Home Page Forums MAME MAME Mac weirdness

video/mac.cpp has some code to force the view depending on the monitor type, which is what causes the weirdness when using a machine with built-in video plus a card. That was considered the best possible solution ~10 years ago to get the right aspect ratio for the full-page display (3:4), can we do something that sucks less now?

I’ve thought about this a bit, and I can’t think of a simple solution yet. Two things that won’t work:

• Using a machine configuration setting for the monitor type, but the time you can read the I/O port to find out what it is, it’s too late to set the screen’s physical aspect ratio. You can’t read I/O ports before the machine starts, but you need to set screens’ physical aspect ratios before layout geometry is calculated.
• If you put the screen in a slot device representing the monitor, its tag changes depending on the monitor type. Slot cards are set up too late to tell device_screen_interface things what the actual screen tags are.

Another annoyance is that there’s no way from within a layout to get a screen’s aspect ratio by tag. That’s still only exposed by index, and screen indices change depend on card setup.

I guess we just leave it for now.

Further complicating the "physical aspect" issue is the existence of rotatable displays with sensors to detect changes during operation between portrait and landscape modes, such as the Facit Twist terminal or (to return to the subject at hand) the Radius Pivot.

But that doesn’t actually change the aspect ratio, just the rotation. The Radius Full Page Pivot still scans along the long axis when it’s vertical. It’s not like the Apple portrait monitors that scan along the short axis.

ArBee: how much explanation for video cards should be included on the wiki page for the 68k Mac drivers? And how much should go in the list, versus having an additional section specifically for video cards?

We're kind of flying blind here in terms of precedent, but I'd at least list what video modes each card supports and any special features (pan/zoom or acceleration).