Stumped.... need help w/ old school setup

[OSCAR]

Okay, please bear with me here.  I know I am going about this the way we did a few years back before all the new toys were available  But in my never ending quest to rid myself of the stuff I've been hiding from the landfill, I'm trying to put together a little system that can run just a handful of the classic vertical games.  [BTW, Peale if you read this, Vantage won't load on this PC.  It errors out with a SIGSEGV(sp) message no matter what I do. ]

Here's what I'm working with:
Pure DOS 7, no Windows installed at all
ATI Rage II+ (pci, no agp on this mobo)
DOS MAME v .59
ArcadeOS 2.5
JPAC
13" TV tube with 8liners chassis

I'm using nothing special other than arcmon.sys to display on the arcade monitor.  Everything like DOS and ArcadeOS comes up beautifully, very sharp and easy to read.  The problem is when I load *any* game, either direct from a command line or through AOS, there is a distinct rectangular "smear" on the screen.  I swear, I could draw a rectangle around the smear on the screen with a Sharpie, and it will show up in every game in exactly the same spot.  The smearing flickers a bit, changing around a little, but it is always in the same area on the screen.  I've tried every vsync, triple buffer, etc option available in MAME, but it doesn't change this affect at all.  There is also a slightly noticeable discoloration down the left portion of the screen (viewed vertically), but that isn't so bad, it actually looks worse in the photo.  It's just the rectangular "smear" box that I can't live with or figure out.

I'm not sure if this is a hardware or software problem, but it only shows up when MAME loads a rom.  If I bring up an Edit box to manually configure a file, it's not there.  It also doesn't show up in the AOS menu or screen shots, only when MAME loads.

Here's a few pics:

My hi-tech test bench for this system (this is what you're supposed to use cocktails for, right?)

Full screen



Close up of smear rectangle



In my non-technical terms, my gut feeling is that this particular card is not writing to the display correctly, but I don't have an extra pci Rage II handy to verify that.  Other than this little annoyance, the overall display is pretty nice.  I'm actually content with the results of a standard Rage II displaying directly to an arcade monitor in full screen with DOS MAME other than this problem.

Any thoughts?  Think it may be this particular video card, or is this a known problem with Rage II's? Or maybe it's not a problem with the video card at all?

Thanks!

[SirPeale]

Hm...

What variety of memory managers do you have going?  VAntAGE is finicky about it.  And some games run better than others.

As for your problem...have you tried another monitor to eliminate that possibility?

[Tiger-Heli]

If it looks fine in DOS and ArcadeOS and Edit, and just bad in MAME, I highly doubt it's a hardware problem.

Q's - All MAME games have the problem (or at least most of them)?

Always in the same area?

Suggestions -
I assume you tested with artwork off (there's not some artwork filter that's loading with all games?)

Can you try a different MAME version and see if that fixes the problem (Dos MAME does not do hardware stretching, so that could be affecting it).

Not sure what you can do with TV out, but maybe try running MAME at different resolutions.

Try other Emulators like, ummmm, other DOS emulators - and see if it occurs there.

[OSCAR]

Peale - I'm using himem.sys and emm386.exe from Win98.  I haven't tried it with a different monitor yet, but I have another one around here that I can try it with.  Something just tells me that the monitor itself is okay, because everything looks fine except when MAME loads up a game.

TigerHeli -  Yes, I have the artwork turned off.  This affects every game I've loaded, and it's always in the same spot on the screen.  I'm not using TV out, this is a TV tube w/ arcade chassis.  In either case, I've tried fixing the default resolution at every one available, no difference.  Something tells me this is somehow related to how MAME is writing the sprites to the screen.  You know how Andy has written (although much more eloquently than I can) before about a one-to-one correlation between graphics memory and the display?  I have a feeling this may be the problem I'm seeing as it is always in the same spot.  When I get some time, I'm going to try some other things like a different video card, version of MAME, and so on.

Thanks!

[dabone]

I would try a copy of advancemame.

That really looks to be a graphics problem.

Can you grab a copy of knoppix linux and boot it up to make sure your graphics card is working correctly?

http://www.knoppix.net

If it works fine in knoppix then I'd switch to advance mame.


I've got a cab running dos7 with advancecab, advancemenu, and advancemame.
I've got a trident t64 agp video card and a soundblaster pci16 in it.



Works great, just a pain to configure the very first time.



http://advancemame.sourceforge.net



Later,
dabone

[SirPeale]

Yes, I'd try another video card.  Easiest way to test.

Do you  have cwsdpmi.exe?  I'm sure you do, it'd complain otherwise.

There was a recent thread in the software forum regarding your problem, and the 'solution' was to have cwsdpmi load before each game.  I think it was:

cwsdpmi -x

and then the game.  Don't quote me on that.

[Tiger-Heli]

Here's the thread Peale was talking about (I think):

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,28999.0.html

Looks like you need CWSdpmi Version 5, but you can launch it with the -p -x options in your autoexec.bat.  But this is just for Vantage, not the funky MAME graphics prob, AFAICT.

[OSCAR]

Yeah, forgot to add that I'm also using cwsdpmi ver 5.  I'll have to try Vantage again with those flags for cwsdpmi and see if I can get it to fire up.

I haven't tried advancemame with this video card yet, I have to see which drivers (vbeline, svgaline, etc) it is supported by and see if I can get some decent screens with it.  The darn thing is, I'm just this close to making plain 'ole DOS MAME work perfectly if it weren't for that stupid smear.

Ah, maybe I'll get some time this weekend to dink around with it some more.  Thanks again everyone!

[dabone]

Just advancemame a shot, with the right card it's video support is leaps and bounds above dmame.

(I can even play satan's hollow in the original res on my monitor.)


Later,
dabone

[OSCAR]

Success!!  Definitely a MAME problem.  Thanks for the suggestions on Vantage with the cwsdpmi flags, that did it.




The nasty smear is gone and Vantage looks fantastic on this setup.  I can't believe how easy Vantage is to configure once you have it running.  Full screen on the games with no tweaking, using an antique Rage II video card, and plain 'ole DOS.  Thanks again for the help, all!