Hello, everybody. I was wondering if anyone knew how to make emulators work on my secondary monitor. It's not _precisely_ a monitor, really. See, I have this GeForce FX5700 (256 VRam), that is not only lovely for PC games, but also quite useful for 3D modelling and video edition (which is why I have it. I'm not much of a PC gamer, really). Along many fineries this particular card has, there's a S-Video OUT that allows me to have my TV as a second monitor. I use it for DVDs and AVIs and, to tell you the truth, It's quite useful to preview videos you're editing or to hide away a Lightwave window. Now, the problem. Every emulator I use gives me signal only on the first monitor, not on the pretty S-Video out connected TV. No luck getting any emu to work on the TV. I could do this from the old laptop, that has good old RCA-Out (and gets more mileage as a Playstation, these days), but I still can't get this machine to give me emulator output on the second monitor. I am using these emulators ZsnesW, Snes9xw, Emurayden (a Spanish hack of Connectix VGS), MAME32, Virtual ColecoVision, and NeoRageXP I also have the PC version of Shikigami no Shiro (borrowed from a friend). I would really like to know, since most of you are very technically knowledgeable, if there is a way to make any of these pieces of software to work fullscreen on the second monitor instead of the first one. Thanks a bunch.
Check the software drivers that came with the video card. THere should be options in there to have it as a dual display where you can simply drag an open window "over" to the TV monitor. My video card is a 9600 Pro All in Wonder and has this option built in. When I used to have a second monitor, I did use it as a TV as well as in some PC games that make use of a second monitor. Overall, just check the software, like the utilities that came with it and see if it has options to force an application to be viewed on a second monitor.
When using multiple monitors be sure to make sure the dektop is a single desktop stretched over both monitors and not a single desktop with an extended desktop on the second screen. If it is the second, then none of the acceleration features of the card will be used on the second monitor.
This is quite easy to do with nVidia cards, in my experience. Go to the display control panel, Settings tab, Advanced button, then go to the Geforce tab. Once you're there, the extra menu will slide out to the left, choose "nView Display Mode". There should be an option for "Clone". Choose it, OK out of all the properties dialogs, and if it still doesn't work, go back to this option, and in the drop down titled "Display" below the "Clone" option, it should list "nView Display 1: {Analog|Digital} Display". Switch to "nView Display 2: TV M/NTSC" (or it should say something about PAL in PAL lands), then click "Make this the primary display", and then OK out of all this again. Best NTSC resolution for TV-out emulation is usually 640x480 (most consoles) or 720x480 (WinUAE). I run CCS64 in 400x300 for PAL stuff, and have not found an optimal NTSC resolution yet. Worth noting is that the Genesis/Mega Drive emulation Kega Fusion works best in 720x480 for NTSC, and is damn near visually identical to hardware. I have no experience with PAL sets, but I would imagine the best modes would be 576 line modes, since that's the number of visible lines in a PAL signal (with the other 49 or so being used as blanking). Best thing to remember is, if you can get the desktop to display on the TV-out, then most emulators will also work (emulators that happen to use the overlay should work already in your situation since that's how you watch DVDs with it, but there are relatively few of these as compared to emus without overlay support).
Unless it's PAL-M, which is 480 lines like NTSC. It's used in a lot of South American countries - dunno about Mexico though...?
