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| A single beep from the motherboard.. and then slowdown |
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| Tiger-Heli:
--- Quote from: Truz on March 09, 2004, 02:22:04 pm ---well i went and tried to use the x-arcade with ps/2 keyboard plugged into the passport on the x-arcade and i still had the problem with the shift button and the control stick. Also i am having a problem with mamewah (hehe the probs just keep on coming) . . . whats the deal here? --- End quote --- Not surprised about the PS/2 keyboard not affecting anything. I haven't used MAMEwah, but is there a chance that you have your .ini files or some files in the MAMEwah directory set to read-only - like if you copied them over from a CD. If so, that would do it. |
| Truz:
well i decided to reformat the computer for the hell of it (it was in need of it anyway) and it didnt resolve my problem. I still get the problem within the x-arcade test, and the single beep while playing games. Although the slow down does seem drastically improved now it is still there and annoying. Granted it will only happen once while playing a certain game it is annoying that i cannot figure out for the life of me what the hell the problem is. If anyone can help me out here i would greatly appreciate it. |
| Tiger-Heli:
--- Quote from: Truz on March 09, 2004, 11:11:51 pm ---well i decided to reformat the computer for the hell of it (it was in need of it anyway) and it didnt resolve my problem. I still get the problem within the x-arcade test, and the single beep while playing games. Although the slow down does seem drastically improved now it is still there and annoying. Granted it will only happen once while playing a certain game it is annoying that i cannot figure out for the life of me what the hell the problem is. If anyone can help me out here i would greatly appreciate it. --- End quote --- I contacted a knowledgeable anonymous source and he replied (in part): "Remember when I told you that the PS/2 port triggers an interrupt when the keyboard sends data? If you have enough data being streamed at the cpu it will overflow the buffer (the "beep") and choke the processor.....especially if it is running something computation heavy on a slow system." I doubt you will hear this from their tech support, but my guess is the problem is a less than stellar encoder in the X-arcade (my opinion), combined with possibly a slow processor on your PC, and a processor-intensive application (MAME). To solve it, I would recommend the following options (in cost-benefit) order. 1) This is technical, but you don't need to understand the physics, (from my keyboard hacks page): "There are certain keys which send extra commands to the keyboard buffer and should be avoided. Highlight these non-recommended keys in Gray (for example) as follows: Direction Arrows (note that both HotRod and X-Arcade avoid these), Windows Menu Key, L Windows GUI, R Windows GUI, R Ctrl, R Alt, Insert, Home, Page Up, Delete, End, Page Down, PrntScrn, Pause, Keypad Slash, and Keypad Enter. Details of how I came up with this list are available here. Most keys send three characters to the keyboard buffer. These all send five or more." IF you are using any of these keys with the X-arcade, reprogram it, reprogram MAME to use the re-defined keys, and test it out. 2) If possible, test the X-arcade on a friend's faster machine. If your problem doesn't appear, you might want to upgrade your processor/memory/OS version, or all of the above. 3) It might be helpful to dump MAME for a faster and less hungry emulator, such as Calice, Final Burn, or Nebula for the games you mentioned. 4) You might want to try the USB adapter for the X-arcade, I think it's about $20.00. (Although I'm somewhat skeptical that this would help). 5) If you aren't going to use the X-arcade with console systems, it would be possible to re-wire it to use either a KeyWiz (www.groovygamegear.com) or I-PAC/2 or mini-pac (www.ultimarc.com) encoder for around $40. 6) Live with it or find other favorite games to play (not what you want to hear, I know). |
| Truz:
well the computer that i am having trouble with is a p4 1.3ghz 512 mb ram with a geforce3. But i tried it on my main pc (p4 3.0c, 1 gig ram, geforce fx 5900 ultra) and i did not run into the beeping problem. I did however have that problem within the x-arcade utility program. And i went and checked out the keys that were mapped to the x-arcade, and the ones that might be causing problems are CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT. I know you specified the right ctrl, alt, and shift buttons .... but within the utility it only says xctrl, alt, shift without anything specifying left or right. So i figured ill try and press the right form of the buttons on the keyboard (running through the pass through port) and sure enough the R ctrl, R alt, and R shift registered as the buttons on the x-arcade. So i will try and remap these to different buttons and than see if that helps any. Thanks for all your help. |
| Tiger-Heli:
--- Quote from: Truz on March 10, 2004, 09:20:17 am ---well the computer that i am having trouble with is a p4 1.3ghz 512 mb ram with a geforce3. But i tried it on my main pc (p4 3.0c, 1 gig ram, geforce fx 5900 ultra) and i did not run into the beeping problem. I did however have that problem within the x-arcade utility program. And i went and checked out the keys that were mapped to the x-arcade, and the ones that might be causing problems are CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT. I know you specified the right ctrl, alt, and shift buttons .... but within the utility it only says xctrl, alt, shift without anything specifying left or right. So i figured ill try and press the right form of the buttons on the keyboard (running through the pass through port) and sure enough the R ctrl, R alt, and R shift registered as the buttons on the x-arcade. So i will try and remap these to different buttons and than see if that helps any. Thanks for all your help. --- End quote --- Sounds like decent hardware in both machines (it might be more a function of how fast the particular mobo polls the PS/2 port), I'm not sure of this, but I should have made that clear. Remapping buttons is the easiest (and free) thing to test. Let us know how it turns out. |
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