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ArcadeVGA and Jomac chassis sync issue


TheWiggman

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Well it's only been about 4 years since I was a regular on this forum, back again (for help of course)

 

I have a cabinet with a 51cm TV, ArcadeVGA (AGP) and Jomac chassis. Never had any issues with it before. Connection details here in an ageing thread.

 

I've had 2 HD crashes and after about 9 months sourced another HD. On turning on the cabinet, there are some clear syncing dramas. Not that there are skylights reflecting off the screen.

 

432368570_IMG_31861.thumb.jpg.9d7ce17b1a8e37ed485b3c933a144497.jpg1958202666_IMG_31851.thumb.jpg.3bd5b93e9e2b2f7dad0ea78e7d320391.jpg

 

I played around with the V and H hold, pincushion on the chassis etc. but to no avail.

Also went through and checked all the pins on the plug. V and H sync coupled, RGB syncs all connected and ground on chassis end has continuity with VGA plug. Had a good look through all connections and can't find anything suss.

 

Any suggestions? Very keen to get it back up and running. Might give me the enthusiasm to (gasp!) finish it.

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Looks like your Cmos battery is dead and has reset Bios settings to default. Replace the battery and reset the correct settings and you should be OK. Possibly default display device was on board etc. seems unlikely that you are getting an arcade monitor friendly signal, so do not leave it on for long, or use a computer monitor to adjust the settings in Bios.

Dave

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It has no hard drive and I paused the boot for the photo.

This is a Jomac 15 kHz chassis with an ArcadeVGA so the two are 100% compatible. I've played hours on this machine, it's only stopped working after it's been sitting idle in the shed for a few months. How would the BIOS settings affect the output of the graphics card?

 

Ed: re-read and came across as a bit negative. Not meant to be. I'll check tonight.

Edited by TheWiggman
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It has no hard drive and I paused the boot for the photo.

This is a Jomac 15 kHz chassis with an ArcadeVGA so the two are 100% compatible. I've played hours on this machine, it's only stopped working after it's been sitting idle in the shed for a few months. How would the BIOS settings affect the output of the graphics card?

 

Ed: re-read and came across as a bit negative. Not meant to be. I'll check tonight.

 

 

No problem WM, not negative at all. Things like halt on all errors except xxx can stop the system booting. When the battery is dead it will revert to standard BIOS settings and cause the machine to hang and wait for an input as it has forgotten your settings due to the dead battery. Had this once on a MAME setup once, and once on an X-in-one arcade board that I fixed for a local member a while back. Not sure exactly how far it gets from the info you provided If you paused boot to get the photo it might not be what I suggested. In any case, check to see if BIOS settings have been retained, if not it might be your issue.

Let us know how it goes.

Dave

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If you can connect any standard arcade board you will know straight away where the problem lays , I very much doubt there is a chassis issue but having said that I have seen a few of these chassis with the input connector pins cracked off where they solder into the chassis , for some reason mostly the sync pin.

If you look underneath where the pins solder they usually look perfect the solder pad breaks away from the track which can be confirm with a multimeter.

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I checked the pins Joey and they're all good. I checked continuity between the monitor plug and solder on the back of the board and -

R G & B all good

R G & B ground are all common to GND

H and V sync (pins 13 and 14) are comom to H/V on chassis.

Pin 5 isn't connected to anything.

 

BIOS is good, battery fine.

 

What next? I don't have a standard arcade board, just the MAME PC.

If it's relevant the jumper on the chassis is set on V.C, not H+V.

Edited by TheWiggman
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The image looks pretty standard for a 31k signal going into a 15 or 24hz chassis.

What does the image do after the bios and the software takes control..

 

or why cant you get past bios or error

 

you need to put something into the chassis that is producing 15hz and see what it does

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Check out the link of the build as posted above gents, it's an ArcadeVGA in an AGP slot plugged directly into a Jomac chassis. The pics I've used are an example of what's going on. I'll reiterate -

 

Cabinet was working, then HD crashed. HD removed.

Sat there for 9 months. Literally.

I turned it on, and it didn't display the picture right (as above).

 

As I said, it has no hard drive and I was just testing the system to see if I could install an OS onto a USB. The new HD for the system is currently being used to recover data from my crashed HDs on my home PC (OT I don't know if there's an EMP grenade in the area but I am having very bad luck lately).

 

Previously, the boot screen/s always displayed correctly as the PC was booting up.

 

Is there any possibility that the ArcadeVGA could be outputting the wrong signal? I'm struggling to believe it because I though Ultimarc had them hard-wired so that they would output 15kHz. I really do not want to go down the path of changing the ArcadeVGA on a whim, as the AGP versions aren't available any more and I have an AGP motherboard.

Is there anyone in Orange/Bathurst area who has an arcade board so I could diagnose whether the problem is with the PC or the chassis?

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OK, hang on. If there is no hard drive attached then the Bios cannot complete boot. If you cannot get past the boot sequence then the ArcadeVGA card cannot get the right output signal going. I can never recall seeing a Bios boot screen correctly displayed on my arcade monitor. I don't think there is anything wrong at all, just that you are not able to get to a point where the ArcadeVGA card can do any work for you.

Plug in a PC monitor and I reckon you will see the boot screen OK. Add a CD to the MB as primary boot device while on the PC monitor and use a boot CD to start up while on the arcade monitor. I reckon you will be back to normal????

Dave.

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AVGA will display all boot screens correctly when fully functional, regardless of a hdd being present.

 

I have an AVGA in one of my cabs and I can see every screen properly from the moment the PC powers on.

Edited by namastepat
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AVGA will display all boot screens correctly when fully functional, regardless of a hdd being present.

 

I have an AVGA in one of my cabs and I can see every screen properly from the moment the PC powers on.

 

Ah, in that case I am out of ideas, sorry WM

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It seems like something has gone amiss with the AVGA or the J-PAC. As others have said, the best thing to do would be to get a 15khz board hooked up. Then you'll know if it is the monitor, or something to do with the video card or J-PAC. My money is on the video card.
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Here's my cable arrangement and continuity as determined by a multimeter.

 

Untitled.jpg.8009ca4140d1d27b0063e4462884ac72.jpg

 

Note that pin 5 is common to the metal on the VGA plug, but not to GND on the plug to the chassis. My first thoughts were if there was a sync issue, there must be a dodgy connection. Should pin 5 be wired to pins 6 7 & 8? I'm thinking no because everything worked before.

 

Yeah namastepat, I'm thinking that too. I don't have a J-PAC. I'll try unplugging and re-plugging the graphics card in vain tonight. I really, really don't want to have to buy a new computer and VGA card as I've already spent enough money on the existing parts.

I've found when Joey suggests, he's right 99% of the time. For the other 1%, he was mistaken as being wrong and it turns out he was actually right.

Edited by TheWiggman
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AVGA will display all boot screens correctly when fully functional, regardless of a hdd being present.

 

I have an AVGA in one of my cabs and I can see every screen properly from the moment the PC powers on.

 

All monitors will react differently to it..

Any chance the arcade vga is ****ed

 

Why don't you plug it into a normal lcd monitor. Most decent monitors will display the frequency coming into the monitor if it cant display it.

If it does display what you have now then you know the card is at fault

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Fair comment Moose but I'm personally wary of plugging things into a $500 item (monitor) for testing like this. Maybe it won't blow it up, but modern LCD screens don't accept 15kHz signals so it'll either break it or display 'incompatible signal' or something along those lines. I highly doubt it'll pop up with a reason for the incompatibility nor a set of options why. Generally they turn on, say "she no go mate', then go back to standby.

 

For what it's worth the DVI output works fine and I can use it as a normal granics card on that.

Another positive is I described the problems to a fellow workmate who I've done a few brews for. He said "I've got a PCIe motherboard I was going to toss on the weekend, would you like it?". "Yes" was the answer, with a please or a 4 letter word either side, can't remember. But anyway I'm only $130 in the negative once I get a new ArcadeVGA if this is actually the problem.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

All monitors will react differently to it..

Any chance the arcade vga is ****ed

 

No I don't agree with that. An arcade monitor at 15kHz will display the image fine during the boot sequence. Pretty sure it's 320x200 so not interlaced - all 15kHz screens should be able to display it.

Yes there is a chance it's asterisked. Fairly high I think.

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I plugged my PC monitor into the DVI output. I decided to install XP on a new drive and in the process it got to the 2nd screen (after loading drivers) and the screen went blank. On, but no image.

Curious.

I tried a few times, same result.

I then thought maybe it needs a HD to load data on to? I plugged in a HD from the PC inside and accidentally allowed it to open XP. During the intro screen it suddely started to flash a bit and the image separated.

 

Other stuff happened, and long story short I'm almost certain it's the ArcadeVGA. I told my tale of woe to a work colleague and he said "actually I have a complete motherboard with RAM and CPU. I was going to chuck it in the bin on the weekend, would you like it?"

So a MAME upgrade it is :D Just need to convince my wife of the $130 outlay on a new ArcadeVGA card.

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You could always forgo a ArcadeVGA for a cheap ATI card and CRT_EMU driver. Although, without a J-PAC, you would have no way of blocking the non 15khz signal to your monitor before the PC boots into windows and loads the 15khz driver.

 

EDIT: Oops, said J-PAC instead of AVGA :) Fixed.

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  • 3 years later...

Ok 3 and a half years later I finally bit the bullet and bought a new ArcadeVGA. I've battled away today and can't get it to work. Once I played around with the monitor sync and position settings this is the best I could get it to look -

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yZnYCRE7TmDXxmhYA (hopefully the link will work)

 

I re-checked everything. I pulled the chassis off to double-check Joey's comments - the rails on the chassis are connected fine. There is continuity to all pin plugs but granted I did not check resistance.

I tried the new ArcadeVGA on 2 PCs and using HDMI to a monitor. It functions.

 

Honestly I'm at wit's end. I'm going to shout out to a local maker's group to see if anyone has an arcade board. Is there anyone in the Albury Wodonga region who might be able to help out?

Alternatively should I just cut all the wiring and re-terminate? I don't know what else it could be and I'm getting to the point where I might have to sell it off for parts. It'd pain me to do it, the MAME's was one of my life's spoils.

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Yes it would be good to try a JAMMA game board to see if the monitor is ok. Also would be good to plug in your mame setup into another monitor to see what happens too. Hopefully there is someone in your area to help out.
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