Boot CD installs DOS, Vantage, Raine, MAME (1 of 7 versions) and Game Launcher

[spystyle]

Well I have received many e-mails about this disk, I am pleased it is working for some, but others are having trouble with the ISO

How to burn the ISO:

Download burn4free*, it's free. Install it, then go to add/remove programs and uninstall it's toolbar. The program remains

start burn4free, click: drive > burn iso

use it to burn the ISO "as" a disk

some users accidentally burn it "to" a disk using other programs, that is why I recommend burn4free

Cheers,
Craig

*
http://tinyurl.com/b8mco

[stuzza]

Thanks for an awesome disk Spystyle! 
I've managed to get it all up and running on a couple of old Pentium II machines I had lying around at work.  Had a few issues trying to get some old creative ISA sound cards working with the default settings from the cd but after running the drivers setup program in the dosdrv directory managed to get them to work!

I've got mame 0.55 setup but am wondering if anyone knows how to get a smaller list of games in Gamelauncher?  I've tried using the GameLauncher (http://hem.passagen.se/robert.palmqvist/Downloads/downloads.html) Mame tool and mame content manager, however they seem to need a catver.ini file which only goes back to 0.56?

Anyone know how I can create a Gamelauncher list of just a few hundred classic games that will run on a PII with maximum 3 buttons??  Also anyway to remove the OK screens and warnings from old dos mame version without having to recompile?

[spystyle]

Glad you like the disk! I hope it makes DOS easy :)

As for the roms - You can sort the roms on your regular computer before putting them on your cab.

Cheers,
Craig

[IG-88]

Thanks for an awesome disk Spystyle! 
I've managed to get it all up and running on a couple of old Pentium II machines I had lying around at work.  Had a few issues trying to get some old creative ISA sound cards working with the default settings from the cd but after running the drivers setup program in the dosdrv directory managed to get them to work!

Care to elaborate on how exactly you did that? (the drivers setup program) I need some help in this area also! 

[stuzza]

Care to elaborate on how exactly you did that? (the drivers setup program) I need some help in this area also! 

In the SB16 folder there is a progam called "diagnose.exe".  I ran that and it goes through autoscanning your sound card - be careful though, the first time I did it I overwrote the entire autoexec.bat file with another, I think the key was to go through all the setup then F3 exit out before it modifies all the files or something. - I'll check the exact process tomorrow.

Anyway, it turned out that the settings I needed for my Soundblaster ISA card (model CT4170) in the autoexec.bat file are:

SETBLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P330 T6

Which is slightly different to the line which the CD autoloads.
Hope this helps.

[spystyle]

Good job! DOS guru in the making

If you are worried your autoexec.bat will be overwritten you can back it up first.

To backup your autoexec.bat do this:

C:>copy autoexec.bat autoexec.bak

This will make a backup called autoexec.bak

Later you can edit the two and add/remove lines

C:>edit autoexec.bat

C:>edit autoexec.bak

Cheers,
Craig

[stuzza]

thanks for the extra info.  I've now got a games list of 533 classic only games which are running a treat on the old P2 333 with a 4GB hard drive!   Works so well I've gotton an identical P2 machine up and running aswell - just ghosted the first hard drive over and voila second machine up in under 10min!!

So last but not least, how do I get a mame 0.55 version with the OK and warning screens gone? (preferably without having to compile it myself)

[IG-88]

Care to elaborate on how exactly you did that? (the drivers setup program) I need some help in this area also! 

In the SB16 folder there is a progam called "diagnose.exe".  I ran that and it goes through autoscanning your sound card - be careful though, the first time I did it I overwrote the entire autoexec.bat file with another, I think the key was to go through all the setup then F3 exit out before it modifies all the files or something. - I'll check the exact process tomorrow.

Anyway, it turned out that the settings I needed for my Soundblaster ISA card (model CT4170) in the autoexec.bat file are:

SETBLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P330 T6

Which is slightly different to the line which the CD autoloads.
Hope this helps.

Cool. A couple of questions. Why does it hurt to overwrite the autoexect.bat file if the original settings for the soundcard that come off the CD and put in that file are wrong anyway?

And second, should this diagnose.exe work for any Soundblaster card (I have several ENSONIC PCI cards that I think are Generic SB cards ??) or is this an ISA thing only?

[spystyle]

From what I've read - SB16 ISA is the best soundcard to use with Dmame (DOS mame, which I include with my boot CD)

However, I think PCI sound cards are supported in AdvanceMame, check their docs, Fraggal's boot CD installs AdvaceMame and ArcadeOS.

Also consider calling your local computer shop, it's likely they can dig up a SB16 ISA card for you for $5

Or bump up the RAM and install 98 (much better driver support). I show in the "nlite" thread (in this forum) how to get 98 to use 24 MB RAM only, MAME32 .36 needs 10 MB RAM, the rest is for the game rom. 256 should be ample, 128 should be fine.

Cheers,
Craig
 

[IG-88]

Can't go Win98 on these machines. They won't support that much Ram.

Are you saying then that PCI cards won't work with your boot cd?

I did go to on of my local shops and asked about ISA cards. They looked at me like I was from Mars.

What are the model numbers of the cards that you have gotten to work?

[spystyle]

The cards had "soundblaster 16" stamped on them

Here are some links to buy one

http://tinyurl.com/unsp6

http://tinyurl.com/yxqwrq

http://tinyurl.com/yxnh43

[IG-88]

Yip, Yip Yahoo! I got one to work! I found an old ISA card mixed in with a bunch of old network cards out in the garage. I believe the model # was C2940 but I'm not sure. I can check if anyone cares. Machine works like a champ. Now I just have to sort some roms like you guys talked about earlier and it's done!

I guess it's off to ebay to find some more of those cards!

Thanks guys for all your help!

[AlanS17]

Have you considered using FreeDOS? It doesn't require any MS licenses. As the name suggests, it's free. Otherwise, this sounds like a neat idea.

Also, AdavnceMAME offers support for non-Sound Blaster sound cards as well as other tweaks. It's what I use in my DOS setups. That might be over-complicating it, though. I haven't actually tried this disk for myself so I don't know exactly what it can and can't do.

[IG-88]

Just a small update. I have now tried several different PCI sound cards and have had all kinds of problems. I can (sometimes) get completely thru the set-up and put the roms onto the HD but never had any of the cards work. I've tried Soundblaster and Ensoniq both, and several different model #'s of each. Mostly tho I get strange error messages, lockups, hangs you name it when using PCI. Spystyle was correct in stating that DOS works best with ISA type cards.

I am waiting on getting some more of the model CT2940's (isa) off of Ebay to see if they will work as effortlessly as the first one did. I've also added darned near my whole set of v36 roms and I've only found slow down in a couple games so far. (i-robot comes to mind)

I've also tried using Fraggals Boot CD but it just locks up after install. EasyCab Cd seemed to work pretty well but I'll be damned if I can get the games to show up in ArcadeFe.  Both of these support the abundance of PCI cards I got. I wish there was some more support for the programs themselves. 

Anyway I'll post back after I've tried the CT2940's.

[redfivexw]

I am trying to install this now, i am getting similar problems to a previous poster, I see the mame splash screen but then the screen just goes black.  Also when i try to use the update command at the c prompt, i get a message that the computer cannot read from drive a, abort, retry, fail?.  I dont understand why it is trying to read the floppy drive.  any help is appreciated.  I am running a celeron 1200mhz with 256mb ram. 

[spystyle]

Howdy,

I'm sorry the disk didn't work for you. I just tested it again myself choosing MAME .36, Pentium II, and Soundblaster ISA - it worked perfectly.

I tested SCAN and UPDATE, they worked perfectly as well

I was using a CD made from "SpyStyle_boot_CD_beta_1d.iso"

But it may not be compatible with your system.

Instead you could use Fraggal's boot CD*, Win98**, or MAME-XP***. The latter 2 with MAME32**** work very well.

Cheers,
Craig


*Fraggal's boot CD
http://tinyurl.com/yxxesl

***Another option (that is much more user friendly) is using an "optimized" (stripped) version of Windows XP like MAME-XP. See the nLite thread in the software forum.


**For Win98

open c:\windows\system.ini , search for line [vcache] and change it to this:

[vcache]
MinFileCache=8096
MaxFileCache=8096

(This makes 98 use 8 MB RAM for disk caching, leaving more resources for MAME32. It also allows 98 to use more than 512MB RAM)

****To get MAME32 to start with Windows, Maximized :

Place a shortcut to mame32.exe in the startup folder

right click the shortcut, select properties, and change

"run : normal window" to "run : maximized"

[spystyle]

Windows 2000 may be desireable too because it has "hibernate" - allowing it to start up quickly. I've read that allot of the MP3 "car-puters" are using this.

[RXII]

Hi Guys,
             I have been emailing Craig with a few problems I have been having installing his awesome boot CD on my old HP 33mhz PC. I have not been able to get it to boot up properly. I have finally found the problem, the PC has a CDRW in it and the old bios musn't be able to see it as a proper reader. I couldn't set the CD as the 1st bootable source. I fitted a $5 CDROM into it then it let me set the 1st boot to be from the CDROM, put in the boot CD and away it went.
Thanks again Craig for all your help with this..you must get bombarded with emails when you put something like this CD together.

Cheers,
Simon.

[IG-88]

Were you able to get the games to list in Game Launcher after you intalled them? Thats the problem I keep having. I got it too work on one PC and then never again 

[RXII]

Were you able to get the games to list in Game Launcher after you intalled them? Thats the problem I keep having. I got it too work on one PC and then never again 

No I haven't had any luck with that either just yet, I am downloading the .36 set (I actually just picked the games I wanted for now) after reading that I may have to have the correct roms for .36 that I installed. Yeah initially the entire gamelist came up but then after I did the 'scan' there were no games in the list...not even the ones I installed off the boot disk. I went through the directory and saw that the roms I put in were actually in the mame/rom folder which they were. I will keep you updated on the .36 roms I get.
Have you had any luck?

Cheers, Simon.

[spystyle]

GameLauncher won't list the games?

That's odd

Make sure that mame is setup correctly in the first place:

From C:> prompt

Type

cd mame
mame digdug -soundcard 0

Assuming you have digdug rom in the roms folder this will test mame, if digdug launches then mame is not the culprit and you need to examine GL, if digdug does not launch you need to examine mame

There is a good site about DOS mame here:
http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/

Also feel free to e-mail me.

Lastly, if you have a P2/500 or better, 98se "optimized" only takes 15 MB RAM and works well, I just added that step by step in my tutorial, also setting up mame32 (which only uses 10 MB RAM, ver36)

Cheers,
Craig

[RXII]

GameLauncher won't list the games?

That's odd

Make sure that mame is setup correctly in the first place:

From C:> prompt

Type

cd mame
mame digdug -soundcard 0

Assuming you have digdug rom in the roms folder this will test mame, if digdug launches then mame is not the culprit and you need to examine GL, if digdug does not launch you need to examine mame

There is a good site about DOS mame here:
http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/

Also feel free to e-mail me.

Lastly, if you have a P2/500 or better, 98se "optimized" only takes 15 MB RAM and works well, I just added that step by step in my tutorial, also setting up mame32 (which only uses 10 MB RAM, ver36)

Cheers,
Craig

Hi Craig,
               I have now tried some .36 roms to try with my .36 install of mame and the gamelist still doesn't come up. I tried to run mame as you just said and it came up with this.........

Exiting due to signal SIGILL
Invalid opcode at eip=0020c817
eax=000000038 ebx=009974d4

It reels off a heap more numbers and letters like that and then at the end it says.....

Call frame traceback EIPs:
 0x0020c817

And then goes back to the prompt......
C:\MAME>

Weird huh?

This is on a 333mhz AMD-K6 with 96mg RAM, I chose the .36 mame and I also chose "install the soundcard later" option. I have check and all the roms are in the right place
Any Ideas??

Simon.

[IG-88]

GameLauncher won't list the games?

That's odd

Make sure that mame is setup correctly in the first place:

From C:> prompt

Type

cd mame
mame digdug -soundcard 0

Assuming you have digdug rom in the roms folder this will test mame, if digdug launches then mame is not the culprit and you need to examine GL, if digdug does not launch you need to examine mame

There is a good site about DOS mame here:
http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/

Also feel free to e-mail me.

Lastly, if you have a P2/500 or better, 98se "optimized" only takes 15 MB RAM and works well, I just added that step by step in my tutorial, also setting up mame32 (which only uses 10 MB RAM, ver36)

Cheers,
Craig

Hi Craig,
               I have now tried some .36 roms to try with my .36 install of mame and the gamelist still doesn't come up. I tried to run mame as you just said and it came up with this.........

Exiting due to signal SIGILL
Invalid opcode at eip=0020c817
eax=000000038 ebx=009974d4

It reels off a heap more numbers and letters like that and then at the end it says.....

Call frame traceback EIPs:
 0x0020c817

And then goes back to the prompt......
C:\MAME>

Weird huh?

This is on a 333mhz AMD-K6 with 96mg RAM, I chose the .36 mame and I also chose "install the soundcard later" option. I have check and all the roms are in the right place
Any Ideas??

Simon.

Exactly the same thing mine did. MAME & GL both look identical in the machine that works and the ones that don't. It's got to be some kind of hardware issue.

[spystyle]

According to that site

"The error you're getting is an illegal instruction error, check you are running the correct version of MAME for YOUR platform or try running plain un-optimised MAME"

So try installing the disk all over, choosing a different Mame optimization.

ie: if the problem was K6, choose Pentium, and vise versa.

Good luck,
Craig

[RXII]

Hi,
     I have tried all of the different PC types as well as both .36 and .55 still no good. I did notice that after I have typed 'scan' all of those numbers and letters appear as in my last post before fading out and bringing up the gameless gamelauncher screen. Not sure if this helps. I might just install windows 98 and strip it down, then install gamelauncher and mame .36 manually?? Not sure which way to go. I am so close...it will be something simple that I can't see.

[spystyle]

Did you test Mame seperately in each case, with "mame digdug -soundcard 0"

Or is it GL crashing?

[RXII]

Yeah sorry I tried each mame version on each PC version and it was no good. I am currently loading win98 to try that. Do you have a link to your win98 mods that you do? I thinks it all under the Nlited XP thread. I will let you know how I go.

[IG-88]

It's like you are travelling that exact same road that I did. Craig's modified win98 works great but I can tell you that I didn't like the MAME32 v.36 on it. Compared to the GL that works on my one computer it's not even close visually. I am only running 160-200 MHz tho. And maybe GL will work on yours under win98. I'll be eager to see.

[RXII]

I had no problems getting mame to work after I had installed win98. I got mame.36 but the K6 version, put a few roms in there.....WALA! Even the sound works straight away. I haven't configured Game Launcher yet but I am happy it at least runs a few basic games which is all it has to do to be saved from the BIN! 

[Cheapskate]

Hay! Finally i can register to these forums lol

Awhile back i had been emailing Craig with the same problems that alot of people have been having with the Roms not showing up in the FE but like alot of yous never found out why or how to fix that problem. For the people that have it just hang after it beeps when its on the boot screen or if it goes to a black screen and just hangs try and put a pause in the autoexec.bat before the glaunch command

So the autoexec.bat will look like this:

c:
cd glaunch
pause
glaunch

For yous that are having trouble downloading TinyXP through the torrent i found a direct link to it but I'm not shore if i can post the link to the forum page with the link to the download on it... if its not allowed can you edit it out please.

<edited out ---saint>

Well I'm just getting back into converting my computer into a MAME machine and puting it into my cabinet as its the school holidays, so I'll be visiting on here regularly as i don't really have a life lol

L8az

[IG-88]

Good News! Craigs tip on using a different Mame Optimization worked on another machine.  This set-up is a 200mhz, 64mb ram, ISA soundcard, and an 85mb HD.

Craig. How large is your Boot CD when it's all unzipped? Just curious.

[spystyle]

This disk installs 25 MB data if Mame .36 and Sound Blaster ISA are selected.

Cheers,
Craig

[hsr]

Hi Guys,

Craig, just wanted to start by saying thank you for taking the time to set up your iso file.

I burned a copy to disc and installed first on a P1 233MMx.  Install went fine and was able to run the free rom games.  Setup 0.55.

Tonight, I used the exact same disc on a P3 733.  Once installed, I get the Mame splash screen and then nothing.

If I add "pause" to glaunch.bat, I am prompted to hit return before GameLauncher will run.  After hitting return, GL fails to launch and I get the following error:

Load Error: No DPMI - Get csdpmi*b.zip

In the C: directory, there is a file entry for CWSDPMI.SWP, but its size is 0.

Tried launching both GL and Mame from the c: prompt and get the same load error as above.

Scan from the c: prompt gives the same result then on the next line says cannot run _gl.exe.

Same error was present after loading .36, .55 and .100.

Anyone else seeing this?

Anyone making any progress on getting PCI sound cards to work in DOS?  I have several P3's available to me, but none with ISA slots.

IG-88,

What Ensoniq's did you try?  Reason I'm asking is http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/html/hardware.htm claims the Ensoinq should be the cure all.  I happen to be trying the 1373 in this particular P3 733 above.  Although the above problems persist with or without the card installed or configured.

RXII,

Can you elaborate a little further on your set up?  You said you have no issues after installing win98, even sound straight away.  Are you running DOS off boot or in a shell?

Last question for this post:  If I have to end up using a winMame on these P3's, do you recommend command line or Mame32?  Why?

Thanks in advance,

[spystyle]

...Tonight, I used the exact same disc on a P3 733.  Once installed, I get the Mame splash screen and then nothing.

If I add "pause" to glaunch.bat, I am prompted to hit return before GameLauncher will run.  After hitting return, GL fails to launch and I get the following error:

Load Error: No DPMI - Get csdpmi*b.zip

This happens if you do not restart the computer after initial install, because the installed software has not been loaded (it is set to load at startup)

If you are receiving this error after a restart it would seem that data is missing from the drive - either you selected an install option that doesn't work (this is a beta disk, maybe some don't work?) OR the hard drive is corrupt.

To check the hard drive for errors boot the computer and type

scandisk c: -autofix -nosave -surface

(at the C:> prompt)

It is also possible that the CD-ROM drive is malfunctioning on that computer.

That computer is fast enough to run Windows 98 (if you get sick of trying to configure DOS) 98 can be optimized to use only 15 MB RAM.

Cheers,
Craig

[hsr]

This happens if you do not restart the computer after initial install, because the installed software has not been loaded (it is set to load at startup)

If you are receiving this error after a restart it would seem that data is missing from the drive - either you selected an install option that doesn't work (this is a beta disk, maybe some don't work?) OR the hard drive is corrupt.

To check the hard drive for errors boot the computer and type

scandisk c: -autofix -nosave -surface

(at the C:> prompt)

It is also possible that the CD-ROM drive is malfunctioning on that computer.

That computer is fast enough to run Windows 98 (if you get sick of trying to configure DOS) 98 can be optimized to use only 15 MB RAM.

Cheers,
Craig

This was after a restart (and many more) after making autoexec changes.

I ran Boot and Nuke on all of my hard drives (uses DoD standards to write zeros to the disc), fdisk and long format, than ran the Western Digital Data Life Guard to verify the integrity.

I've got a pile of CD drives, so I'll throw a few more in there and see if any changes.

Due to the sound issues, I am now leaning more toward Mame for Windows.  I've been reading your posts in the nLite thread for the past week.

[IG-88]

IG-88,

What Ensoniq's did you try?  Reason I'm asking is http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/html/hardware.htm claims the Ensoinq should be the cure all.  I happen to be trying the 1373 in this particular P3 733 above.  Although the above problems persist with or without the card installed or configured.

To be honest with you, I don't remember. I pulled them and threw them in a box with a bunch of others. After getting a bunch of ISA cards off eBay, I have been having much better luck.

I have also tried the EasyCab boot cd and have had the same problem with games not showing up in the menu. I tried the ArcadeOS with DOS MAME PC option and the ArcadeOS with AdvanceMAME PC option and neither let the games show up. (on this one  PC I am trying) I then tried the AdvanceMENU with AdvanceMAME PC option and it worked great. Great that is until I ran the games and the audio was all screwed up. Visually they looked superb but it was like someone was tweaking the speed of the audio playback. Real weird. If I remember right it was a PCI soundcard I was using too. There is no ISA option in the setup.

Anyone else tried this CD yet?

[spystyle]

If you use a soundcard other than soundblaster ISA you'll need to change the "soundcard 1" line, in c:\mame\mame.cfg

0=Silence

1=Sound Blaster

2=Pro Audio Spectrum

3=Ultrasound Max

4=Ultrasound

5=Windows Sound System

6=Ensoniq Soundscape (Used By Soundblaster PCI Cards)

[RXII]

RXII,

Can you elaborate a little further on your set up?  You said you have no issues after installing win98, even sound straight away.  Are you running DOS off boot or in a shell?

The PC i am trying to get going in a HP4404 which is a AMD-K6 333mhz and it has 96mb of RAM. The initial trouble I had was I was trying to use a CDRW drive that the HP bios obviously didn't recognise so it wouldn't boot the CD. I have since put in a CDROM and it booted up fine. Since having trouble getting the boot disc going with GL and mame I decided to put WIN98 back on and run Mame32 v.36. It ran Mame fine and once i installed the audio drivers I was away. The main thing I wanted to make sure was that the PC was capable of running the games I wanted and that I was wasn't wasting my time with it.

UPDATE!
I thought I would persist with Craig's CD as it was obviously nothing to do with his CD. I reformatted the drive and reinstalled the boot CD. This time I tried a few more combinations of PC type and Mame versions. I stumbled on using Mame .55 and Pentium 1 and IT WORKED! I did the scan and the PC actually had a think about it instead of bringing those error numbers and letters as on one of my previous posts and bought up the 3 installed roms off the CD! YAY!
BUT I still cant play the game through GameLauncher. I can play them staright from Mame but through GL when I press 1 or Ctrl the menu slides away but then just comes straight back....sort of like when you first install the disc and it brings all of the games that aren't really there. So I need to find out why this happens. Its obviously a config setting in GL...not sure where to start looking though and haven't had time to check it further. But I am sure I am on the right track now!

[IG-88]

Good job! A quick question I have....did you use v.36 roms with that or did you use v.55?

[RXII]

I have the full v.36 set and picked a few of my favorites to try....I just used those.

I cant find the v.55 set anywhere. I may have to learn how to use Clrmame???