How to fix major slowdown caused by controls

[dema]

I have half a gig of memory in my PC with a P4 3.0 GHz processor, so it should be beyond powerful to handle mame and emulators. However, ever since I've wired up my controls, the post 1990 games have had serious slowdown. After some testing I found that when I don't plug in the USB cable with the controls that the games run fine. However, once I plug in the USB cable (which has the three GP Wiz 49 way encoders and a Mini Pac connected) the CPU resources instantly jump from 20% to 60% when idle. Then when I run Mamewah it jumps to 90%+. When I play games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter the gameplay is very slow and jerky.

I've tried to shut down apps that are taking a lot of memory from the system, but it seems the biggest problem is my controls. Is this due to the three GP Wiz encoders since they're read as gamepads as opposed to keyboard presses?

What can be done to fix this?

[2600]

Are you using a hub?  Is it a 2.0 Hub?  Self-Powered or separte power supply?

From your other thread you mention using the mouse at the same time.  Is it possible for you to only enable the joystick or mouse in MAME for the games that need it or are other applications like Mamewah unusable?

[dema]

Yes, I believe it is a 2.0 hub, and I'm running a power cable to it, so it shouldn't be hogging any of the system's resources.

In terms of the trackball/spinner issues, I changed the joystick option in MAME.ini because the joysticks weren't working without the change. The same was true for Mamewah, and until the joysticks were enabled in the Mamewah.ini file I wasn't able to scroll through the games.

[2600]

Yes, I believe it is a 2.0 hub, and I'm running a power cable to it, so it shouldn't be hogging any of the system's resources.

What are you basing this opinion on?

In terms of the trackball/spinner issues, I changed the joystick option in MAME.ini because the joysticks weren't working without the change. The same was true for Mamewah, and until the joysticks were enabled in the Mamewah.ini file I wasn't able to scroll through the games.

Yes that's true when you use the joysticks, but is the mouse enabled at the same time?  Do you have to use that at the same time?  Are all your buttons coming off the GPwiz49?  Does MAMEWAH slowdown if both are enabled?



There's a couple of things to try to see which works for you in no particular order:
1. Don't use a hub.
2. If nothing is slowing down, except MAME, then only turn the mouse and joystick on a per game basis.  This assumes your buttons aren't all coming from the GPwiz49.
3. Go into the BIOS and disable USB 2.0.
4. Use 2 hubs and plug them into the separate USB connector stacks. You may have to do this and #3 as well. 

[dema]

Thanks for the advice 2600. I'll give your suggestions a shot. I was able to isolate the problem further. It seems that the problem occurs once I plug in the USB cable from the GP Wiz 49 ways into the hub I'm using, which is a 2.0. If I unplug everything except the Mini Pac everything runs fine. But as soon as I plug even one of my three GP Wiz's the slowdown begins.

I just tried using an older hub and lo and behold things look to have sped up!!!

You're right about the hub being the issue. I wasn't thinking that would be the case.

[2600]

Are you interested in doing a bit more testing to try to isolate the problem even more?  Other people have this problem and it would be nice to isolate it a bit.  If your busy, don't worry about it.


If so, here are some questions:
1. Can you describe your PC a little?  Basically, want to know what chipset.
2. Does the OS have all available updates? What OS?
3. What drivers do you have installed?
4. What was the brand and model # of the hub?  If your really want to get down to it, open up the hub and what is the writing on the chip inside it.

[dema]

1. My PC is a HP I bought online and I got it with an Intel P4 3.2 Ghz processor.

2. My OS is a little behind in the upgrading process. I haven't upgraded it since early 2005. Once I had it working I kept it as it was in order to preserve the work and the settings I chose. Then when I upgraded the Mame and Mamewah versions I realized I probably shouldn't have wasted the time preserving a working version and instead just taken care of everything when I was finished.

3. I'm not sure which drivers you are referring to. For the encoders I didn't need to install any drivers since they were programmed to be recognized by the computer automatically upon plugging in the USB.

4. I used the Targus 7 port 2.0 USB hub, model number PAUH212. When I swapped out the hubs I realized that it also caused a problem for me on startup, where if it was plugged in the OS wouldn't boot. I had to boot up without the USB from the hub plugged in, and then attach it once the XP was running.