card that can output 240p connected to a RGB to component transcoder. Anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[FilthyRear]

I recently removed my VGA monitor from my game setup in the office, which means I no longer have access to gaming on my Pi since it can't output low res RGB. Does anyone know what the best way to get a rombox working on a SDTV is going to be these days? The Wii is good enough for most of the consoles, but it doesn't do Mame. I'm thinking a Groovymame rig with a vid card that can output 240p connected to a RGB to component transcoder. Anyone have any other suggestions?

OG XB?

 

[Gamefan]

OG XB?

That's what I ended up doing. Made things so much simpler!

 

[Thebonuslevel]

My small contribution. Here is my "Box" Fractal node 304. Its pretty large for a "emu box" but it acts as media server, NAS, and steam box and all that. I picked it because it can hold 6 hard drives, a fullsize video card and power supply.

 

[kuze]

Dude I'm pretty sure that's a mini fridge

 

[cdamm]

Dude I'm pretty sure that's a mini fridge

also: my rombox just got finished. i did the rasberry pi 3 thing with retropie and a 128 gb sd card. once all the setup/ bugs were worked out its actually pretty decent! handles everything up to ps1 era pretty well. dc works well, but with a small and noticeable drop in framerate (still very playable). n64 is just a trainwreck- but thats just the world of n64 emulation. neat having emu for zx spectrum, vectrex, apple II, dos, colecovision, intellivision, and a whole bunch of really old stuff.

 

[Pasky]

I ordered a Pi 3 this Friday, installed Retro Pie and tried to play some games, the input lag was pretty fucking horrible until I found out that setting the 'Video_frame_delay' to 5 fixes it. Now there's just about as much lag as playing through a framemeister. It's pretty cool, I like how small it is and you can just use the IBuffalo pads to plug in, gonna be great to take with me on the road during business travels during hotel stays and shit. Might get rid of my spare OG Xbox now.

 

[cdamm]

I ordered a Pi 3 this Friday, installed Retro Pie and tried to play some games, the input lag was pretty fucking horrible until I found setting the Video_frame_delay to 5 fixes it. Now there's just about as much lag as playing through a framemeister. It's pretty cool, I like how small it is and you can just use the IBuffalo pads to plug in, gonna be great to take with me on the road during business travels during hotel stays and shit. Might get rid of my spare OG Xbox now.

that was a key setting for me to figure out. I had the ibuffalo pad going- now i got a logitech f710 going on it. it allows just about everything to run right, but is something of a bitch to make it work right. once the settings are in, it's pretty damn solid for a ps3 style clone.

this is the controller: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-940...=8-1&keywords=logitech+wireless+controller+pc

 

[greedostick]

So this thread has me thinking. I would really like a dedicated pc for emulators. Maybe something that involves hyperspin and MAME.

Do you all think a PC running on something like a BenQ rotatable monitor via HDMI through my xrgb mini would be pretty good?

Im not really sure how the xrgb handles HDMI, but I would think it would be pretty nice if it could still do scanlines via hdmi, and be able to tate my monitor on the fly for SHMUP mame.

Would the video quality be comparable to a real retro console running RGB through an xrgb?

Also, what would be a good amount of CPU and video to run stuff up through the saturn era and some of the newest arcade stuff playable on MAME?

 

[Neodogg]

Dude I'm pretty sure that's a mini fridge

Ha ha, exactly my thought too!

 

[Thebonuslevel]

Dude I'm pretty sure that's a mini fridge

Yeah, doesn't score much in the looks department however the amount of stuff you can fit into it is amazing. Also, since it was built to be a media appliance I wanted a very plain non-descript case.

 

[smokehouse]

A person from work randomly gave me a hacked Gen 1 XBox that currently contains quite a few old XB1 games (including Marvel vs Capcom 2...score). I know zip about these things so I'm going to have to do some research on the to see what things I can load on it. It has a sub section on startup that says "emulators" but that is empty...

Either way...it's a pretty sweet giveaway...

 

[FilthyRear]

A person from work randomly gave me a hacked Gen 1 XBox that currently contains quite a few old XB1 games (including Marvel vs Capcom 2...score). I know zip about these things so I'm going to have to do some research on the to see what things I can load on it. It has a sub section on startup that says "emulators" but that is empty...

Either way...it's a pretty sweet giveaway...

If it has UnleashX, any emulators might be under "games".

When it starts up, is there a splash screen? Does the system boot with the stock xbox animation? If so, under the XBox logo, does it say "Microsoft" or does it say something else?