DOS vs. Windows vs. roms?

[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]

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?

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...

And yes, you are definitely likely to run into rom problems if you try to use .80 roms with .100 mame.

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.

[AtomSmasher]

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.

Well I know that when I switched to v55 of Mame on a really old machine, about 3/4 of the v98 roms did not work.  Theres a good chance his problem is elsewhere, but matching the roms to mame should be his first step in correcting his problems.

[TheShanMan]

You can also use clrmamepro to audit your roms against the mame exe you have.

[joshlindem]

thanks for the suggestions on the ROM info.  I'll give that more of a look once I get things working.

I noticed something late last night, just before heading to bed, which may be my problem, though I'm having a little problem in itself trying to fix it.  Suggestions? 

So last night I started thinking more about the sound.  I still find it odd that I can boot up and during that Mame MPG hear the sound as well as in the ArcadeOS screen, but I guess this is a normal problem.  Sadly all this came to me around midnight so I didn't take too long working on it.

Anyways, last night I started looking even more closely to the boot up.  During the first mame boot screen I hit ESC, to watch it load the CDROM and sound.  and just before the screen blinks away I was noticing that the sound was going on IRQ10.  Odd huh?  After a couple quick reboots I kept watching and sure enough, IRQ10.  Then I started reboot and watched the POST.  You know after that first POST screen you get the 2nd one that looks like a really big chart?  It took me a number of immediate reboots to catch what was on that screen but I finally found that IRQ10 was being used by my PCI sound card + the onbaord AGP, and another onboard device.

Keep in mind, I've been in the BIOS, turned off the onboard sound, and turned off the onboard AGP and boot off the PCI video.  I even tell the BIOS that IRQ5 goes to PCI Slot 1 (my sound card).
This is my motherboard = http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=1407
This is my soundcard = Creative Labs (PCI) Model: CT4750  looks exactly like this http://cgi.ebay.com/Creative-Labs-CT4750-Sound-Card_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQitemZ170162263819

Now I'm not sure if the CL sound card has a hardcode of using IRQ10 or what.  I have (2) of these cards and they both do the same thing. unfortunately there are no jumpers on the card or any way I know of that can change this.  I was hoping to stay with this card because I have a backup/spare.
I do have a "C-Media" PCI sound card that I've been able to download drivers for.  I'm going to see if I can replace my current PCI128 sound drivers with the ones I have of this card.  Not my first choice of card to go with, but when I installed this one into PCI Slot 1 it pulled IRQ5 immediately.  But I didn't have the DOS drivers installed so when it got to ArcadeOS it booted out to the DOS.  Again, this was just after midnight last night so I didn't spend took long messing around with it.

Any thoughts to the onboard sound card?  It's a Realtek AC97.  Do we know if that could work? Is there a DOS driver that we could use?  Just starting to wonder about that as I write this.

[gonzo90017]

Can't help you with your problem but if you press "Pause Break" on your keyboard you can pause those post screens.

[Tiger-Heli]

Been a long time since I've used DMAME, I haven't ever had much success with AdvanceMAME, and I never tried TV out, so here goes.

.
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.

Could likely be from the roms not being correct.

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?

Yes - both to match your ROMS and b/c that machine due to it's speed will run better on an older version of MAME.

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?

Only advantage I could see is Win98 might be a fairly recent version of DOS at the core - like 7.1 instead of say 5.0, but FreeDOS should be fairly new.  Other advantage is you can use Windows frontends and there are many more of those than DOS fe/s but then you aren't really running DOS.

RE - version of ROMS - You can't look at a ROM collection and know what version of MAME they are good for.  As mentioned, you can run clrMAME and it will check the roms for you, tell you which ones are good, which ones are missing, and (if you tell it to), try to fix/rename roms for you, but unless you just ran ClrMAME with MAME 0.50, 0.51, 0.52, etc. until it came back with no errors, that's all you can do.

RE - the sound card - I thought DMAME had an option to tell it what type of sound card you had - seems like if you ran MAME? or just MAME, it would prompt you and you needed to enter a number - seems like 3 was the good one for it.

You can get Dos MAME 0.81 here - http://www.emu-france.com/?page=fichiers&idFile=2749 from the readme.txt:

-soundcard n  select sound card (if this is not specified, you will be asked
              interactively)

I don't think there are DOS drivers for onboard soundcards.

Recommend you find a rom that will work in MAME and then try to get sound etc. working with it first and then go from there.

Hope this helps!!!!

[joshlindem]

Thanks Tiger-Heli, that's good info there.

I've got the right version of dmame now to work with my roms.  So I'm ok in that resepct, but still running into the same "black screen" issue.

I've been told by a reliable source that it's most likely due to a sound card conflict.  I'm hoping some fool has already tried and succeeded with the AC97 dos drivers, but tonight I'm hoping to get that C-Media sound card working. I've got DOS drivers for that card so hopefully I'll make some progress there.

More comments and suggestions are welcome.

[Tiger-Heli]

There is supposed to be some way with Dmame that it prompts you for a soundcard -

Does Dmame generate a mame.cfg or mame.ini file (probably .cfg).

If so, look for a soundcard entry in there and try changing the values to 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (believe zero was none, so that should at least get MAME to run). 

Here you go - have a look at this page: http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/mameguide/mamedossetup.htm