Blast City Monitor cutting on and off when hooked to PC

TrAb

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Hey guys i have been out of the arcade scene for almost 6 years. I just got my blast city out of storage and decided use some spare pc parts i had to make it into a temporary mame cabinet. When my bios shows up the picture is perfect, once windows starts loading the monitor starts flickering, and sounds as if it is cutting on and off very fast. Picture is very distorted at this point. I know this is probably a resolution problem, but i have the pc set to 640x480p and im not sure why it isnt displaying. I have a dreamcast with VGA converter and it is working perfectly on the same monitor. Any help? Thanks
 

TrAb

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Also I looked at my monitor and it has a auto tri sync chassis in it.
 

grendelrt

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I had problems with Windows changing the resolution once it loaded up. What I did was start the computer and vpn into using ultra vnc , watched what res was set when the blast turned on and then flipped it back to 640x480 60hz through the display adapter properties, not the normal one but the one you get through adapter properties, list modes.
 
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ballzdeepx

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Without knowing what your PC specs are, some video cards won't even display 640x480 without custom drivers. Sometimes the low res modes are hidden as well.
If changing your pc to 640x480 isnt listed as an option you might need to install crtemu drivers or powerstrip to keep it forced after boot up to 640x480.
 

TrAb

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Its windows 7 that im using. I dont know what video card it has either, it is a nvidia but it is built into the motherboard. I just found a arcadevga video card on ebay for cheap so i went ahead and got it. Figured that would clear up my troubles and make it a little easier on me hopefully and also run the newer games without much trouble since it has 1gb video memory. The video card on this board didnt want to display at that res, but i went into the nvidia controls and did a custom resolution. Grendelrt, that idea with ultra vnc is a great idea for checking res, never would of thought of that.
 

skate323k137

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Here's what I do:

Pick up a 15" LCD for a few bucks at the pawn shop and throw it next to your cab.

Get a card video with 2 outputs on it. Connect two displays, one to each output. Ideally don't use your cab monitor yet. (you can use DVI to VGA adapters if you need to)

Figure out which video output the BIOS uses by default. That will be the port you use for a 2nd monitor which is -not- your cabs monitor (the LCD)

Let windows boot. Set up the cards 2nd monitor output to 640x480 60hz. You might have to custom add this mode. That's the output you will connect to your cab, which is actually the secondary output on the card.

In Windows, set the cards second output to be the "Main" monitor. Leave the LCD to the side on the cards main output and extend your desktop on to it.

This way when the system boots, the LCD is used primarily by the graphics card during boot. Once windows boots, it'll switch on the cabs monitor at 640x480 / 60hz, and leave you a hi res extension of your desktop on the LCD (super handy for opening windows and stuff, especially if your cab is tate).

Basically you're making windows "swap" the main monitor after it boots. I've used this method very successfully on my net city cabs.
 

Tripredacus

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Its windows 7 that im using.

You won't be able to get around it unless you use an older OS.

Due to technical constraints in Win7, boot is always displayed in our recommended minimum resolution – 1024x768, regardless of the system’s native resolution.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/02/18/engineering-the-windows-7-boot-animation.aspx

There doesn't seem to be enough people interested in getting Win7 to boot 640x480 for anyone to bother trying to mod the OS.
 

skate323k137

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This is why I use 2 monitors. I'm using windows 7 just fine. No hacks or mods needed. Just manually specified the resolution in the control panel.
 
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TrAb

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TrAb

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Just got the arcade vga video card today and after installing drivers it bored perfect. Monitor flickers one time during whole windows 7 boot.
 

Tripredacus

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I think the arcade vga video card will get around this problem right? At least it says it will on there site. If not ill go xp.

Yeah so as you saw (I quoted this post instead of the other one) that even using a card you can't 100% stop Windows 7 from changing the resolution at boot. You can get it down to a 1-few seconds which I have heard of, or deal with it (if the monitor can handle it) or have some method or circuit designed to not power on the arcade monitor until after Windows loads.
 

TrAb

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Well this is as close as its gonna get i believable. It is just about perfect. I turn the pc on, bios comes up fine, after bios windows logo shows up and you hear the monitor try and change res 1 time which is just one click. Then after that it goes into windows and that was it. But see i tried turning my monitor on after windows had booted before i got the arcadevga and it was still flickering so im still not sure what the original issue was, i know it was at the correct resolution then.
 
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