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I would think that those flyer images would be a good start?

If theres anything that i can do to help on this one then please do let me know (someone!) but on the whole it's not something that's going to prevent me sleeping at night

Flyer images are normally only acceptable if they show completely the wrong color rather than a difference in saturation (which is what's going on here). I would hope it's obvious that photographs of a CRT almost never reproduce exact color, especially ones from the early 80s. Personally, I think the flyers are well within tolerance for what MAME's showing, but you're welcome to bring it up on MAMETesters and see if Aaron bites.

Nah, it's not worth the effort. I've learnt a long time ago now to just accept that mame is always right

If you really wanted to test, you should play the original board *and* the MAME version on the same monitor (with the proper res output, etc) to see if there's any difference. Assuming that was even possible, it would at least give you a 1:1 comparison, and take fluctuations in output device quality out of the equation.

If I can locate a good, working Gorf machine, I'll see what I can find out. The trouble is, it seems to be completely subjective as to what a "good, working Gorf machine" actually is, so any efforts I make could be completely dismissed out-of-hand. I'm not interested in going to the trouble, if it's just going to be ignored.

Actually, I would love to get better colors on the Astrocade games. The current ones are an evil hack and I'm sure they are incorrect. I didn't touch them compared to the last time.

Ideally I would write code to run on the Astrocade hardware and cycle through the colors one at a time. Then someone with an oscilloscope would report the final RGB output voltages. It would be a tedious job but we could finally get proper results.

If someone is willing to do that, I would be happy to write the code. I'm afraid there is too much subjectivity in photographs to rely on those for data, and using an Astrocade console isn't sufficient because it doesn't include the effect of the RGB converter board.

How would you run the code on old hardware? A ROM swap of some sort?

And thank you for setting the record straight about the color accuracy. It's appreciated.

Yep, it would be a ROM swap. There are 256 possible colors supported by the hardware. I would fill the screen with one color at a time so that it is the dominant signal. You would cycle through them by pressing a button. Then you'd need to measure the R,G,B voltage values at the RGB encoder board's outputs for each color.

I can happily do that for you Aaron if you're able to produce the code to cycle the screen colours

Like you say, that's the only way to get the values without including the monitor although you may still need it to be done using two or three different RGB encoder boards because of the somewhat obsolete and strange component on there (we're taling about the board with the paper tube, yes?). I can borrow two or three of these little PCBs if you did want to check the results from more than one since another collector in the same town has a loft full of this kind of thing.

It would also provide an incentive to dump my romset too since i don't recall it matching either of the sets in mame from a point of view of not being either the hard set or the easy set.

It may not be very far different though, I've just never bothered doing anything with the cab since it's never needed any attention.

Interestingly enough, if the hardware supports 256 colours, why on earth does Robby Roto only bother to use 3 or 4 of the things

Which reminds me, I have a fully working original Roto cab too but I don't recall there being any issues that sprang to mind with the emulation of that one

Oh, and a Wizard Of War boardset (but not cab)