Re: About to attempt AVGA Card install....

Note some of these answers may not be 100% correct, I've used the
ultimarc cards for years and these just represent my experiences and
understanding. refer to ultimarc etc for 100% correct answers ;)

RRcade wrote:
Yes this is Mame related, but don't blast me I also own quite a few
Dedicated machines, and I know there are some closet mamers in here.


I'm about to try installing my Arcadevga card and I don't want to
screw anything up, so could you let me know if this sounds right? I've
read all the Ultimarc documentation but I'm still not sure of the
proper way to install.

I have both a version 1 agp card(R9200) and a version2 agp
card(ATI9250).
I'm going to install the version 1 card on a AMD Athlon MP 900 Mhz 480
MB Ram computer with Windows XP Prof.version 2002 serv.pack1. It has
onboard video, the Display Driver is SiS
651_661FX_741_760GX_M661FX_M661MX_M741_M760_M760GX

I've read that if I have an ATI video card already I should remove the
drivers, since mine is Not do I still need to remove the drivers?

theoretically no, but sometimes windows will detect the wrong drivers
and install the wrong ones from what I remember. If you have trouble
boot into VGA mode, delete the other drivers and install directly from
disk. if you alrady had ATI drivers... yes... you really want to
uninstall them first. ultimately even if you get it wrong... you can
still fix it you really cannot do anything that cannot be undone.


So to install the AVGA I assume I first uninstall the existing
drivers(if required?) then I shut down the computer and in my case
there is no video card to remove so I just install the new AVGA card,
then I connect my computer to my Wells-Gardner arcade monitor via the
breakout cable from Ultimarc.

yes.

Then I turn on my computer and if
windows tries to locate drivers I stop it.The documentation says The
Windows screen should be displayed at 640 X 480 interlaced, 16 colours.

correct

(Does this do this automatically, or is this something I should do?)

should happen automatically.

Then I put in my Ultimarc cd and first load the cards Drivers,reboot
and then load the ATI control panel. Then right click desktop and set
to 32 bit colour.

Now I go into mame:Ensure the default settings in MAME32 are as

I don't use MAME32 (regular old mame) but that seem good depending on
some choices you make.

follows:
Display Tab:
Run in a Window: OFF
Advanced Tab:
Stretch Using Hardware = OFF (if this is greyed out you have not
switched Windows to 16 or 32-bit
colour mode)
Scanlines = OFF
Resolution, Size = Auto (or select from drop-down list in game as
required)
Switch Resolutions to fit = ON
Use DirectDraw = ON


Now the documentation refers to using the Avres program to adjust
resolutions for the mame games

Do I really have to adjust the resolution for each and every game? I
always assumed the AVGA card automatically adjusted to the correct
resolution for every game?

yes and no, mame can auto-choose resolution, but the AVGA card doesn't
support every possible resolution, so you have to to tell the games
which resolution to use, there's a bunch of ways to do this.
The easiest (but least "pure") is to choose a resolution and make mame
play all game at that res then use hwstretch and/or switchres to
resize the games to that image. Technically that defeats alot of the
purpose of the card, but personally I think it looks fine. ito me it's
worth it if you have an older monitor that needs to be adjusted when
you switch modes (ie if it rolls etc when you switch)
The big win is getting to use the arcade monitor which makes a HUGE
difference over a regular computer monitor. you'll find you'll
probably be tweaking the settings for quite a while to get it exactly
as you like it, just don't be afraid.


Like I said I also have the AVGA version 2 and in that documentation
it says you don't even have to tell mame that you're using a Arcade
monitor, does that mean that the version2 card DOES automatically
adjust resolutions?


no. the AVG1 and AVGA2 changed some internal components and connetors
(I think)

Is there anything I missed? I really don't want to screw anything up.

don't panic... there's nothing really that you can do with the
software that cannot be undone/redone!
the only thing you have to really be careful is when switching the
cards etc, just make sure you fully shutdown your system and unplug it
before switching the cards out.
also this is a MAME machine so I assume you don't have any important
data on it. if you do back it up. that way if you really really really
screw things up (it's pretty hard) you can always just re-install and
start again!

-brian
.

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