Anyone using a 400 mghtz machine for cab?

[Hoagie_one]

I have a 400 just sitting around and was wondering what games i can expect to not be able to play.

Will TMNT's and other 4 player beat em ups work OK?

[danny_galaga]

dunno about tmnt but when i was setting up a 400mhz celeron, i found that raiden was too slow. i overclocked it (first attempt at that sort of thing). at 500 something it was still slow and at 600mhz or so i fried it so ill never know!

[captainpotato]

I'm using AdvanceMAME (around v.093 from memory) on a K6-2 500 machine. Street Fighter II is *just* playable. Gauntlet (I & II) and Quartet are fine though.

I'm going to try an older version soon, so maybe it will be better.

[Hoagie_one]

sounds like i need to just go and buy a better "old" computer for this project then.

thanks

[tk_42_1]

I don't have any problems with any of the usual 4-player games on my 400Mhz PII, even though I only have a 2 player CP.

[Hoagie_one]

I though mame didnt use the video card except as a display?  I though it was allcpu cycles?

[danny_galaga]

oh yeah forgot! i was running mame32 v78 running on win98se...

[tk_42_1]

I though mame didnt use the video card except as a display?

[Sephroth57]

I though mame didnt use the video card except as a display?

[Hoagie_one]

all right then, its worth a try.  IF it doesnt work, ill upgrade it

[Thenasty]

I was running 233 before but I was using 36 final and all seemed good. So maybe consider using an oldie version of MAME.

[Hoagie_one]

good call.  Ill miss out on a few newer games, but have better performance overall

[crashwg]

Use mame V36b12.

[Hoagie_one]

I was thinking the last release of v37, why 36?

[jfunk]

We built my little bro a 4-player cab running a P2 400 (MAYBE 450, but i think 400) on an Intel MoBo with 192 Megs of ram..  It's running Win98se with MAMEWAH as the shell..  Runs MOST games in MAME .65 without a hitch..  Metal Slugs get laggy, and MK series, NBA Jam series, etc are unplayable.  But we have some great games of Marvel vs. Capcom, X-men, TNMT, etc, etc.

.55 plays things GREAT.  Even MK1 is a little pretty playable.

Also have .37b14 (i think, can't remember, it's at his house, not mine) on it, but haven't resorted to it, yet, because we've got a lot of great games already 

[SirPeale]

I've got a Galaxian cabinet that has a 486 of all things.  Of course, it's running VAntAGE.

It will be upgraded to either a P75 or a P133 (not sure which I have around) because I can't get Galaga running full speed on it.

And I just might use the latest version of Mame.  Dunno how it'll do on a 133, but since they fixed Galaga's discrete sounds, it's worth a shot for me.

[elvis]

I was thinking the last release of v37, why 36?

From memory 0.36 was the last MAME to use many of the assembly cores, as well as no alpha/transparency and whatnot.

0.37 onwards migrated all code to a much more complete and portable tree, and in turn needed much more grunt.

Remember that the idea of MAME is to document games accurately.  There are plenty of emulators which aren't nearly as accurate as MAME, and instead focus on playability.  For the MAME devs, playing games is just a "nice side effect".

MAME 0.36 on DOS will run most games happily on 200-400MHz hardware.  Post-0.36, you almost need to double (and in some cases triple) hardware requirements.

[Tiger-Heli]

I was thinking the last release of v37, why 36?

What Elvis said, but . . .

R36B12 is the magic pre-alpha blending release, especially important for Battlezone and less for Astdelux (I still use this for bzone with an XP2800 Barton).

R37B15 is the first windows version with hardware stretching and the last truly working System 16 build.

Everyone needs to get over this notion of "I need to just install this version of MAME on my cabinet . . .

Put all your roms in one folder.  Install MAME R36B12, R37B15, 0.55 or so, and 0.90.  Play a few games in all of them, see which one gives you decent performance.  Use this as your primary build.  Use the older builds for the few games that play noticeably poorly in the primary build.  Use the newer builds for games that weren't emulated in the primary build - they will be choppy or sluggish, but they'll work.  Use your frontend to select which Mame build gets used for each game.

You don't have to give up anything . . . .

I wish I knew why more people can't embrace this concept!!!

[Hoagie_one]

I was thinking the last release of v37, why 36?

I wish I knew why more people can't embrace this concept!!!

Because people are lazy

[Dexter]

sounds like i need to just go and buy a better "old" computer for this project then.

thanks

Have you used fastvid before? Its a tiny dos executable that you run from your autoexec.bat file. It benefits older processor machines. My PII 350 got a hell of a boost in dosmame as a result of using it.

[Hoagie_one]

problem is, i have to run windows because of the driver software im using.

[Tiger-Heli]

problem is, i have to run windows because of the driver software im using.

Ummmn, Hoagie, if you are using anything below NT or Win2k, then you are using DOS, and if you drop back below R37B15, you will be running DOS Mame.  It might be in a command box, but it's still DOS at the core.

If you are running 2K or XP, I think you still can run DOS apps, but you are using an emulator ( :-) ) to run them.

Bottom line is the program will probably work for you, although I can't comment on what it does . . .

[megashock5]

OK, this brings up a good question...

I don't know all that much about PCs (Mac user

[Tiger-Heli]

In your collective experience, what would be the best version of MAME to use? I don't need to have the latest games anyway, so I'm looking for best performance for the setup I have.

That should be roughly in the same ballpark as Hoagie's machine, so see my comments above (especially the stuff about multiple MAME versions.

Also, where is the best place to look for older versions?

http://www.mame.net/oldmame.html  (Newer older versions are available by changing the name in the main download from www.mame.net)

[megashock5]

Cool, I will try a few out.

Thanks, Tiger-Heli!

[garyh]

As I'm running DOSMame on a 333MHz PC (and only run the classics) it  sounds from all this that I need R36B12. The problem is that the old MAME site says that "Versions from 0.36b10 to 0.36b16 are unavailable for an indefinite period of time".

Does anyone have a copy of R36B12 they could email?

Regards

Gary

[Hoagie_one]

I believe those versions had teh Pong game built in which was removed later due to legalities.  Good luck finding them.  Wish i had those versions

[SirPeale]

I believe those versions had teh Pong game built in which was removed later due to legalities.  Good luck finding them.  Wish i had those versions

Pong wasn't removed because of legalities, it was removed because it was simulation, not emulation.

[Hoagie_one]

my bad

[IG-88]

What do you guys think of this "optimized" stuff? I haven't had the chance to compare it yet, although the guy who pointed it out to me swears by it.

http://redump.emubase.de/mame.php

[microwrx]

Does anyone have a copy of R36B12 they could email?

Enjoy:
http://patpend.net/ftp/emulators/arcade/mame/

[elvis]

What do you guys think of this "optimized" stuff? I haven't had the chance to compare it yet, although the guy who pointed it out to me swears by it.

http://redump.emubase.de/mame.php

You get some speedups from it, but generally speaking nothing more than 5% on average.

There's also "fastmame" which is compiled with Intel's commercial ICC compiler (as opposed to GCC which is typically used), which makes things nice and speedy.

If you have a few games on your system that are borderline  performance, then the optimised binaries can help.  For instance, I was only just getting enough speed out fo an AthlonXP 1500+ to play gunbird2, often dropping a few frames when there was plenty of onscreen action.   A quick recompile with -march=athlon-xp, and I notice the game is much smoother.

Again, it only helped because I was borderline anyway.  You're not going to magically get 60FPS in calspeed all of a sudden thanks to the optimised builds.

[moonpatrol 4 lyfe]

I emulated MAME for a long time on a 400mhz Celeron.  Some 4 player games will run fine, but expect to turn of the sound emulation in others.  SFII didn't run too well with the sound emulation endabled.  I believe some NeoGeo games ran pretty well though.

Bill

[penjuin]

i ran xmame->tmnt on me linux box @ 500mhz (192mb ram).

four players, no lag in sound or play, and my graphics are a voodoo 2 and an SIS 600! (old for those of you who dont know).

And hoagie, which things do you need drivers for? If you use dos i will almost guarantee a performance boost.

[Hoagie_one]

cant find the dos drivers for the stupid onboard stuff for this dumb emachine

[penjuin]

cant find the dos drivers for the stupid onboard stuff for this dumb emachine

What kind of onboard stuff? graphics? sound?

[Hoagie_one]

sound was teh big one.  I tried using the advance cd and i couldnt get any sound off it.

[SirPeale]

Well?  Why haven't you posted the chipset?  More eyes looking = teh g00d.

[Hoagie_one]

i dont even know how to find that out.

[SirPeale]

Well...you open the box, and find the chip for audio on the motherboard.

Or you can post the motherboard model, and we can help you look.