No screen just sound in MAME??

[06attaker]

I'm having a problem getting the monitor to come up when I load a game.  It shows the game loading and shows the screens before the actual game comes up.  Then blank.  I can put coins in with 5 and hear them and can hear the game play but no video?  It will do this through mame and also through mala....any ideas....the screen shows everything until a game is actually present... thanks in advance!!

[Slippyblade]

Are you using on-board video or an actual video card?

[06attaker]

video card....windows xp with an old Pentium 4

[Slippyblade]

Just as a test try launching a game with this command...

Code: [Select]

mame [ROM] -video gdi
if that works then try

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mame [ROM] -video ddraw
if that works then try

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mame [ROM] -video d3d
That will help narrow things down.  Also, what version of MAME are you running?

[06attaker]

ok newbie here......how do I do this

[Slippyblade]

From the command line.  You know, that "C:\users\YOU>" thing?  You said in the OP that it was doing the same thing through MAME as well as Mala, I took that to mean you had tried running MAME from the command line as well as through the front end.

If that is not the case, then step one is to try running MAME from the command line.

[06attaker]

ok.. before I just launched mame from windows.  all three of these commands shows about 16 games all the same...

[DudeRegular]

You have to fill in the rom space with a rom of your choice. Otherwise you are getting the mame gui selector screen.

[06attaker]

ok....I tried out donkey kong and the first one gdi comes up but very sluggish.  ddraw looks good and d3d did not show any video at all....

[Slippyblade]

There we go.  So now we know your installation is functional and that the ROMS are good.  We also know that it DOES work, but you've probably got drivers that aren't working with your DirectX install.  Try updating both. 

[06attaker]

Thanks for all the help!!!!! 

[Slippyblade]

Just so you know, GDI is the base windows graphics calls.  The stuff windows uses to draw text and window borders and such.  Telling MAME to use GDI basically tells it to completely ignore almost all graphical accelerations.