Tuesday, July 5, 2011

RAWHIDE Virtual Pinball General Debugging

Each Virtual Pinball cabinet presents its own set of challenges. This Rawhide is no exception. Here are some of the issues I have had to deal with in the building process:

EVGA GeForce 210
This video card would not hold its settings for dual display. Every time I rebooted, I had to physically swap the display connectors at the card to get the playfield and backbox to display. I returned that card and got a different one...

ASUS 210 Silent
This video card worked fine for configuring dual display, but when I assembled the cabinet and started configuring tables, the DMD would freeze or go blank when I dragged it from the playfield to the backglass display. Tried all kinds of tweaks and settings, but nothing worked. I returned that card and eventually got an EVGA GTS450, which is what I have in my first Hyperpin, and it worked fine for dual display.

Proview 32" monitor
This monitor does not power up when AC is restored to it, and the ON/OFF is out of reach when the display is mounted in the cabinet. I had to rig a lever to physically hit the power button. Primitive solution, but it works, and saved me from having to disassemble the button panel.

Ball movement shuddery... this I discovered was because the displays were connected to the wrong ports. I swapped the displays and now the ball movement is smooth like it should be.

Flippers and Plunger not behaving properly.
I am using a Keywiz (which has a PS/2 interface), and the PC is a Dell GX280 that doesn't have PS/2 ports, so I am having to use a PS/2 to USB Y-adapter. This does weird things to the keystrokes. The plunger, when pulled, will misfire (or release prematurely). The flippers will not hold when I keep the button pressed. It will release, then if I keep the button held down, it will stay up, but this is not really acceptable. I ordered a PCI card with PS/2 interfaces today, and hopefully that will solve the problem.

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