TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe

[John Bennett]

[ukvac] TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe
Well, I've (actually a couple of us ) now lugged my lovely VR Deluxe (from
Matt) up to my second floor office and found some time to get my more
technically literate mates to have a look at it. The initial monitor problem
has been solved (a dry joint on the frame IC) but when the machine boots
(minus it's compressor at the moment) all we get is a full white screen (and
occasionally after rebooting, a white screen with blue lines). The drive bd
works fine (turning the steering wheel gives differing values on the
7segment display) but the possible problem is as follows. The cpu/ram board
has a two parallel rows of red and green LEDs. Initally these all stayed on
but after pressing in the ICs and checking interboard connections when it is
switched on now the first pair of LEDs go out. This leads me to believe they
are all meant to go out in order as the machine goes through its
initialisation test procedure of the ROM/RAM. Is this correct? Does anyone
else have a machine they can check this for me... ArcadeWarehouse ? If
this is correct, then does anyone know which chips are being tested/failing
as the manuals I have (for both Deluxe and Twin) say nothing about these
LEDs

Additionally, how easy is it to drive it's rather impressive 36" WS medium
(high?) res monitor with something else.. say a PS2

--John

DATA Imported from archives: originally posted by John Cassells (john@cassells.screaming.net)

 

[andy_geezer_1976]

Re: [ukvac] TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe
> Additionally, how easy is it to drive it's rather impressive 36" WS medium
> (high?) res monitor with something else.. say a PS2

You won't be able to use a Medium Res monitor on anything else but games
that send a 24.80khz signal.

Using 15.75khz or 31.5khz signals just result in a scrambled picture, and
could damage the monitor, although most modern monitors seem to protect
against this..

Only way it could be done is with a scan rate convertor and personally I've
never seen one for 24.80khz..

That reminds me, if anybody wants a VGA 2 PAL/NTSC RGB convertor (Supports
15.75khz RGB Scart, S-Video and Composite) (Grand Teleview), Frame Pause,
Zoom control, I have one for sale, boxed for £80. Supports VGA upto 800x600
(PAL 50hz).

Andy

 

[John Bennett]

Re: [ukvac] TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe
At 00:25 04/01/01 +0000, you wrote:
>Well, I've (actually a couple of us ) now lugged my lovely VR Deluxe (from
>Matt) up to my second floor office and found some time to get my more
>technically literate mates to have a look at it.

Hang on a minute, you managed to get that thing up a flight of stairs John?
Bloody hell! it was huge!
Did you remove and reseat the socketed ICs, or just press them in harder?
It looked to me like there was a lot of oxidisation that could have caused
problems.
http://www.emuhq.com/smog/news.html
has some info on the hardware

stu.

DATA Imported from archives: originally posted by Stuart (s.d.birchall@pgr.salford.ac.uk)

 

[John Bennett]

Re: [ukvac] TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe
From: Stuart <s.d.birchall@pgr.salford.ac.uk>
> >Well, I've (actually a couple of us ) now lugged my lovely VR Deluxe
(from
> >Matt) up to my second floor office and found some time to get my more
> >technically literate mates to have a look at it.
>
> Hang on a minute, you managed to get that thing up a flight of stairs
John?
> Bloody hell! it was huge!

Hehe... read my post again. My office is on the second floor so we got it up
_2_ flights of stairs. It did have to be taken down into quite a few pieces
though as even if it had been a ground floor room it was far too big to fit
through a door. It's in a spare room on it's own now.. it would've been a
tight squeeze in the main games room with my 2 pinballs, pool table and 2
player sitdown Virtual On

> Did you remove and reseat the socketed ICs, or just press them in harder?
> It looked to me like there was a lot of oxidisation that could have caused
> problems.

Just pressed them in harder in the meantime... I'm gonna try reseating them
tonight if I get the time (my work is getting in the way )

--John

> http://www.emuhq.com/smog/news.html
> has some info on the hardware
>
> stu.
>
>
>
>
>

DATA Imported from archives: originally posted by John Cassells (john@cassells.screaming.net)

 

[John Bennett]

Re: [ukvac] TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe
From: Andy Geez <andrew.lewis5@ntlworld.com>
> You won't be able to use a Medium Res monitor on anything else but games
> that send a 24.80khz signal.
> Using 15.75khz or 31.5khz signals just result in a scrambled picture, and
> could damage the monitor, although most modern monitors seem to protect
> against this..
> Only way it could be done is with a scan rate convertor and personally
I've
> never seen one for 24.80khz..

Latest suggestion was a PC output.. a 3DFX card in 512x384 at 60hz would be
about right (~23khz).. yes/no/stupid?

--John

DATA Imported from archives: originally posted by John Cassells (john@cassells.screaming.net)

 

[andy_geezer_1976]

Re: [ukvac] TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe
>Latest suggestion was a PC output.. a 3DFX card in 512x384 at 60hz would be
>about right (~23khz).. yes/no/stupid?

Yep I developed Mon-ARC Plus (PC to Arcade Monitors/Fixed Freq Monitors
TSR), and yep it supports Voodoo cards (Banshee, 3 series, 5 series)

512x384 at 60hz running at 24.80khz perfectly fine for Med Resolution, Also
640x400 and 640x480 are also possible, the 640x480 mode being at 50hz,
opposed to 60hz. (other modes can be created like 320x200, 320x240, 400x300,
providing the dot clock is programmed at around 24.80khz).

This was primarly designed for MAME/Raine and other DOS games (Like
ZSnes/Quake and all).

I also developed a special Windows Program (Medium Resolution Monitor
support for Windows 9x using Voodoo) that will allow me to run
Direct3D/DirectDraw/OpenGL and Glide programs at 320x200, 320x240, 512x384
(Direct3D/OpenGL/Glide, no Direct Draw), 640x400 and 640x480.

Games look amazing on a big Med Res monitor, DVDs and OpenGL/Glide/Direct3D
stuff.

Andy
http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/park/xng75/arcade
ICQ:20285446

 

[John Bennett]

Re: [ukvac] TECH (help needed): Virtua Racing Deluxe
Cor Andy,
WOO-HOO... thanks for the help. Time to get making leads up and testing
screen modes and games tomorrow methinks

> Yep I developed Mon-ARC Plus (PC to Arcade Monitors/Fixed Freq Monitors
> <snip>
> Games look amazing on a big Med Res monitor, DVDs and
OpenGL/Glide/Direct3D
> stuff.

DATA Imported from archives: originally posted by John Cassells (john@cassells.screaming.net)