International Topic

[dasfool]

Good news. I finished assembling the new Mame pc and the ATI HD 4670 card performs excellently in it with soft15khz in XP going through a J-pac into my Taito Egret II. I first tried using Windows 7 x64 but couldn't get any of the drivers to work properly with soft15khz, so I gave up and went back to XP.

Currently, Catalyst 9.7 is installed. Can anyone confirm a newer Catalyst working without issues with soft15khz? I'm thinking of throwing on Street Fighter IV, and that game would probably function better with newer drivers.

Thank you very much, SailorSat, for all of the work you've put into soft15khz.

[SailorSat]

Well my Radeon HD 4350/4550 works fine with Catalyst 9.12 on Seven 64bit.

[dasfool]

With Windows 7 x64, after installing catalyst, then soft15khz, none of the low resolutions would be available, but sometimes after a reboot it would say out of range on my pc monitor and plugging it into my arcade cab would work. Nothing would stay put though (another reboot and it'd go back to pc range sync), and after a few hours of trying different things I just gave up. Also, I think soft15khz wasn't uninstalling the registry entries properly in windows 7.

Did you have to do something special to get everything running correctly in windows 7, SailorSat?

[SailorSat]

Hm... Yeah there should be a notification window that you need to run Soft-15khz as Admin to avoid problems with the registry.

I guess it still needs some additional love though.
NVidia doesn't work at all on Seven. ATI didn't need any changes FOR NOW...

[Junior]

Hi, I use soft-15khz since some times now it always works. I tried to patch two computers, one in 2k with TNT2 and one with Xp Pro with radeon9200. I use the program as usually ... install 15 khz. it seems to be good. I reboot and nothing. I have a normal display no 15 khz. Idea ? DCC detection ? Thanks.

[SailorSat]

If the vgas have two outputs, try the other one
Other than that... What driver versions?
R9200s should use Catalyst 6.5
For the TNT2... Oh well... ForceWare 66.93

[Junior]

Woowwwwww so fast. Only one vga available on the radeon 9200 with 6.5 drivers as recommended. I used that card before and it works. I assume you didn't change a thing for old cards in the newer version.

[Junior]

Hi again. It gets weirder. I did a brand new Windows XP Sp2 PRO French installation. I put 6.5 drivers for my ati. I patched and nothing. BUT I did all my updates and "sysprep -mini -reseal". I boot in vga. I change the resolution in 1024x768 and then I'm in 15 khz. Ideas ??? [EDIT] In fact, the sysprep has nothing to do with it. If we change the resolution. It works.

[mrgraves]

i saw the hd4850 is working with Soft-15khz mod, any chances the the hd4850x2 or 4870x2 are also working with the mod? no difference at all

after reading a lot about the soft mod i am still not sure if i can play every mame game as with my ol arcadevga (current cab setup).

whatever the conclusion is, thx for really pushin the old school world of vidgames ^^ THX

[Junior]

It works great ! But I recently discovered that not only the graphic card has to work but the computer. I explain. I did some experiments. Two computer, one from Compaq and one from random parts with the same graphic card. I configure both computers. I start I've got the front-end on both. I start a game on Compaq and nothing. A black screen and unable to do a thing. Reason unknown ? The graphic cards are the same. I even switched the cards. Same configuration. The compaq works great in standard mode . The computer is a exact science, isn't it ?

[obb]

Well my Radeon HD 4350/4550 works fine with Catalyst 9.12 on Seven 64bit.

SailorSat,

Can you tell us exactly how you got it working on Win 7 64bit ???

I have a Radeon 4650, Win 7 64bit and using Catalyst 9.12, and soft15khz doesn't work at all on my set up. Tried loads of different things such as runnin it in compatibility etc but nothing .... Just will not run in 15khz no matter what.

By the way works fine on XP 64bit no problems

Cheers,

[mrgraves]

Finally i got a hd4870 x2 for my cab, will report this week how well it will work with the softmod and emus like demul^^

[italiandoh]

Hm... I've seen that problem myself.
Infact my 33" Polo has exactly the same line problem.
It looks like it hat the fields swaped -> line 2 -> line 1 -> line 4 -> line 3 etc.

However I have yet to find a solution as only THIS monitor hat the problem.
My various smaller screens don't have this "bug".

OK, with the help of a professional arcade monitor engineer I have finally solved this problem. It is caused by a ground loop on the sync input pin of the TDA1675 (vertical amplifier). It is a pcb design fault of Polo and other monitors. I have a Selti monitor and it has this problem too. It is not noticeable unless you use interlaced resolutions.
The ground loop is caused by a filter capacitor placed between the sync input of the TDA1675 (pin 5) and ground (pin 8). In order to fix this, there are two options:

- connect the end of the capacitor that goes to GND directly to pin 8 of the TDA1675 by means of a very short insulated wire
- if this doesn't help, remove the capacitor completely

On my Polo 28" 15 kHz I had to remove the capacitor (C136 on my chassis) to completely fix the problem. Now the image is PERFECTLY stable and correct even with interlaced resolutions (no flickering at all).
I wanted to post this also here for everyone to benefit as it was a very annoying problem and damn hard to fix.
All the best,

Matteo

[SailorSat]

Thanks for the tip.
I'll try as soon as I get home from my holidays

[Junior]

Hi, everyone.

I would like to know what are the recommanded parameters in mame.ini with soft15khz ?
I'm talking about video parameters:

video D3D or DDRAW
hwstretch 0 or 1
triplebuffer 0 or 1
switchresolution 0 or 1

I don't know what's best ?
Sometimes it seems unable to launch game and tries to expand the pagefile.sys

?