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| joshlindem:
Hi everyone, yes I do understand that this is a heavily asked question, but I have more to ask than just that. About 4 years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to MAME and the art of creating a arcade cab. It wasn't until 2 months ago that I finally got my hands on an old arcade cabinet so that I could rebuild it using MAME. For the past month I have been working on building this cab with the following pieces: PC Arcade Cab TV AMD Duron 1200Mhz StreetFighter Vs. X-Men cab Hitachi 24” 384MB 2 Player (6 button) console Model# CT2043B 30GB HardDrive 2 coin slots Serial# S1A006144 SoundBlaster 128(PCI) 120V 60Hz 115W ATI Radeon 7000 (PCI) 32MB Ultimarc I-PAC But as with most noobs, I'm running into big problems. I've had these pieces sitting aside for the past 4 years and finally able to start putting it together. My video outputs to my TV through a "Video-Out" connection. It took a while but I finally figured out how to flash the ROM of the video card so that it would output to the TV on boot. Once that was done I've disconnected the computer monitor and use the TV solely while I'm working on my build. At first I was using DOS + AdvMenu + AdvMame, because I really liked the setup I saw from it on screenshots and it's ability to have built-in video configs. I could never seem to get it to work properly. Everything seemed to come together, but I could never get the AdvCFG to work because once I got to the configuration screen part, it booted me out to DOS saying it couldn't run the configuration screen. Sadly, I don't have the manual for the TV, nor can I find it so I don't know the exact v / h settings. (and last week someone hinted that AdvMame won't work in DOS) Then I was introduced to "Darren's Mame Boot CD" which installs FreeDOS, ArcadeOS, and DMAME. Finally I got some results. It started up a MAME Splash Screen, then kicks off this MPEG which I can see and hear, and then it loads up ArcadeOS which I can see and hear and use. BUT... If I attempt to play any game... then all I get is a black screen. That's it... nothing more... no sound...no video. I pretty much have to shut down the computer and restart it again. So I here I sit... frustrated and alone. HELP!! Now, the roms that I have were received 4 years ago, and at the time I believe were "made" with\for Mame0.80. Does this mean I should be using dmame0.80 and not dmame0.100? Also, I've been going with a DOS based system, because when I get my cab setup, I want the ability to turn on/off everything with a simple switch. I don't want to start the machine and have to wait as Windows does a disk check because I shut down improperly every time. Are people actually loading windows, and then a DOS session, or I think I've read how people install Win98, but then modify the boot so it doesn't load Win98 but goes directly into DOS. Is there any benefit of doing this over what I'm currently doing? Sorry for such a long post, but I'm really looking to get peoples suggestions and opinions, and needing to run this by the group. I figure I have all the pieces, and perhaps I'm missing something. And I don't really want to go out and purchase more hardware unless I know for a fact that the hardware is the issue. Thanks, Josh |
| AtomSmasher:
--- Quote from: joshlindem on February 11, 2008, 12:48:55 pm ---Now, the roms that I have were received 4 years ago, and at the time I believe were "made" with\for Mame0.80. Does this mean I should be using dmame0.80 and not dmame0.100? --- End quote --- I know little about Mame, but I do know that roms should be the same version as the version of Mame. They seem to change a few file names and add or delete a few files with each version change, which can cause older roms not to load correctly on newer versions of mame (and vice versa). |
| TheShanMan:
Well I wired up an arcade button on the top of my cab to the pc's power button terminals so it acts just like the power button on the front of your computer. That way, windows starts up when you press it, and shuts down when you press it (shuts down fully and properly). The windows startup time is a small price to pay for the ease of working in windows IMO. I remember years back trying to take an approach similar to yours - dos and arcadeos, and it was nothing but headaches working with arcadeos. At that time development of it was dead. I have no idea what the state of that frontend is these days. For all I know it could be great now. But I ended up switching to windows and I've been mostly happy with that choice. There are always tradeoffs with any decision, but this works well for me. And yes, you are definitely likely to run into rom problems if you try to use .80 roms with .100 mame. |
| joshlindem:
to ask a question to this specifically... --- Quote from: TheShanMan on February 11, 2008, 02:33:53 pm ---And yes, you are definitely likely to run into rom problems if you try to use .80 roms with .100 mame. --- End quote --- This looks like a good question to ask for new or old users, but other than the fact that my DVD cases for my roms have mame0.80 printed on them... how else does a person know which version of mame they should use. or what version of mame is good for their roms? |
| f4phantomii:
You don't need to have the same version of mame as your roms. I think I'm using roms for v0.79 or something like that. Many games don't work, but a whole bunch do. I think I'm using Mame32 v0.116. I too tried the dos route and even windows with a front end. It was just more trouble than it was worth, especially with mame code changing so often. I just use Mame32 now and I'm perfectly happy with it. |
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