changing "timing mode" in your video drivers settings to one of these will solve your problem:

General Timing Formula (GTF),
Coordinated Video Timings (CVT) Standard,

Thanks for the reply.

In the Nvidia control panel, my timing was set to "Auto Detect". I tried changing it to both GTF and CVT, and each one had the same result:

- No effect on the Windowed mode. (I know that this was the expected behavior of course.)

- Pressing Alt+Enter to go into full screen mode resulted in my monitor screen going black and the message "Out of Range" appearing on it. It seems that the scan rates for GTF and CVT at that resolution are not possible on my monitor.

Any other ideas?

What would be best is if somehow the windowed mode could be stretched to the right aspect ratio. Simply adding an extra 80 lines to the Y axis (in double-size mode) would do it. Of course, that would make some pixels taller than others so it would look slightly funky. If there were a triple-size mode that corrected the aspect ratio, that would be even better...

With my nvidia drivers the black bars disappeeard if i set 320x200 or whatever resolution dosbox changes to, higher than 60hz, for some fucked up reason the 60hz modes on nvidia are 320x240 modes in timing

You get "Out of Range" cause your refresh rate for 320x200 or/and 640x400 is set to 60Hz. Setting it to default or any other refresh rate will work.

This "fucked up reason" seems to be that as monitors are not able to use very high refresh rate, they are also not able to handle very low refresh rate. And 200 (400) lines with 60Hz are below that limit. So if you try to force your monitor to use 60Hz it just switches to the first resolution it is able to use which is 240 (480). And the way it behaves depends on the timing mode you use (it uses more lines or goes out of range).

Aha. Thanks guys. My solution wasn't exactly what you suggested, but it was close and got me in the right place. In my second trip into the timing frequency screen in the Nvidia drivers, I noticed a check box that I hadn't looked at before. It said "Enable Double Scan For Lower Resolution Modes". Setting the Nvidia driver to GTF and double-scan worked for full screen.

So cool, full screen is sorted. Thanks! Now what about that windowed mode? 😀

Hang on, I take that back. When in that full-screen mode, the picture ends up being wider than my monitor by about ten percent, and the menu controls on the monitor won't let me shrink it small enough to fit. So I can't see the left or right edge of the game, and still can't stretch it tall enough.

I'd like to try setting the refresh frequency for 320x200 higher, as suggested, but I don't know precisely how to to that or where to set the settings.

I went into the Nvidia display properties and it actually let me create a 320x200x75hz mode for Windows itself, which was interesting to say the least. (i.e., it worked, but only about 1/10th of any given dialog box is visible at any one time and it's nearly impossible to select options and such.) However, when I ran DosBox in full screen mode, it didn't seem to use this mode. How do I make DosBox use a higher refresh rate for its 320x200 mode?

"Enable Double Scan For Lower Resolution Modes" is another thing - it display all lower resolutions in doubled resolution. This way you don't get black lines between displayed lines in lower resolutions on larger monitors. It also solves the problem with getting out of range with lower refresh rate.

For window mode switch your windows display into 8:5 resolution (1920x1200 for example) or any very simmilar (1280x768).

Go to "refresh rate overrides"

Aha, that took care of it, thanks!

So where do you set 320x200 to 70Hz (with NVidia cards)? The settings in the Direct3D refresh rate overrides don't have any effect...

Michael

It's not in anything having to do with Direct3D. It's just in the plain old Nvidia control panel, as shown in the screen shot below.

It only worked for me if I changed the display timing to GTF and overrode the refresh rates as shown.

(This should be in the FAQ, shouldn't it?)

We are talking nVIDIA here. What about other cards, like ATi? For me, i own a GF4 Ti4200, changed to CVT and had to adjust some video settings. Other than that, it seems to be working. Using latest Detonators.

P.S: I consider this thread very interesting.

ATI and other cards should have a simmilar pannel with options. If for example your card manufacturer doesn't provide it with the latest drivers you still can use special programs for that (PowerStrip for example).

Michael: you have got a LCD monitor and it works in a completely different way. Maybe someone with access to such a thing could tell us more.

This is more like magic than anything else.

After cheating the latest driver to install on my notebook (the latest official driver is 42.something, that has the refresh rate overrides only for Direct3D), I managed to get it working by connecting a CRT and setting the override to 70Hz for 320x200.

From this moment on, it worked no matter what. Didn't have to change timing formula, and even after a driver reinstall, it worked. I had to connect the CRT because otherwise the only choice in the refresh rate overrides is 60Hz. Now it just says "default", but it works nevertheless, both for the CRT and the LCD.

Michael

>This is more like magic than anything else.

Heh, yeah, I hear you. I refer to all such situations as "FM". (The M stands for Magic.)