mame won't run on my new Dell

[rmcelwee]

 I started a thread last week about buying a $228 machine (ended up buying a $360 P-4 1.8gig dell). Anyway, I pulled the HD from my working mame machine (P2-400) and stuck it in the dell. It booted up (from a win98 boot floppy), loaded arcadeos and everything seemed fine. Whenever I try to play a game arcadeos (or mame???) locks up. Any idea what is going on. I thought it was the video card doing something so I stuck in the old one I was using and it did the same thing. I also tried playing with a pc monitor - still locks up. Any ideas on why my new machine will not play mame? Thanks...

Hmmm, maybe I'll run upstairs and try mame by itself (without arcadeos).

[rmcelwee]

 I turned off arcadeos and arcade monitor support and just ran mame from the command line.

When I type: MAME YARD
I get: audio initialization failed, unable to initialize system

When I type: MAME YARD -SOUNDCARD 0
I just see it try to load the game (the rom names are quickly displayed - I guess this is the game unzipping) and then immediately return to the dos prompt.

Any ideas?

[madk]

Did you just swap your new hd for the old one?  If so did you make sure to get all the drivers for your new hardware?  

[rmcelwee]

Did you just swap your new hd for the old one?  If so did you make sure to get all the drivers for your new hardware?  

Nope, just swapped out the drives. Since I'm running in Dos I didn't think I would need any drivers. I can see video, I've got the soundcard disabled in bios, I'm not using a mouse, etc. Not sure what drivers i would need.

[mrhowell]

You may need some sort of memory manager loaded (himem.sys)?  http://www3.sympatico.ca/rhwatson/dos7/v-himem-sys.html

[rmcelwee]

You may need some sort of memory manager loaded (himem.sys)?  http://www3.sympatico.ca/rhwatson/dos7/v-himem-sys.html

Since the software is the same (same boot floppy and hard drive) I wouldn't think this would be the problem. I am unsure if I have it loaded now (built the floppy about 2 years ago) but all I did was change hardware. It would be like walking up to your mame cab and changing your cpu to one that was faster. I wouldn't think that would call for software changes. Or am I wrong?

[Howard_Casto]

Excuse me for stating the obvious here but you have a 1.8 gig machine.  Running in windows isn't going to hurt performance a bit.  As a matter of fact dos actually hurts performance on higher end machines as all of the resources can't be detected, even with custommemory managers.  There are also tools that will help you run an arcade monitor in windows, like powerstrip.  

If at all possible switching to windows would be your best solution.  However your problem lies in arcadeos itself.  A quick fix is to disable sound in arcadeos.  You won't have sound in the menu but mame will most likely still have sound as it's better about detecting sound cards.  

[rmcelwee]

Excuse me for stating the obvious here but you have a 1.8 gig machine.  Running in windows isn't going to hurt performance a bit.  As a matter of fact dos actually hurts performance on higher end machines as all of the resources can't be detected, even with custommemory managers.  There are also tools that will help you run an arcade monitor in windows, like powerstrip.  

If at all possible switching to windows would be your best solution.  However your problem lies in arcadeos itself.  A quick fix is to disable sound in arcadeos.  You won't have sound in the menu but mame will most likely still have sound as it's better about detecting sound cards.  

You've misunderstood the problem. I don't run dos for performance, just video. I've tried a few utils (powerstrip, etc) but I haven't found any that work for me. In arcadeos I just boot up and run. Nothing else is needed. Arcadeos is NOT the problem, when I run mame from the command line it does not work. Arcadeos boots and runs fine until it hands over control to mame. I've disabled sound in mame but it has not helped.

[SNAAAKE]

Why dont you get a brand new sound card which is 100% dos compatible?That should do the trick right?I have one in my machine(useless as I use windows) but is 100% dos compatible.Got it from compuse for $10 on sale.

Also you might wanna reformat the HD just incase you missed something(i know the idea makes no sence but you never know).

[android]

I still suspect it has something to do with the built-in sound/video. You may want to disable your sound card from the BIOS and see if it still locks up when run without sound from the command line. If it still does, then do the same for the video card using an external one.  Also, if you are just swapping hard drives, make sure your config.sys and autoexec.bat don't call any drivers/tsr's that mess around with the IRQ's. Just a thought.

[rmcelwee]

I still suspect it has something to do with the built-in sound/video. You may want to disable your sound card from the BIOS and see if it still locks up when run without sound from the command line. If it still does, then do the same for the video card using an external one.  Also, if you are just swapping hard drives, make sure your config.sys and autoexec.bat don't call any drivers/tsr's that mess around with the IRQ's. Just a thought.

I already did that. Sound is disabled. Cannot disable video card but a PCI was added to the machine and it didn't help.

[CD_Vision]

Dude, I'm not getting a Dell.

[SNAAAKE]

hhaaaaaaaaaahahahhhahahahhahahhaaaaaaaaa
ghahghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

buahhhhhhhhhh
guahhhhhhhhhahahahhaa...

 :Pso funny

DUUUUDE...You are not getin a DELL .

[rmcelwee]

Dude, I'm not getting a Dell.

Regardless of if it will run Mame or not, $360 to my door was still a good price and I wish I had bought two of them. The price jumped $150 two days after I bought mine. I'll probably say screw it and just use it as my video (burning dvds, cds, etc) computer and put my p3 and p2 machines in the two cabinets. Oh well, maybe next time <G>.

[gnateye]

i would try restoring the pc to the way it arrived to you and try downloading mame and running it fresh with just one small rom if that works than you can go from there, i have heard some horror stories about dells being very finicky about hardware....

[planetjay]

Did you check with DELL for DOS drivers for your built-in sound? Or check the net (google) for DOS drivers for that chipset?

[MrArcade]

try forcing a resolution like  :
mame robotron -640x480 -soundcard 0

I always use robotron as my test game...it seems to work well.  Many vertical games will crash in dos because of odd resolutions.

[shaunti]

Try loading windblows and seeing of there are any memory address or IRQ conflicts with any of the devices.

See if windblows9x or XP/2K ever freezes.

I don't run dos mame (Visual Pinball/Pinmame + Mame32)

but I would look at things like different drive partitions.  FAT32 FAT16 NTFS, IRQ conflicts.  Or simply Bad memory or motherboard.  It happens..Even with a new Dell.