Hello. I haven't visited this site in a long time (been very busy with real life) but several years ago I was a frequent visitor to this excellent site, and it helped me immensely. I was able to put together my own MAME machine and it came out great, mostly thanks to the great advice and support I got here... so thanks everyone.
I have a new project now, and a new problem with it, I was hoping maybe someone could shed some light on what might be the problem.
My friend and I decided to create our own video game (not just a cabinet, but an original GAME). He wrote the programming, and I built the cabinet and wired up the PC, etc.
I used the same "arcade-controls-to-PC-interface" method that I used for the MAME machine I built years ago... I used an OLD keyboard. One that is old enough that it has micro-switches for each keyboard button. What's cool about these is that if you open up the keyboard there's a circuit board for the whole keyboard and each key has two solder joints on the back... this makes it SO easy to just run a couple wires from each key to each arcade button/joystick/etc.
This method worked out fine for my MAME machine, but for this machine we're building now, it might be a problem. I honestly don't know if this is what's causing the problem, it could be any number of things, but I was hoping someone else might have run into this problem themselves and might know how to sovle it.
The problem is that the computer doesn't seem to keep up with my arcade input.
One of the things in our game is that you need to press the arcade buttons REALLY FAST, kinda like "Track & Field" fast. But the game or computer doesn't seem to be able to keep up with my button-pressing.
Here's the hardware/software we're dealing with. It's a DELL PC with a Pentium 3 1.0Ghz processor, 256 MB RAM, 32 MB AGP video card... I'm not really going to go into any more detail about the PC hardware... nothing else really would make a difference except the 1.0Ghz processor. There's really hardly any RAM memory usage to this game and there's also not any spectacular graphics.
Like I said... for the arcade interface, I'm using an old micro-switch keyboard with wires running from the keybard keys to the arcade buttons, etc. and it's a PS2 keybaord.
The operating system is Windows XP (another possible problem)... and I'm kinda pissed. I had a hard-drive with a fresh Windows XP Home installation on it, that was all set to go, but when I put it in this new PC, it screwed up and made me have to completely re-install Windows XP Home. Now it wants me to ACTIVATE it (stupid machine)... I'm not going to activate it (because I can't... I had to use my own Windows XP disc for the install and of course that's already activated on my home PC. So I'll just have to live with it bugging me to activate.
The program my friend wrote is in JAVA (jre-6u5-windows-i586-p.exe to be exact). I know NOTHING about programming or JAVA so this part is all up to him. He wrote the program on his 2.4 Ghz PC, and it was using 100% of his processor, so when I first put it on the game PC it was running ---smurfy---, and it maxed the processor usage out. But that was on the original PC I had it hooked up to, which was a simple slot 1 pentium 400 Mhz processor. He tweaked up the program and got it running better so that on HIS 2.4Ghz computer it was only using 12% of his processor. Running this new version on the 400Mhz slot 1 computer I had, pushed the processor usage up to 70%. But, now I have a bit newer PC to use for this game and it's got the newer Pentium 3 (not slot 1) 1.0 Ghz processor in it, so I figured that should be plenty.
So that's about it. 1.0Ghz processor, running Windows XP Home, running a game programmed in JAVA, using an old PS2 microswitch keyboard for arcade controls interface, and the game can't keep up with my button-presses.
What's the problem? Is it the processor is too slow? Is it that the keyboard is too old? Is it the operating system is too much of a resource hog? (I'm not familiar enough with Linux to get into that, even though I thought that might be a good idea... but I don't have the time or know-how to learn linux, and my friend doesn't know it either). Someone suggested I try to find a better keyboard driver? But how would I go about searching for a "keyboard driver that can handle fast button pressing" driver? I'm going to ask my friend if he can write out the program for use on JAVA for Windows 98, and see if it runs any better on a Windows 98 operating system?
Anybody got any ideas? We've been working on this thing for a while now, and the problem is we have a deadline to get it done in just TWO MORE DAYS. The game machine is built and done, the program is written and done... it just doesn't run efficiently enough, and we really need to figure out why. I'm also really out of money, I can't afford to just go buy a 2.0Ghz or 3.0Ghz or so PC. I also don't have the time to order any parts, they wont come in in time. I was wondering if an ipac might get me around this problem (but again, I can't GET one in time). I do have a HotRod arcade joystick that I use on my home PC, and a friend of mine suggested poaching the keyboard encoder from that and see if using that in my game might make it run better.
Any ideas are much appreciated, as I am under the gun. We need to get this thing done and working up to snuff in just TWO more days. Anybody run into a problem like this before?
Thank you very much.