Why so slow?......

[Ummon]

I've noticed some games rom/ram checks are very fast, and some pretty slow. I can understand with later games, but I'm talking about golden age games. For example, DK is about a second. Pac-man/Ms Pac take several seconds. How come?

[Turnarcades]

I have no tech knowledge but at a guess I would say it depends on the amount of chips on the board, plus the game designer probably set it so each rom chip is checked a set number of times, whereas others were just once.

[RayB]

Which games for example? I've never seen it take long, but I use very old versions of MAME.

[Justin Z]

Arkanoid is the first example that pops into my head.  There's a countdown when you first boot the machine that is several seconds as I recall.

[RayB]

Oh the INTERNAL checks. They are slow because the game is throttled to it's "real" CPU speed. If you want to skip those, press F10 to turn off throttling, then turn it back on when it's done (which will be like, less than a second later).

[u_rebelscum]

Mame emulates the original hardware.  If the original game took X number of seconds, mame tries to match.

So the question revolves around how the original game tested.  Was it a crc check on part or whole chips?  Did it involve multiple reads and (for RAM) writes?  Was there a timed pause between chips/tests?  Or did the next chip/test start immediately after the prior?  Or were they done in parallel?  Add that older machines had slower RAM/ROM and slower CPUs, so they expected to run slower (bits/sec) than current hardware.  And last but not least, these tests were done only on machine startup, so they didn't need to finish quickly: most machine were on all day so no player saw how long it took to start up.

edit: RayB beat me to it.

[Justin Z]

That's what I always figured -- the designers were probably like "yeah nobody's going to care if this takes 15 seconds because, well, you turn the machine on once in the morning and that's it."

[Ummon]

Notice I didn't say 'in MAME'. So of course the actual games, although as MAME is intended to accurately emulate, the point is a little moot.

Oh the INTERNAL checks. They are slow because the game is throttled to it's "real" CPU speed. If you want to skip those, press F10 to turn off throttling, then turn it back on when it's done (which will be like, less than a second later).

Apparently there is something in AdvanceMAME that is doing this automatically. Not for all games, but many. If it's that simple, and while there are savestates and such, perhaps someone'd like to write a script for this to add to your build or FE folder or something?

[HaRuMaN]

[Turnarcades]

Never made much difference to me to be honest, after all it's only a few seconds each time. It's not like it's as bad as old computer tapes with long loading times, or even modern consoles, with up to a few minutes between stages and stuff while it reads off a disc - wish they'd research better cartridge technology so we can go back to instant gaming. But then, even then they stuck loads of non-skippable company logos on the start you have to sit through.

[Ummon]

Never made much difference to me to be honest, after all it's only a few seconds each time.

The newer the game, the long it can be, sometimes up to thirty seconds or more.

Hey. You don't have ta get gussied up ta kiss me.