ATI Card Flashed to 15K

[Ropi Jo]

OK... you lot win.

Various bods have told me to get an ATI card and flash it to 15K, then use a VGA to RGB converter to get into the scart on my TV in my Mame cab. Up till now I've resisted.

I'm currently only using S-VID. It's always been ok using an old MOBO with a AGP card (Radeon) on W7.

Now I've gone to W10 on a fast MOBO the only PCIe card with S-VID I could find in the box was a nice GF 8800GT. It works, but won't refresh above 25Hz to the TV. Googling shows this is a common issue which has no fix. The flicker is bad. Real bad. Headache time bad.

I looked deeper and found a Radeon 3450HD with S-VID but there are no W10 drivers for it. I installed the W8 drivers but they won't allow any setting up of S-VID.

So... time to bite the bullet.

I'm looking for a step by step....

1. What cheap card will fit the bill.

2. How do I flash it or does it come pre-flashed?

3. Do I buy the VGA-RGB or do I make it? Any plans anywhere?

TIA.

Ropi Jo2020-06-06 18:06:58

 

[Escape-to-88]

You don't need to flash your card to make it run on a CRT. It's just an extra step. There is a guide on arcade controls for flashing with Atom 15 if you really want to. I've flashed radeons before but my current GM setups aren't flashed. Take a look at Calamity's guide on the forums I mentioned.

 

[Ace`]

I could never get flashed cards to work in windows due to the custom drivers not installing. They did work in dos with advancedmame which was nice for it's quick loading but it's very out of date now.

There was a yahoo group or something similar dedicated to flashing ATI cards to 15khz, not sure if it's still about as this was years ago.

 

[Ropi Jo]

OK... so if I don't need to flash the card, how about this.....

I ditch the PCIe card, install soft 15k, and run the video straight from the mobo through my J-PAC set to 15k (to protect the TV), then use a VGA to RGB converter?

 

[Ropi Jo]

Take a look at Calamity's guide on the forums I mentioned.

Errr... yeah. There's no way I'll make that work. Something will go bang. It's way over my head.

 

[Ropi Jo]

Did it the simple (and cheap) way.

Backdated to W7, stuck in the ATI, loaded the catalyst driver and jobs a good'n.

Pic is sweet (and can't believe I forgot how much faster W7 is compared to W10).