MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi everyone, I have a mistercade via jamma in an Arcade cabinet, I'm new to mister in general, arcade games look great, the sound and controls I have no problems, but I have a doubt that if I'm playing the resolution exact of the game, in the groovyarcade is the same or very close the resolution of the mame and the real one of the game, but in the mister do I have two different resolutions? Is this normal or am I playing with upscaling?

You're seeing the analog/JAMMA output (top) and digital/HDMI output (bottom), the analog output doesn't use the scaler unless you explicitly configure it to do so in your MiSTer.ini profiles. These outputs are also displayed in the MiSTer menu if you're viewing the leftmost pane -- where the volume controls are.

"vga_scaler - Sends the scaler output to the VGA port (either Analog IO or Direct Video). This is usually used with computer CRTs and other 31kHz displays which are not compatible with 240p TV signals."
https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... o-settings

More details here regarding analog output configurations.
https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... /crttable/

If you aren't outputting analog from the scaler and aren't using the scandoubler, cores will output using their predefined modes documented here.
https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... nativeres/

prenetic wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 7:18 pm

You're seeing the analog/JAMMA output (top) and digital/HDMI output (bottom), the analog output doesn't use the scaler unless you explicitly configure it to do so in your MiSTer.ini profiles. These outputs are also displayed in the MiSTer menu if you're viewing the leftmost pane -- where the volume controls are.

"vga_scaler - Sends the scaler output to the VGA port (either Analog IO or Direct Video). This is usually used with computer CRTs and other 31kHz displays which are not compatible with 240p TV signals."
https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... o-settings

More details here regarding analog output configurations.
https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... /crttable/

If you aren't outputting analog from the scaler and aren't using the scandoubler, cores will output using their predefined modes documented here.
https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... nativeres/

So is the signal above correct? don't they have to match? if i do vga_scaler=1 it looks bad

Yes, that's correct. They don't have to match and often won't since modern, digital displays typically don't support the breadth of modes analog displays do. Continue using vga_scaler=0 so long as your analog display is fine with that and you'll wind up the intended/native output, just understand that the mismatch between the two readouts is because the digital output is going through the scaler to conform to common digital display modes.

prenetic wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:23 pm

Yes, that's correct. They don't have to match and often won't since modern, digital displays typically don't support the breadth of modes analog displays do. Continue using vga_scaler=0 so long as your analog display is fine with that and you'll wind up the intended/native output, just understand that the mismatch between the two readouts is because the digital output is going through the scaler to conform to common digital display modes.

It is that there is really no lag in the refresh of the image and it really looks like an arcade board, it was simply a question that I had, thanks

Correct, there is no lag, and assuming the core was coded exactly like the original hardware, it should look the same as an arcade board would (only better because the signal to the display may be cleaner with newer hardware).