I run on a flat panel with a DVI and it's always rock-solid, but I recall at my last job a number of the workstations we had needed to have the refresh rate set in XF86Config so that there was only one choice, 60hz.
From messing around with running Linux on arcade monitors (no, really!) I can tell you that the image not being centered like that is quite likely a timing issue. Running xvidtune will help you create your exact modeline, and strangely enough so will AdvanceMame video setup program. Once you have that modeline in for your desktop resolution, it should always work.
A second complication I had that was similar was with my laptop- it supports a key combination to use the external display, which is somewhat confusion to X. Basically, you had to start it either on the local, on the secondary, or on both displays. Setting it to external only would result in it sometimes "Remembering" the higher refresh rate, causing my display to go off to the right of the screen just like you describe!
SO my advice is to try to make sure your XF86Config *only* allows the correct refresh rate, and make it be one that you have centered as best you can using xvidtune or AdvanceMame's video mode generator.
DB
Dan Beimborn wrote:
I run on a flat
<snip> AdvanceMame's video mode generator.
Can I assume from that post that you did something sick with a multiple-arcade-game-in-a-cabinet type thing using linux?
cheers,
John
John Billings wrote:
Dan Beimborn wrote:
I run on a flat
<snip> AdvanceMame's video mode generator.
Can I assume from that post that you did something sick with a multiple-arcade-game-in-a-cabinet type thing using linux?
Yeah, but nothing sick.. I set up a nice 29" jaleco sit-down arcade cabinet so I could hook it up to a computer or the arcade boards I used to collect. It's pretty cool to se X-windows running on a game screen, though after a while it's more thrilling to use it to play games on!
AdvanceMame is far and away the best way to set up a cabinet.. and AdvanceMame on linux is the most easily tunable (for me anyway) version of mame to use. Advancemame can be found on sourceforge, or via retrogames.com
I got into it because I was a collector of the Capcom games. We had a cabinet at the office that we bought on eBay in startup fever days, and we used to play Street Fighter variants on lunch hour (and sometimes not on lunch hour!). When we discovered that you could play interesting hacks & so forth in the emulated versions, we hooked up some computer guts inside the cabinet and made a wiring harness to switch between real & computer-emulator games.
At the office, I had it so we could be playing Street Fighter with a tiny picture-in-picture in the corner that had my sysadmin notifications squirting into it. It was done with a borderless xwindow that was full-screen, and a smaller one in the corner that was set tailing a logfile :)
I liked the idea, so I got the parts and made one at home. It lasted about a month before I burned out the Horizontal sync inverter trying to get my 1024x768 mode better centered & sized and accidentally fed it too much signal!
It's actually a pretty easy hack. Here in the UK with your SCART connectors, it's very easy to roll your own tv-out cable, you just have to be careful not to fry your TV with the wrong signal!
DB
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Dan Beimborn -
Dan Beimborn -
John Billings