HELP needed CRT + HyperSpin

[dompau]

Hi all !

Here's my little story as introduction : a friend of mine is a retro-gamer and collector, he gots his hand on a Sega Blast City Arcade cabinet, without PCB and without the screen. He'd like a working Arcade machine, I mean, "fake", with a PC running emulators & of course.. HyperSpin ! (he had an old cabinet like that with an old PC (I mean.. OLD!) barely running mame...didn't really look good and I showed him HyperSpin that I accidentally discovered on the internet and he was amazed)

(example of this cabinet taken from another forum)

Where am I involved here? I'm not good at electronics and neither am I a DIY man (not really good with screwdrivers if u know what I mean). No, my dope is.. computers, Photoshop is my stuff, I have no issues with coding as well, and setting up a huge thing like HyperSpin, emus and working with huge amount of files is what I can do ...and what he's absolutely away from.

Where's the problem here? the screen! He wants to stick his old Philips CRT 32'' TV with an adaptor VGA-Peritel to get the "retro" curvy look that you lose when using modern LCDs. My issue is there, how to build hyperspin not knowing the resolution I must work for. I was hoping for a 1024 x 768 setup but I have no idea if that will work or not, the problem is I live 250km from him, I do have the PC that will be used.. and of course, he has the TV screen. The graphic card will be an ASUS enGTX275 (nVidia). I've read the original Sega Blast City Cabinet was a 29'' monitor running 640 x 480 at 31KHz but this is kinda irrelevant ...or if I can't do more than 640 x 480 then HyperSpin will just look awful ?! no?

I'm a little lost here, thanks for reading me, a bit long I admit but I prefered anticipating questions. And if there are mistakes, forgive me, english isn't my mother language.

If anyone can shed some light for me on this topic I'd be grateful !

(What I would do If it was mine would have been to buy a nice LCD and have a kickass Hyperspin setup but I can't convince him, he absolutely want his "retro" look with a curved monitor...)

[somail]

Hi dompau

Welcome! I am going to list off a few items to keep the wording to a minimum.

1. I doubt the Nvidia card listed above is going to work with the CRT. Although I am not familiar with a "VGA-Peritel". Assuming the monitor is a standard Arcade resolution monitor, you are going to be stuck at 640x480(i) max. Most common way of getting the signal to the arcade is the ArcadeVGA or using the Crt_Emudriver (search groovymame on google). Both will limit you to a ATI HD3000 or HD4000. It may help if you take the back of the cabinet off and tell us the make/model of the monitor.

2. Windows 7 has a bug when switching between interlaced and progressive resolutions. Due to this, most of the CRT people are running windows XP. Calamity (maker of CRT_EmuDriver) is working on a fix for this, but I believe it is a long way off, and may not even be possible. The reason I mention this is because the next generation of HyperSpin apps are no longer going to support WinXP. This means your friend's upgrade path may be limited if he sticks with a CRT. Some emulators such as Demul have also stopped supporting Windows XP.

3. As mentioned, resolution is going to be stuck at 640x480 max. I can go on and on about resolutions, but if your friend is serious about a CRT I would recommend Groovymame as your "MAME" emulator. Hyperspin looks great at 640x480 but as more and more widescreen themes and HD videos become available this may no longer be the case.

I have 35" CRT in my setup and I love it. That being said, it was a pain in the butt to fix, run, and gt all the software working with. It also makes it darn near impossible to configure due to the poor resolution of text. I usually use a VNC program to configure it and that comes with its own problems. I will not even bother mentioning the weight.

If I was to do this all over again, I would have spent money on a nice 42-45" inch LCD with a high refresh rate. With mame's HLSL settings now maturing and the future of the hyperspin programs, CRT has minimal usage going forward. In addition, all methods that I know of to get a computer signal into a arcade monitor require older cards which are not capable of running the new emulators at high speed (ex. Dolphin & Demul).

If your friend does end up wanting the CRT please make sure you inspect the circuit board of the monitor. Look for bad capacitors as these are very common. It may be worth getting the board serviced while you work on the software/computer.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

[dompau]

Thanks a lot! That's a bunch of infos I'll be in need of that you just gave me. Now I feel even more into my "squaring a circle" problem. I have already got all my stuff prepared for Win7 64 and these comments rise some interesting issues. About the monitor, you said "Assuming the monitor is a standard Arcade resolution monitor" , I'll be more clear , it's not an arcade monitor, and it's not a PC Monitor ! (would be too easy..) it's a .. television. I asked about the model, he said he didn't know, of course, boxes and manuals are long gone.. It's a Philips 32'' CRT television,

Here is the beast by the way, he just sent me pics:

(notice that he switched the original basic blue artwork on top for KOF2002 one ^^..anyway it's not a collector thing since PCB/Monitor were missing)

About the adaptor, it should work as he said, since the guy that made it especially told him so. And that's where I realised the best way was to contact this guy to get more infos about this resolution problem thing, he's a homemade arcade cabinet maker (owning 5), though his ones are using old computers with old graphics cards and plugs (an xbox too I think) as my friend said. So I'm gonna wait for answers from him as well, but this thread will help me too, especially your answers somail. If anyone wanna add informations and knowledge feel free. I recently saw what a piece of art was the new Hyperlaunch but I'm realising he won't be able to benefit from it at all (like for nice hd videos I already got) if he's sticking with such hardware..