Thinking of downgrading mame PC, advise needed

[Tokey]

I've been running a 3.2EE P4 with 1 gig of dual channel ram and a radeon 9800xt in my mame cabinet.

[Scott84]

just test it out and see how it runs... network both computers... .or if your mame cab has a cd burner, burn some games and transfer it to your 700 mhz computer. give it a shot and see how you like it.

[whammoed]

Depends on your version of MAME as well.  Mortal Kombat ran fine back in the day on my PIII 700 but on recent releases its very sluggish.  I like to run a more recent version of Advmame because it has the capabilities I need so I use fast, modern hardware.

[GGKoul]

My Mame PC is a 1 gig Athlon w/512 of ram and a Voodoo 2 S-Video out.

[Tokey]

So in addition to mortal kombat are there any other games that jump out as being system intensive?  We stick to the 2D fighters and side-scroller beat'em ups most of the time.

[whammoed]

So in addition to mortal kombat are there any other games that jump out as being system intensive?

[NoOne=NBA=]

An alternative would be something like I did on my cab.



I put a USB hub in the CP area, and made a swappable panel that allowed me to hook up a keyboard/mouse.
The pic above is before I finished the tabletop and cab, but you get the idea.

That allows you to use one computer for everything, without having to short yourself anywhere.

[pointdablame]

At the risk of sounding like paigeoliver, I'd install an older version of mame on your 700mhz system.  Something like mame .55 will have almost all of the popular fighters and side scrollers that you say you like, and it runs significantly faster.

I put .55 on a 450mhz AMD machine, and almost everything ran perfect.  The only place I had trouble was Mortal Kombat and some NeoGeo games off the top of my head.

I also have .55 on a 900mhz athlon system that will go in my bartop and everything i've tried to run worked just fine.

There really aren't a whole lot of games you'd be missing out on since .55 .   Unless there are a few games that were added since then that you just HAVE TO play, i'd go this route.  If all you are doing is MAME and older emulators, that 3.2 is not living up to its potential AT ALL.

[Tokey]

Where can I grab an old copy of mame?  Can I run my .89 romset (for the most part) on .55?

[lcddream]

http://www.mame.net/oldmame.html

[pointdablame]

Where can I grab an old copy of mame?  Can I run my .89 romset (for the most part) on .55?

You'll have to run your .89 set through ClrMame to change any differences that have occured since .55.  It's a pretty simple procedure if you just read the tutorials on teh web.... I believe there is one on EasyEMU... can someone correct/confirm that?

EDIT:  found the link.

http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/clrmameguide.htm

[quarterback]

Where can I grab an old copy of mame?

[romperwomb]

Mortal Kombat ran fine back in the day on my PIII 700 but on recent releases its very sluggish.

Hmm, maybe you could setup your Front End to run an older version of MAME for just the MK games. 

I think this would be quite easy to do with MAMEWAH.  You would switch to the Mortal Kombat themed layout, just like you would switch to Daphne or Visual Pinball.

[SirPeale]

I've used clrmame to check my roms and knew that it could fix some problems but I didn't know it could be used to revert the roms to a previous version of Mame.

It can't change the ROMs themselves, but it can rename them.

[quarterback]

I've used clrmame to check my roms and knew that it could fix some problems but I didn't know it could be used to revert the roms to a previous version of Mame.

It can't change the ROMs themselves, but it can rename them.

  I thought that "change any differences that have occured since .55" meant that it could change any differences that had occurred since .55    Oh well.  Thanks for the clarification Peale

[pointdablame]

I've used clrmame to check my roms and knew that it could fix some problems but I didn't know it could be used to revert the roms to a previous version of Mame.

It can't change the ROMs themselves, but it can rename them.

yes, sorry.  I see that I could have worded my original statement a bit better.  It will rename the roms, but not correct any changes that have occured.   I have not found many problems with this yet, but I'm sure some games will not work.

Is there a list or way to determine which games from a .89 set or similar would not work on .55?

[jimj]

I imagine that none of the newer ini files will work with the older version of Mame?  I just got done using the AVGA Res tool to setup all the game specific ini files for Mame 0.88, but I'd like to downgrade my mame for the speed increase.  Will I need to re-create all the game specific ini files?

[darkmavis]

hope u dont play any of the neo geo footy games, most have isses with .55, but mk and all the other fighters will run ok, well the yo on my networked machine downstairs, and  thats a celeron 700

[danny_galaga]

S.T.U.N runner seems to take a bit to run even though it's from 1989. had a dual processor...

[paigeoliver]

STUN Runner has crazy hardware, there is a lot to emulate.

[darkmavis]

stun runner runs like crap on my machine and its 1.7 processer 

[Sephroth57]

i agree with the MAME version downgrade if you decide to use the slower computer. The new MAME versions get slower every release, and rarely add anything worth playing. mame is starting to suck IMO with new releases, your best bet is to wire a dreamcast into the cab for a nice selection of newer arcade type of games

[SirPeale]

They don't get slower on *every* release, but usually when a particular driver is rewritten it gets slower.

Some of the time, anyway.  There have been quite a few instances where it gets a lot faster.

lokki here on the boards works a lot on the code, and he works on optimizing it. He's made a lot of headway, with 10-20% speed increases.

Upgrades are definitely worth it.  Namco Classics vol 1 & 2 are now playable, and Galaga no longer requires samples as of this latest version.