Groovymame/ Arcade monitor orientation

[InsertManyCoins]

Hey folks,

Been searching for an answer to this but not come across anything yet so if you could point me in the right direction that would be appreciated.

I have dug out an old Mame project from the garage:

It's just an old PC running Tiny XP - Intel Pentium E5300 Duel core @2.60Ghz

I have an Arcade VGA 3000 graphics card

A 25" Arcade monitor hanatarex polo I think

Jpac

I have an old version of Groovymame unsure which revision but it needs setting up correctly as the switchres stuff doesnt work. My aim is to have the best most accurate setup without the sound/ graphic tearing issues.

From researching I discovered that the Arcade VGA 3000 may not be the best card to get all the supported resolutions so ordered a new graphics card off Ebay - AMD Radeon HD 7450 1GB DDR3

I am planning on installing this at some point this weekend which leads me to my questions.

1. Is there any benefit to updating to the latest Mame/ Groovymame 2.20 with my setup?

2. Is having windows XP an issue at all? I have seen that from a lot of the Groovmame stuff online windows 7 and above are mentioned a lot

3. Which set of CRT Emu drivers should I install? I don't see my exact card mentioned on the lists and it appears there are 2 types

-1.2b Catalyst 6.5

-1.2b Catalyst 9.3

4. Once the drivers are installed is it just a matter of installing the latest VM Maker software and setting the right ini settings?

My plan is to run both Horizontal and verticle games in their correct orientations and this will involve me physically rotating the monitor position.

Not ideal I appreciate but I was wondering how I would achieve this?

Does Groovymame recognise say 1942 being selected and swap to a vertical resolution 224 x 256.

5. Would I need 2 different setups of Groovymame one for vertical and one for horizontal?

Thanks for all your help in advance, hopefully be up to speed on all this stuff again after having a good long break from it.

InsertManyCoins2020-05-16 11:16:31

 

[JonnyG]

1 - No reason not to, fresh start with latest support and up to date romset

2 - After having used Win 7 for years on my cab I switched to Win 10 (previously thinking it was a bit OTT for a cab and maybe not suitable for use with a 15khz CRT but I've had no probs) but I hear really good things about using read only Win 7 which protects your against system corruption being that the cab just boots in the exact same state every time.

3 - You need 9.3 for your HD7450

4 - Follow this guide http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/viewtopic.php?id=433 Never used a dual horiz / vert setup so will let someone else advise you on that. I know some high end cabs have rotatable monitors but from the sounds of it yours doesn't - it's not a job you want to do manually on a per game basis if you ask me though. I know it's not ideal but I run vertical games on a horizontal monitor with no issues.

5 - See above

 

[RygarR]

Re: Horizontal / Vertical

Dunno about MAME itself, but frontends like Attract Mode have an option to select the orientation of your monitor.

If you select 'Horizontal', every game will then run in that orientation. The vertical games will have bars own the side. Select 'Vertical' and the hoizontal games will be in letterbox format.

The visual effects of doing this range from barely noticable to awful - depending on whether interlace kicks in, and how your monitor copes with it.

For the best experience, rotate your monitor!

 

[InsertManyCoins]

Cheers Jonny appreciate the response and guides. I think I will go for a full upgrade of everything then to take advantage of any updates in Mame.

The windows 7 read only build you talk about is this something I can buy? And does it come with Groovymame preconfigured? I take it I can also edit settings and then put back into read only mode?

Many thanks

 

[InsertManyCoins]

Thanks RygarR

I’m thinking that I could have a standard Groovymame setup for horizontal and can play games like 1942 with the bars either side as this will be the orientation used the most but also have a second build dedicated to vertical for when I want a perfect full screen accurate game.

I don’t have a fancy rotation system so it would be a manual physical rotation which I don’t want to be doing too much. so if I went through a phase of wanting to play vertical I would keep it that way for a bit and the switch back when I fancied the horizontal games.

I’m using launch box on my laptop but this pc isn’t as powerful so may look into alternatives I also noticed that when looking through the Groovymame ini file it has the orientation displayed so maybe a simple edit of that to let it know it’s verical May do the trick.

Thanks for your help

InsertManyCoins2020-05-18 10:29:21

 

[JonnyG]

Cheers Jonny appreciate the response and guides. I think I will go for a full upgrade of everything then to take advantage of any updates in Mame.

The windows 7 read only build you talk about is this something I can buy? And does it come with Groovymame preconfigured? I take it I can also edit settings and then put back into read only mode?

Many thanks

Never used it myself but this is the thread with all the info, good luck!

http://www.ukvac.com/forum/read-only-windows-7_topic366332.html

 

[InsertManyCoins]

That’s awesome thank you