Looking for some help with a very weird/specific lightgun tracking issue...

On the PC, jamma board, or both?

RiddledTV mentioned that you could dial down the brightness of the gameboards on the EZ Jamma Gameboard with RGB interface. Have you tried that?
I'm talking PC only, I never had this issue with any boards with my switcher in there. Even right now when the PC wont track, if I switch to Maximum Force, it tracks just fine with the same calibration.

Turning down the brightness would only make tracking worse.
 
OK. I'm trying to ask if the over-brightness appearance occurs with both the PC and gameboards.

1. When you have the monitor brightness turned up so that the guns track with the PC, the monitor looks too bright, correct? I assume Yes.

2. Without adjusting the brightness pot on the monitor and you switch over to a game board, the monitor still looks too bright? If Yes, then I believe what RiddledTV was telling you is you can adjust the brightness down ON THE SWITCHER so it doesn't appear too bright, not the monitor brightness adjustment pot. Have you tried that? And if so, does that cause the guns not to track if you dial down the brightness on the switcher?
 
OK. I'm trying to ask if the over-brightness appearance occurs with both the PC and gameboards.

1. When you have the monitor brightness turned up so that the guns track with the PC, the monitor looks too bright, correct? I assume Yes.

2. Without adjusting the brightness pot on the monitor and you switch over to a game board, the monitor still looks too bright? If Yes, then I believe what RiddledTV was telling you is you can adjust the brightness down ON THE SWITCHER so it doesn't appear too bright, not the monitor brightness adjustment pot. Have you tried that? And if so, does that cause the guns not to track if you dial down the brightness on the switcher?
1. Yes, but like it's not TOO bad where it's not passable or anything. I'd even wager people not into arcade games would probably think it looks just fine.

2. I haven't tried that since I don't have those interface boards with adjustments. I'm honestly not concerned with how real games would look really cause I doubt I'll use real games often if at all. I kind of just want the option and am debating even having the switcher in line at this point. I only have 1 game that I can't emulate and it's kind of rare (Locked N Loaded) but realistically I dunno how often I'll have an urge to ever play it.

Tomorrow I'm going to mess with adjusting the monitor calibration pots on the neck board and see if I can get it working better. I'll just be sure to take pics before I adjust stuff so I can get back to what I have it set at now.
 
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Dumb question. Could you instead just run the video to the monitor independently and use a separate switcher for that? Does the image look fine if you run it straight from the board to the monitor? Use the Riddledtv switcher for everything else JAMMA but just either manually plug in the video input for your game source to the monitor or use a separate a/b switcher for the vga/cga outputs to the game board and pc?

So basically video never goes through the switcher board.
 
Dumb question. Could you instead just run the video to the monitor independently and use a separate switcher for that? Does the image look fine if you run it straight from the board to the monitor? Use the Riddledtv switcher for everything else JAMMA but just either manually plug in the video input for your game source to the monitor or use a separate a/b switcher for the vga/cga outputs to the game board and pc?

So basically video never goes through the switcher board.
I'm not even sure how I would be able to do that to be honest.

I would assume that WOULD work in theory though since the issue is only present when running everything through the switcher.
 
Note, I'm not recommending this, but I am a self titled king of "temporary" hack jobs and future previous owner where the new owner scratches their head and say, "What the %&?! is this?!" 😉

Option one: use a jamma extension harness and cut the ends of the the video signal wires and hook that up to the monitor. If that solves your problem, now you just need to solve a new problem, how to switch your R,G,B, Ground and sync between units.

Option 1: buy 10 light switches, or any switches really. Put the switches between your wires and monitor. All 5 video related jamma switches flipped to "on" and all 5 video wires switches from the pc switched to "off" for your jamma game and vice versa for the pc based games.

Option 2: buy another relay switcher that can carry 5 independent signals and see if that avoids the issue you are seeing. Saves you from manually switching 10 switches.

Option 3: find an A/b a/v switcher off of Amazon or something. Wire the wires to match the jacks, just make sure it can pass through 5 signals. A gamble if it would work, but probably a 12 buck piece of equipment or hit up a thrift store.


There's smarter ways to do it, but I'm not that smart to know how! 😉
 
Yeah thanks for the ideas but I'm not going to do all that. If I can't get it to work with the switcher then I may just scrap the switcher all together, cause as I've said, I am kind of keeping it around as a "nice to have" when I don't even know if I will ever really use it aside from a random one off.

I may mess with the monitor RGP pots and see if I can brighten it up in a better way with the switcher connected, but I took a look at them this morning and noticed they all have hot glue on them.

If I do mess with the monitor calibration though, I'm going to take the monitor out of the cabinet because doing it while in the cabinet is a pain in the ass, especially with this monitor.
 
So I basically completely recalibrated my monitor this morning. I pulled the monitor out and put it on the side so I could mess with pots and see the changes without bringing out a mirror or anything.

I followed this guide by Zenomorph here:


After doing that, the guns still wouldn't track properly. One thing I noticed however is that the hardware screen flash on trigger pull does NOT fill the full screen at a certain BRIGHTNESS pot setting. Like once I pass that threshold, the flash covers the whole screen. This may be a USB2GUN thing I am not sure.

But after that, I then tried messing with the RGB gains.

I ended turning them all the way up and then adjusting brightness/contrast down a bit, and I believe I got it in a good spot. The brightness pot and contrast pots are not all the way up now in order for it to track. I think the picture overall just looks better. The colors look great too. It seems to "pop" more. The true blacks aren't COMPLETELY black like the monitor is powered off, however I don't really have an option with needing guns to track. Even with real games I could never get it that black or the guns wouldn't track.

Is there anything bad about having the RGB gains turned up all the way?
 
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