CRT Switch Res

RetroArch Linux devices
#1

Hello there. So recently I got this great 17" CRT and as I remembered having used retroarch with native console resolution on a CRT a couple of years ago I thought this “small” CRT hooked up to a small computer would make very suitable retro setup.

Back when I used retroarch with native res before I remember always having to manually set the resolution before starting up retroarch.

This seems to have been solved with the addition of this new “emudriver” switchres setup now. Unfortunately as the documentation is a bit sparse I can’t quite get the whole picture of how these components play together.

TL;DR THE ACTUAL QUESTION As recommended here: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/crtswitchres/ I have a switchres.ini and increased the dotclock_min to 25 and indeed it switches resolutions. Setting “native” clearly gives a clear picture but it is completely offcenter and I can’t move it further using the OSD menu. As for “super resolutions”, I have several dozens of modelines with both 3840 and 2560 in my xorg config, but they all result in an distorted picture. What is the cause of that? I would like to know what it is that I’m missing and in which config file?

My Setup: OS: Debian and the newest RetroArch build - the repo package is extremely outdated - before the new switchres implementation got introduced - and the retroarch steam version doesn’t want to switch resolutions. PC: small 2013 celeron with integrated graphics - will upgrade to a faster i5 system Monitor: generic VGA CRT with around 30˜ - 70˜ khz

#2

emudriver

A WIndows tool that doesn’t have any significance to my issue. As you can see I mixed up quite a few things and I’m still confused by the overlapping configuration options of the switchres.ini and retroarch.cfg file.

I tried all kinds of things to get the screen centered, but to no avail.
For example fiddling around with the following option in the switchres.ini file does nothing:

# Apply geometry correction to calculated modelines
    	h_size                    1.0
    	h_shift                   0
    	v_shift                   0

Though overall the switchres.ini file seems to do something. Increasing the pixel clock lead to it being able to display something at least.

I also tried 480p and it gets the screen zoomed in, at least not completely offcentered.
I can’t preclude the possibility of my CRT just not being able to display that kind of resolution - as you can see the OSD also is quite off. Any thoughts?