ZVG dev

[chadsarcade]

I got tired with having to have the PC plugged into the back of the cab when testing and debugging the menu, so I decided to do something about it.

This should make ZVG development a lot easier...

Chad

 

[trm]

That looks cool! What setup have you got? Some kind of VM running a version of MAME to rasterise the vector output from the ZVG menu?

 

[chadsarcade]

The above is Ubuntu 11.04 and the Linux port of the menu.

I patched the ZVG drivers so that vector writes are (optionally) mirrored to the screen as well as the ZVG. You can have both displays running in tandem, or if the ZVG isn't detected it'll output to the PC only.

Should make life easier, previously I had to have the cab next to the PC, turning the vector monitor off during code updates so it doesn't sit on the spot killer, then powering up to test the results of new code. I was getting a little worried that all the power cycling would lead to ill health of the monitor. Now I can get things working by the output on the PC monitor alone (and in colour, as I only have a G05 to hand!), then connect to the cab when all looks good and I should see the same thing.

Next up is an attract mode tweak... 30 secs or so of random games during screensaver mode

I've got an XP VM on the same box so I can compile the DOS version too - I never did get cross compiling working properly so now at least I can do it all from one box without reboots into different OS's.

 

[trm]

Excellent! My ZVG arrived at the end of last week but I'm not going to get time to touch it for a week or so. I've got a Vectrex (need to cap-kit to get rid of some wobbles) but was planning on using my o'scope to do the initial setup and familiarisation as I don't want to learn on the 25" Amp in my SWC

Would if be possible to get hold of the hacked drivers? I'm leaning towards building a Linux VMAME setup so being able to make all my early mistakes purely in software would be pretty cool. No probs if you need to keep this private though.

Thanks for your work again dude!

 

[chadsarcade]

Sure, I can sort something out.

The drivers are pretty much still pure, what I did was I had my own "drawvector" function in the menu code which every function used rather than calling the ZVG functions directly. This made it easier to apply translations and the like to everything being output to screen.

All I did for screen output was repeated the "send a vector to the ZVG" call only targeted the SDL surface instead. Luckily as I'd used my single function it was the only place I had to make a change.

Likewise the "sendframe to ZVG" function, I called via my own function. I added to this a call to display the SDL screen.

I'll dig out the drivers and calling functions for you.

Cheers,

Chad

 

[retroshaun]

Hey Chad... how do you plan on handling the shutdown of the Linux/PC hardware when everything is implemented into a 'finished' machine? Thats my current concern with my ZVG project and is the only reason I lean towards DOS (though I can't get the SB card working in DOS anyway so I probably don't have much choice!)

 

[chadsarcade]

Hi Shaun,

A "shutdown -h now" will gracefully turn off the PC once you exit. Ideally I need a way to turn off the monitor as well - I had a though on having one of those intelligent 4-ways in the bottom of the cab with the PC plugged into the "master" socket. 2 other sockets would be occupied by the ZVG PSU and the cab itself, with the lead of the 4-way becoming the cab power lead. That way, once the PC shuts down the power should be shut off to the other sockets as well.

Provided you set your BIOS to "power = on when power resumed" it should all fire up when you switch on at the wall (though I can't say from experience the intelligent power strips allow for this).

What model sound card do you have? I picked up drivers for a few when I was testing various models. Some drivers for SBs didn't work whilst another revision (supposedly for the same models) did. I think SBs in particular completely changed their chipsets at one point but kept the model numbers the same.

Chad