LONG Pause loading games in dos.

[slicer_d]

So I'm messing with doss and using mame .91 whenever I run a game there is like a 1-2 min pause (maybe longer I havn't timed it).  Is this normal for dos mame?  I have tried the same HHD drive on two comps with very different configs and have changed all the mame options I could find.  Please somebody help.

[paigeoliver]

That happened somewhere around mame .90. I have no real reason to use that version, so I haven't actually looked into seeing what is up with it.

[2600]

I'm assuming it's the same in the DOS version?

skip_validitychecks 1

[paigeoliver]

Which once again brings up the point, WHY are most of the default options in Mame the wrong ones.

[2600]

I imagine at the time, they were pissed.  Constantly being bombarded with this bug that bug, and most of the people reporting bugs weren't even using MAME.  They were using derivatives of MAME that modify stuff like MAME32, MAME Plus, and MAME blah blah.  Sadly the first rule of reporting a bug, is to make sure you are using MAME and not a derivative.

At first this check was hard coded, then they listened to the users and and added the way to turn it off.  If you've seen the MAME forums most of the bugs reported people aren't using official MAME or report things like bad graphics even when there is a big screen that comes up and says this game has incorrect graphics.  They try to educate the user by displaying that message and allow them to disable it, it's not hard to disable it as you know, but it takes hopefully a little understanding and a little common sense which when you get people around computers seems to go out the door.

It gets tiring, I'm sure the devs around here feel the same.  There is a reason they came up with RTFM.


Now, if you are talking about other things like artwork or what not, I dunno.  What else do you change from the default?

[SirPeale]

You haven't mentioned system specs, but I'm guessing your system isn't exactly the fastest.  I've got a P133 I was doing some testing on, and experienced the same thing.  Heck, even my XP2400+ had a lengthy pause.  Not 1-2 min. like the 133, but longer than I thought was necessary.

I have even turned off the validitychecks, to no avail.

[Witchboard]

I have a 30 second pause from the time I run the mame command to the time the game starts using a PII 233 and MAME .87.  I do not see a "skip_validitychecks" in the mame config file.  Do I just manually add it?  If so, under what section?

[SirPeale]

Yes, you can just add it.  Doesn't matter where.

Of course, you have to have a version of Mame that supports this command.  Not sure when they added it.

[Chris]

Is it possible that you're not loading SMARTDRV?  It makes a huge difference on DOS cabinets.  I'm sure that's not the whole problem, but it might lessen the impact of whatever is happening.

--Chris

[SirPeale]

Um...I dunno.  I'll check later.

[slicer_d]

Thanks for all the replys guys.

I will try the "skip_validitychecks 1 " thing and see how much it help and I will also research the SMARTDRV stuff which I think I have installed but I will double check.

Also system specs wise I'm running a P3 slot 1 550 and a P3 833 both with 512 ram.  The 833 runs most games pretty well under xp so it seemed very strange that it would pause so long in dos.

When I get time to test this stuff I will be sure to use a stop watch and report results when I change stuff.

[SpamMe]

Of course, you have to have a version of Mame that supports this command.  Not sure when they added it.

Think it was added in .88

[Witchboard]

Of course.  The version right above mine. 

[SirPeale]

Just checked, I'm running smartdrv

smartdrv 4096

and I also have

skip_validitychecks = yes

[screaming]

Just checked, I'm running smartdrv

smartdrv 4096

and I also have

skip_validitychecks = yes

  Doesn't that 'yes' need to be a '1'?

[SirPeale]

  Doesn't that 'yes' need to be a '1'?

DOS version, remember?

[screaming]

  Doesn't that 'yes' need to be a '1'?

DOS version, remember?

  *shrug* I didn't know there was a difference

* screaming goes back to his Warcraft hole now.

[slicer_d]

It was playing around with the machine and its much quicker now.  It still takes 1+ min to load a game but its bearable unlike the 4+ min it took before.

I was wondering how much cache I should set aside with smartdrv? Right now I have 8192 and I have seen other people running 16384.  System specs are 550 with 512 ram and 8 gig hard drive.  How much do you guys think I should set it for?

[Chris]

DOS can't see more than 256 MB of RAM... try taking 256MB out to make sure you're not running into any addressing wierdness.

I would run 16384 on Smartdrv... you can set it higher, but I don't think it'll help much.

[SirPeale]

I would run 16384 on Smartdrv... you can set it higher, but I don't think it'll help much.

You're right...it didn't help at all.

I did overclock the 100 to 133, though.  Took almost ten seconds off the wait time, and added some FPS.  Space Invaders is now @ 60/60 (and if you unthrottle it gets up to a whopping 62/60!).  Galaga went from 29/60 to 37/60 and Pac-Man went from 45/60 to 57/60.

[Lilwolf]

Did you try uncompressing the mame.exe file (to the 34mg+ version).

[slicer_d]

Interesting stuff guys.

Lilwolf how do you unconpress the mame.exe?

I will up the smartdrv to 16384 and see if that helps.  Does dos really only see 256megs of ram?  Is there any way to make it use more or would it just be overkill anyway.

[SirPeale]

Well knit my socks...I thought it was already unpacked!  I'll have to give it a shot when I get a chance.

[2600]

Not sure if it's already mentioned, but you will also decrease your loading times by unzipping your roms.

As for Lilwolf's idea.  I may be wrong, but in DOS it will still load the entire exe in memory.  However, it won't have to uncompress it and take up that part of memory as well.

Also, for further clarification.  DOS can use more than 256MB of memory.  And for smartdrv it may have some affect, but really it's a caching program and I wouldn't think all that relevant to MAME since it doesn't do repeated reads to the HD, just reads and loads the roms once.  May have more of an affect on your FE, though.  Depending on the amount of memory you have, you'd may get a better loading times by using a RAM Drive with MAME in it then using smartdrv.

[SirPeale]

Not only did uncompressing the exe NOT decrease load time, it increased it!  It was loading @ 55 seconds, now it's up to 63!

[slicer_d]

Wow even more great ideas.

I looked up stuff about the ram drive and it seems doable.

[SirPeale]

Yes, 60 seconds until the game starts.  Depending on the game, of course.  Pac-Man loads quicker than Robotron.

You uncompress the exe with UPX.

upx -d dmame.exe

[Lilwolf]

btw, you might be right about loading the entire file in DOS.  I did some testing windows a while ago and found that it sped up the load considerably.  ESPECIALLY on smaller classic games.

But I haven't used the DOS build in years. 

[Chris]

Also, for further clarification.

[2600]

Also, for further clarification.  DOS can use more than 256MB of memory.

My understanding was that DOS's HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE could see a maximum of 128MB up until DOS 6, and 256MB in DOS 7 (Win 95/98).  Quarterdeck's QEMM could always see 256MB.  DOS MAME depends on CWSDPMI for memory allocation, which is also limited to 256MB of physical RAM.  (It will also address 256MB of virtual memory, but that doesn't count for this discussion.)  See http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/v2faq/faq15_1.html for notes on CWSDPMI's memory limits.

--Chris

Um, I think the link you provided says r5 let's you use all available extended memory up to 2GB.  r4 had the 256MB limitation.  But in any case I was making a general statement about DOS which may not have pertained to DOS MAME and it's memory requirements, which I'm not using so should of kept quite and will concede since I'm assuming you are.

I think you'll agree tuning DOS is a fine art and you have to see what works for you.  And Peale is correct that it may just take that long.  These are pretty old machines and there is no magic setting.

The real ways to increase loading time(not running speed) is to help the process of starting mame.

1. Load mame into memory (Either a Fast HD or load mame onto a RAM drive)
2. Unzip the Roms so Mame doesn't have to
3. A Fast HD or ROMs in a RAM drive would help too, but is unrealistic.

I'll leave the rest for those who are actually using DOS Mame and can actually test and try things out.

[Chris]

Um, I think the link you provided says r5 let's you use all available extended memory up to 2GB.

[2600]

Um, I think the link you provided says r5 let's you use all available extended memory up to 2GB.  r4 had the 256MB limitation.

All available extended memory (provided by HIMEM.SYS) and available disk space up to 2GB.  So v5 just upped the virtual memory limit.  I am still unaware of a memory manager that provides more than 256MB of XMS in DOS.  That doesn't mean that there isn't one, but HIMEM.SYS and QEMM won't do it, as far as I know.

  But in any case I was making a general statement about DOS which may not have pertained to DOS MAME and it's memory requirements, which I'm not using so should of kept quite and will concede since I'm assuming you are.

I have used it; my DOS MAME cabinet was the reason I wrote DOSCab Jukebox, which is also dependent on CWSDPMI for memory.  But I haven't kept up with it since about .65 or so.

I think you'll agree tuning DOS is a fine art and you have to see what works for you.  And Peale is correct that it may just take that long.  These are pretty old machines and there is no magic setting.

Absolutely.  I made a living supporting QEMM for four years when I worked at Quarterdeck in tech support, and I definately learned that DOS memory issues can get really esoteric really fast.

The real ways to increase loading time(not running speed) is to help the process of starting mame.

1. Load mame into memory (Either a Fast HD or load mame onto a RAM drive)
2. Unzip the Roms so Mame doesn't have to
3. A Fast HD or ROMs in a RAM drive would help too, but is unrealistic.

The giant MAME executable in a RAM drive is probably a good solution.  An older version of MAME is probably a much better solution.  I'll bet .37 loads and runs fast on that box.  Remember, the older MAMEs could use the much-faster 256 color modes, which really made a difference in vector games.

--Chris

I could see our dispute with CWSDPMI as I'll give you that you know more about it than I.  BUT the statement is a little unclear, It doesn't necessarly say specifically what the breakdown is for physical vs. virtual like it does for r4.  I'm not sure if it's saying there is a 2GB limit period or 2GB limit on disk space because of partition limitations.

However, it does say all XMS.  And I don't suppose you want to see the output of MEM for XMS on my system.  Seems to see 2GB just fine. 

Sorry, just had to make the one last comment. 

[slicer_d]

Well I sorted through all the dos memory talk  and now on my list of things to do is.
1. Make ramdrive for mame and FE
2. Uncompress games
3. Try mame.exe compressed and uncompressed on the ramdrive.

I think I understand how to do most of that but whats the easiest way to uncompress the roms?  I'm running a full set of vertical rom ~700 games what would be the quickest way to do this.

Also Peaple what version of mame are you running?  I still dont understand how your p133 can load almost twice as fast as my p550.

[Chris]

However, it does say all XMS.

[SirPeale]

Also Peaple [sic]what version of mame are you running?  I still dont understand how your p133 can load almost twice as fast as my p550.

.90.  I've been wanting to experiment with the newer versions, but after .91 there ISN'T any.

System specs:

64M RAM
P100 o/c to 133
Tseng Labs Lightspeed 128 (which will do 15KHz!)
Windows 98SE (booted to straight DOS 7.0)
Loading smartdrv 16384 at boot
Soundblaster Vibra 16 (which aparently Mame has it's own drivers for, all I had to do was detail the specs (set BLASTER=*****) in the autoexec.bat)

[2600]

What version of DOS are you running?

Ther version that comes with WIN98SE, if you want to talk about it and/or test it more PM me so we don't taint this thread.  I've got PCDOS 2000 and MSDOS 6.22 available for test here as well.

[JoyMonkey]

I think I understand how to do most of that but whats the easiest way to uncompress the roms?  I'm running a full set of vertical rom ~700 games what would be the quickest way to do this.

With WinRAR installed, select your 700 rom zips, right-click and select 'Extract each archive to seperate folder'.

Edit: You can also do it with WinZip installed; select your 700 rom zips, right click and select 'WinZip>Extract to here using filenames for folders'.

[SirPeale]

Well...for giggles I decided to unzip the few sets I have on this rig into folders.  Results:

lockup!  Each time.  Robotron started showing the startup rug, but that was it.  One stripe of it.  Then it sat there.

Pac-Man didn't even do that. 

[2600]

ROFL

That sucks Peale.  But I swear for as much as you use the DOS version of Mame, I think everytime you post about it or DOS in general there is a problem.   Here's hoping you have better luck.

All I can say is it works for me.  Whether or not it actually speeds anything up is going to be based on everyone's PC.

[SirPeale]

Yeah, it's just my luck, isn't it?  Two things that are supposed to speed loading times.  One makes it longer, and the other makes it go away all together!

[slicer_d]

Well I uncompressed mame.exe and it seems to help shaved off about 10-15 seconds.  I also uncompressed some roms and that helped about 5-10 seconds.

So now it loads in just over 1 min.  I'm still wondering why Peales loads faster than mine.  Is there anything not metioned in here that I might be missing?  I will check over my stuff agaim and maybe try MAME .90 and see if that changes anything.

[Witchboard]

Did you sprinkle chicken blood and dance around your system?  I find it helps load times... or maybe I'm just preoccupied while it's loading and it just seems faster.  Only my witch doctor knows for sure. 

Added smartdrv to my autoexec.bat and got a 2 second decrease in load time.  I'm down to 28 seconds.  Next I'll upgrade my dmame and try the validity checks.

[slicer_d]

Holy crap 28 seconds whats the specs of your system and version of mame?

[Witchboard]

It's at the beginning of the thread.

[slicer_d]

Hmm that makes me think the the version of MAME has a lot to do with the load times.  I will try out some different version later and see what results I get.

[JoyMonkey]

What game is everyone timing?

I've got a PIII 550 (it's a Dell Optiplex) with 128mb ram, running AdvMame (uncompressed) from a RAMdisk in extended memory. I unzipped pacman to a folder on the hard drive (actually not a hard rive, a CompactFlash card) and tried out a few versions:

AdvMame .67 will run pacman in about 2.3 seconds.

AdvMame .80 will run pacman in about 2.7 seconds.

AdvMame .94 runs pacman in about 3.1 seconds.

I could probably get it faster by copying the roms to the RAMdisk, but the CF card is really fast for small files because of it's extremely low seek time. Ah hell, I'll give it a try...

Edit: Nah, copying the pacman rom folder to memory didn't give a noticeable speed increase. Maybe 1/10th of a second- its kinda hard to tell. Maybe I'll try regular old dMame .36...

[slicer_d]

Holy crap JoyMonkey.

I'm usually loading Pacman or galaga and it take 60+ seconds to load.

When I get home I going to setup my ram disk and try AdvMame and see what results I get.
Whats the easiest way to transfer files to the ramdisk after you have created it?



And W00T 200th post

[JoyMonkey]

Congrats and the 200!

I doubt AdvMame is the cause of my speediness, since the AdvMame executable is usually bigger than the standard DOS version.

Here's what my Config.sys looks like:

Code: [Select]

DEVICE=C:\DOS\himem.sys
device=C:\DOS\umbpci.sys
DOS=High,UMB
Files=40
Buffers=40
And here's my AutoExec.Bat (this is set to copy advmame .67 and its config file to the RAMdisk, wait for a key press and then run pacman):

Code: [Select]

@echo off
cls
c:\dos\smartdrv.exe 16384

REM Setup for sb8bit mono ISA (onboard Dell Optiplex sound)
set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h6 p330 t6

echo Creating RAMdisk drive X...
xmsdsk 46000 x: /y

mkdir x:\mame67
echo Copying AdvMame 0.67 to RAMdisk X...
copy c:\mame\advm67.exe x:\mame67\advmame.exe
copy c:\mame\advmame.rc x:\mame67\advmame.rc
copy c:\mame\hiscore.dat x:\mame67\hiscore.dat

pause
cls

x:\mame67\advmame pacman
My advmame.rc file (that's the AdvMame config file) points all rom/sample/cfg etc. folders to the C drive.
I've never tried the skip_validitychecks thing

[slicer_d]

Very cool thanks for the info.  I dont know what most of the stuff in your config.sys even does.  Right now all I have is

device=c:\windows\himem.sys
device=c:\windows\emm386.exe noems

Should I use some of your settings if so which ones?

[JoyMonkey]

I'm no expert on the subject, but I think my config.sys is pretty standard. LasVegas put together a nice site years ago called Purple Mame that explains all kinds of stuff. Here's where he explains what each line of the config.sys and autoexec.bat do:
http://members.cox.net/mame1/software.htm#config

I think the last three lines of my config.sys are recomended.

[Witchboard]

I tried the uncompressed .87 dmame and it increased the load time up to 50 seconds.

[Witchboard]

I tried the uncompressed .87 dmame and it increased the load time up to 50 seconds.

[slicer_d]

Well that did it its loading at ~20 seconds now and all I changed was my config.sys.  It basically looks like joymonkeys I downloaded the UMBPCI package and changed it like the Joymonkeys link told me a too and its so so so much faster.

Next step is to try some different versions of mame and make a ramdrive.

Thanks a bunch for everybodys help.
Slicer_D

[Witchboard]

I went through the steps as well and haven't broke the 27 second barrier yet.  I'll try unzipping the romset and see if that helps tomorrow.  Do you just unzip it into a directory with the zip name and mame will find it on it's own?  I've never used an uncompressed romset before.

[slicer_d]

Yeah like the guy said above.  I used winrar bucause I like it.  Just select everthing you want unzipped right click and there is an option to extract it to a folder with the same name.  Then I you can delete or move you zipped roms and it should work.  You might want to test them before you delete everything though.

[JoyMonkey]

I went through the steps as well and haven't broke the 27 second barrier yet.  I'll try unzipping the romset and see if that helps tomorrow.  Do you just unzip it into a directory with the zip name and mame will find it on it's own?  I've never used an uncompressed romset before.

I remember when zipped rom support was added to Mame; I think I went a couple of months before I realized it had been added and couldn't believe how advanced everything was getting (ha!).

From the Mame 0.31 WhatsNew.txt:

- You can keep the ROMs in a subdirectory called "ROMS", if you want to.
  When loading ROMs for 'gamename', the program will look in these
  directories in this order:
  1) gamename
  2) gamename.zip
  3) ROMS\gamename
  4) ROMS\gamename.zip
  The same applies to samples, you can put them in a subdirectory called
  SAMPLES - therefore separating them from the ROMs.
  [Nicola Salmoria]

Amazing!

[JoyMonkey]

I went through the steps as well and haven't broke the 27 second barrier yet.  I'll try unzipping the romset and see if that helps tomorrow.  Do you just unzip it into a directory with the zip name and mame will find it on it's own?  I've never used an uncompressed romset before.

Hang on, are you saying that it takes 27 seconds for the computer to boot, run through autoexec and then run a game?
Or it takes 27 seconds from the time you run "dmame pacman"?

[SirPeale]

What is the ArcadeOS screensaver bug?  Is it where AOS launches the screensaver within seconds of starting AOS?

[Witchboard]

Hang on, are you saying that it takes 27 seconds for the computer to boot, run through autoexec and then run a game?
Or it takes 27 seconds from the time you run "dmame pacman"?

27 seconds from the time I run "dmame pacman".  I'm using Donkey Kong as my test game.  I'll switch to Pacman tonight and see if it makes a difference.  I didn't know we were using Pacman as a standard for this test.

What is the ArcadeOS screensaver bug? Is it where AOS launches the screensaver within seconds of starting AOS?

The bug I have, and hope he's talking about, is sometimes when you launch a game from ArcadeOS instead of the game starting the screen saver starts, but it's a block of scrambled graphics moving on the screen instead of the clear ball.

[SirPeale]

What is the ArcadeOS screensaver bug? Is it where AOS launches the screensaver within seconds of starting AOS?

The bug I have, and hope he's talking about, is sometimes when you launch a game from ArcadeOS instead of the game starting the screen saver starts, but it's a block of scrambled graphics moving on the screen instead of the clear ball.

Oh yeah, that happens to me all the time.  Usually on the first game run.

I hadn't even realized that I didn't have a lot of the things listed in my config.sys (important things, like files= and the like) so I fixed it, and now everything runs again.  Still takes over a minute for Pac-Man to start, though.  I'm going to recompress dmame, and we'll see what happens.

[slicer_d]

Yeah 20+ seconds after I type in "dmame pacman -soundcard 0" the game loads.

[JoyMonkey]

I can't see why my setup is so much faster than everyone elses. Is it because I'm using CompactFlash instead of a hard drive? Maybe I should try running from a hard drive and see if it makes a difference, but I don't see why there should be a huge difference since I'm running advmame from a ramdisk anyways. Hmmmm... 

[Witchboard]

It's probably because your romset is both uncompressed and on a flash drive.  I didn't get time today to decompress the romset and test it out today, but I did verify that Pacman took the same amount of time.

Here's a question... if you're using a clone, or different version of a game that requires a parent romset, does it increase the load time since it has to uncompress multiple romsets?

Example: Pacman (Midway) = pacman.zip + puckman.zip

[slicer_d]

Maybe it has to do with advmame?  If you wanted maybe try running regular mame from yours any see how long it takes.  But with your setup it might take a little while so I dont blame you for not doing it.  I guess th flash card could be speeding things up but by that much seems like a whole lot.

[SirPeale]

I just did some testing with AdvanceMame.  Pleasing!  Went from 60+ seconds down to roughly *20* seconds.  And that's on a P133.  Of course, nothing played anywhere near full speed.  I'm sure on a decent PC (something above 400MHz) it would be even better.

[Buddabing]

You guys could try using a tiny build of MAME. It'll take some work, but you can edit the tiny.mak file to include only the CPUs, sound systems, and games you have. It should make your executable much smaller.

With a bit of #ifdefing, you can eliminate some of the core modules as well.

[JoyMonkey]

Wow, regular DOS Mame just plain sucks! Running dMame91 un-upx'ed (uncompressed) from a compactflash card took me 37 seconds, running it upx'ed took 19 seconds.
Then I copied it to a RAMdisk and it took 22 seconds upx'ed and un-upx'ed. WTF? Now I see why they don't bother releasing dMame builds anymore.

Whatever AdvMame is doing, its doing it fast.

[2600]

Are you all using a version of DOS Mame > .87?  I'm not 100% positive, but I did a quck check through the source and it seems that DOS Mame did not add the user option of skip_validatychecks.  However, I think it is still in the Main source.  I can't right now, but it would be an interesting check if someone could go back to DOS Mame .83 and see if there startup times are dramatically different than DMAME .90 or .91.

Otherwise, looks like JoyMonkey has helped out a lot.  This seems to be the beginings of a new DOS MAME sticky or faq.

[SirPeale]

Are you all using a version of DOS Mame > .87?  I'm not 100% positive, but I did a quck check through the source and it seems that DOS Mame did not add the user option of skip_validatychecks. 

That would be interesting, and would definitely explain the massive amount of time it takes.

Think I'm going to play a bit more with AdvMame, though.  Last time I tried it in my cab I got some really, REALLY funky results.  Like odd colors and the like.

[slicer_d]

I should be just working on homework today but maybe I will try versions .88, .87 and .83 and see how much they differ.

Thanks for checking the load time out for me Joymonkey.  Its good to know that I wasnt doing anything wrong.  Its strange that advmame is so much quicker to load but games run so much slower.  I tried runnig it but got the same thing Peale got with the funky colors.  Maybe I will try it some more later.

I'm pretty happy with my 13 seconds right now but I will have to see how much longer it takes once I get the soundcard working.

[lokki]

Wow, regular DOS Mame just plain sucks! Running dMame91 un-upx'ed (uncompressed) from a compactflash card took me 37 seconds, running it upx'ed took 19 seconds.
Then I copied it to a RAMdisk and it took 22 seconds upx'ed and un-upx'ed. WTF? Now I see why they don't bother releasing dMame builds anymore.

Whatever AdvMame is doing, its doing it fast.

Not really Mames fault. It is DOS crappy memory handling. That causes that.
Also I think they stopped DMAME because the recent changes to the sound architecture meant that too many things would have to change to get it working on DOS and the developers maintaining the DOS version don't have the time.

[lokki]

Did you try uncompressing the mame.exe file (to the 34mg+ version).

[Witchboard]

Well, I unpacked a romset to a directory and I may have gained 1 second.  Not really worth the effort of unpacking romsets into individual directories.  I think I'm just at the mercy of my hardware and the MAME code.  28 seconds isn't too awful painful, so I guess I'll just stick with what I got.

[JoyMonkey]

Well, I unpacked a romset to a directory and I may have gained 1 second.  Not really worth the effort of unpacking romsets into individual directories.  I think I'm just at the mercy of my hardware and the MAME code.  28 seconds isn't too awful painful, so I guess I'll just stick with what I got.

You mean 28 seconds with regualr dMame right? 28 seconds sounds painfull to me, I wasn't aware of these huge waits since the last time I used dMame was .37something.
What problems is everyone having with AdvMame? Last I checked, it worked fine straight out of the box with a regular PC monitor.
I realize it can be a little tricky configuring the arcade monitor resolutions at first, but once you get used to it, it's easy to get every game displaying perfectly.
To set it up for use on a TV, you just set it to use a standard PC mode like 800x600 (or whatever your TV-out outputs) for every game.

[Witchboard]

Correct.

[JoyMonkey]

Correct.  I am using DMAME .87.  I have not used AdvMAME, but it looks like I may give it a try.  I re-read Peale's post about it not running games at a playable speed, but I think he was talking about his hardware and not AdvMAME.

Speed wise, if you're using that P233 of yours you shouldn't be too bad. I have a vertical cocktail running AdvMame 0.67 on a P233 here. Back in the day, I went through EVERY vertical game on that machine and the only one that didn't play at full speed was ESP Ra.De.. Using a more recent version of AdvMame might make it chug.

[Witchboard]

The reason why I'm using DMAME .87 is that I thought it was the version where they added the Donkey Kong samples.

[JoyMonkey]

The reason why I'm using DMAME .87 is that I thought it was the version where they added the Donkey Kong samples.  If that's not true, I could probably back up quite a bit.  I'm going to use this 233 as a vertical bartop, so I'll probably be in the same boat as you in regards to FPS.  Thanks for the heads up.

I thought you could use the newer DKong sample set with older versions of Mame no problem. Now that I think of it though, I'm still using the old samples. Don't think I've ever even listened to the new ones. Hmmm...

Edit: Here's a breakdown of 3 different DKong sample sets I have (the old one is for use with Vantage or a very old Mame, one is from Twisty's samples page, the other is the current 'official' set). I'm guessing that you could take the newest samples edit them a little and drop them into the old set, to get the new sounds working in older versions of Mame.

[Witchboard]

What is considered old/new for the DK samples?  The timestamp on mine are 3/12/04.  I would presume these would be the new samples since they aren't that old.

[SirPeale]

I realize it can be a little tricky configuring the arcade monitor resolutions at first, but once you get used to it, it's easy to get every game displaying perfectly.

The trouble I ran into was when that everything displayed with really funky colors.  I didn't do too much testing with it.  Centering the screen with AdvCfg made the screen do funky colors.

[HagHore]

Joymonkey, can you provide me with a link to where you got your Compact Flash IDE adaptor?

[JoyMonkey]

Joymonkey, can you provide me with a link to where you got your Compact Flash IDE adaptor?

Logic Supply sells them:
http://www.logicsupply.com/default.php/cPath/47

I've got two of the ones with a floppy style connector and they work great.

[slicer_d]

You mean 28 seconds with regualr dMame right? 28 seconds sounds painfull to me, I wasn't aware of these huge waits since the last time I used dMame was .37something.
What problems is everyone having with AdvMame? Last I checked, it worked fine straight out of the box with a regular PC monitor.
I realize it can be a little tricky configuring the arcade monitor resolutions at first, but once you get used to it, it's easy to get every game displaying perfectly.
To set it up for use on a TV, you just set it to use a standard PC mode like 800x600 (or whatever your TV-out outputs) for every game.

I'm using a regular pc monitor and games looked different than they looked in dmame.

[HagHore]

Logic Supply sells them:
http://www.logicsupply.com/default.php/cPath/47

I've got two of the ones with a floppy style connector and they work great.

Thanks!  I've tried a cheapie off eBay and it didn't work so good.  I've got som 16MB CF cards and they would be perfect for a classic arcade set-up.

[Witchboard]

Oh and to Witchboard if you use winrar (free from download.com) you can just select all the roms right click and there is an option to unzip them into a folder with the same name as the zip file.

[iwillfearnoevil]

are you guys serious in this thread or just joking around? if you're using an old machine, you need to go back versions of mame not increase them. if peale is serious with that p100, it needs like .36 or whatever. are you guys limited by your FE on what versions of mame you can use? am i missing something basic here?

[SirPeale]

are you guys serious in this thread or just joking around? if you're using an old machine, you need to go back versions of mame not increase them. if peale is serious with that p100, it needs like .36 or whatever. are you guys limited by your FE on what versions of mame you can use? am i missing something basic here?

Well, partially it's because I'm testing older hardware to see exactly how horked the games are.  I'm not looking to play SF2 on a P133, but I thought Galaga would be cool for my vertical cab, esp. since it has the origial discrete sound now.  It plays from 50-75%, so I'm guessing that a 300MHz will be fine for this.

[slicer_d]

are you guys serious in this thread or just joking around? if you're using an old machine, you need to go back versions of mame not increase them. if peale is serious with that p100, it needs like .36 or whatever. are you guys limited by your FE on what versions of mame you can use? am i missing something basic here?

I'm running a cocktail cab so all I have are vertical games 98% run at full speed on a p3 550.  If I'm running in windows it slows down after a couple of games have been loaded but thats the reason I'm using dos now so there aren't any backgroud stuff taking up processing cycles.

Regardless of what version of mame you are running there is a lot of good stuff in this thread about optimizing dos to run and load quicker. 

My entire purpose of running in dos was to get the most out of my system for the newer games.  Rather than just throwing more money and speed at the problem I chose to optimize my current setup.  I realize I could run older versions of mame but that would limit my slection of games and I want to be able to play everthing possible. 

Also the knowledge that I'm gaining from tweaking this system out is great and worth my time.  I know I could have just stuck mame .36 in there and been done with it but I would rather push the envelope and run the newest stuff I can.  To me that is what is this hobby is about getting in the trenches and fiddleing with stuff you have never messed with before and getting to know it inside and out.

[JoyMonkey]

are you guys serious in this thread or just joking around? if you're using an old machine, you need to go back versions of mame not increase them. if peale is serious with that p100, it needs like .36 or whatever. are you guys limited by your FE on what versions of mame you can use? am i missing something basic here?

Not sure if you realize that we're talking about optimizing the speed that Mame loads from DOS, not the speed that it runs at.

[iwillfearnoevil]

Not sure if you realize that we're talking about optimizing the speed that Mame loads from DOS, not the speed that it runs at.

i knew i was missing something i think i got thrown off by the fps mentions ...
but i'd still think the new mame executables would be more bloated with more and/or bigger dlls etc and thus take longer to load for that fact.

[marcus.]

Sorry if this was mentioned already, I briefly skipped over this thread...

I use advmame 60something and games like mslug3 / garou and others took forever to load...several minutes (celeron 1.7g 40gighdd 256mb)
the most effective way i found to cut load times was to use UDMA.SYS
Just load in config.sys
Device=c:\udma.sys

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/udma/devel/

MK3 went from 60+seconds to 16 sec.
give it a try

[slicer_d]

Sorry if this was mentioned already, I briefly skipped over this thread...

I use advmame 60something and games like mslug3 / garou and others took forever to load...several minutes (celeron 1.7g 40gighdd 256mb)
the most effective way i found to cut load times was to use UDMA.SYS
Just load in config.sys
Device=c:\udma.sys

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/udma/devel/

MK3 went from 60+seconds to 16 sec.
give it a try

Sounds like something I will have to add I'm still having issues with the damn soundcard and just bought Donkey Konga so might not get to it for a little while.

[lokki]

Hi,
Saw this at the mame Forums. Seems relevant to this. Has anyone tried this?
Note I believe SMF is the developer in charge of

[JoyMonkey]

I was thinking about this today. I'm going to try re-compiling the version of AdvMame that I've been using and removing all the drivers that I don't want (this is for a vertical cocktail cab, so there's a lot of redundant games there).
I'm thinking that slimming down the exe this way will make it load a little faster. I've never tried it before, but it seems to make sense.
Now to learn how to compile AdvMame...

[Witchboard]

Now that my semester is over, I was going to start fiddling with this as well.  I never did get ADVMAME to run right on a computer monitor yet, so I just gave up a while back.  Time to get back on track!