What Graphics/Sound Cards to Use ?

[NickS]

I am looking for your recommendations as to which type/make of Graphics and Sound cards I should use?.

I am planning on running Dos Mame on a Pentium 2 400mhz Motherboard with 192mb. It will be connected to a WG U3000 VGA monitor in a Mame Cocktail Table Cabinet. I am only planning playing the Classic 80'S Mame games such as Pac Man, Space Invaders, Bomb Jack, Mr Do etc.

Your recommendations will be greatly appreciated.

[SNAAAKE]

Get a cheap dos compatible sound card from compusa(I bought one for $10 and works great) and some old Ati card is good.

Ati rage fury is all around card and has av/s-video output,av input and only cost like $30 these days.

This sould be enough for your games .

[JLR2000]

Does your motherboard have ISA slots?  I found the ISA soundcards easier to deal with in DOS.  The PCI soundcards in dos require additional memory managers to be loaded (emm486?) which can "steal" cpu from your games.  The ISA cards worked right out of the box for me (once the driver was installed, of course).

Just my 2 cents....

[rampy]

I second the recommendation for an ISA based sound card for DOS use... It's not worth the headaches trying to get a PCI sound card to work well in DOS with all emu's (I found different libraries worked but others didn't... allegro didn't like a SBlive with the dos emu ... )

so yeah... save yourself th aggravation if you're stickign in DOS, and have an isa slot...  get a decent/older isa soundcard... sb16 or whatever.   I'm sure there's ones to NOT get like an ESS based one, but i'm pretty sure you'll be in good shape with almost any 16 bit isa card in DOS.  

good luck!

rampy

[JLR2000]

 I'm sure there's ones to NOT get like an ESS based one, but i'm pretty sure you'll be in good shape with almost any 16 bit isa card in DOS.  

Rampy - the 2 ISA sound cards I've dealt with were both ESS and I didn't have any probs with Mame.  Is there something about ESS that I should be staying away from?

[rampy]

 I'm sure there's ones to NOT get like an ESS based one, but i'm pretty sure you'll be in good shape with almost any 16 bit isa card in DOS.  

Rampy - the 2 ISA sound cards I've dealt with were both ESS and I didn't have any probs with Mame.  Is there something about ESS that I should be staying away from?

Just annecdotal, from back in the day... i think ESS chipset had a perception of being noisey, cheezy, not as good drivers support (but that might have been windows drivers)  but it might be just earlier revisions of the chipset... but it seemed that computers back then that used it either embedded in mobo or as a card, like compaqs had them and they always seemed to be a pain... so its more a perception on my part than actual fact.  

If ESS chipset card is working for you, than cool.

I just wanted to give some sort of recommendation, like using sb16... because it can suck if you get a bargain bin, flea market isa and can't find drivers, etc...

I dunno.. I guess I'm just rambling... vague not fully formed ideas...

rampy

[Lilwolf]

ESS's used to cause problems, but that was fixed a bit ago for mame.  But you might find some old emulators still have problems that used the same sound api's.

I went with a true SB32 isa that I got a ebay for 10bucks.  But now I wish I got something better.  Not for mame (it's great for mame, you wont get any better for mame in any sound card), but for DVD's.  It doesn't do a good job for playing DVD's for some reason.  

As for video.  Spend a little extra to get something that will have hardware stretching.  ATI radeons are great and anything Geforce+ (actually TnT's did great also for hwstretching).  Go ATI if you want TVout since they all use the same TVout chip.  If you go Geforce, get a ViVo and you should be good.  Since each company uses a different chips is a crap shoot if it will look good (but most ViVo's are good)

good luck

[NickS]

Thanks for all your replies.

I have found a New Sound Blaster 16 ISA Card on Ebay which I have bought.

I have still not decided or found a suitable Graphics Card. I am concerned that they need to be able to operate properly in both Dos and Mame. Are the ATI Radeon and Geforce + able to operate fully in Dos ?. Does anyone have any recommendations of specific cards ?