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Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: electricd on July 21, 2005, 11:52:54 am

Title: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 21, 2005, 11:52:54 am
Hello,

I have an old NT-150 STB machine that I have converted into a computer.  It basically has a 133Mhz processor with 8MB or ram and runs the OS (windows 95) off of a compact flash card (128MB).  I would like to install mame on this box and run just the classic games (pacman, ms pacman, galaga, dk, asteroids, etc.)  Can anyone tell me if they think this might be possible, and maybe give me some pointers?  Thanks!

ED7
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: AlanS17 on July 21, 2005, 12:06:08 pm
Well performance is dependant on hardware, but if you've got Win95 running you should be able to get MAME going. Use an older version of pure DOS MAME. I suggest trying .37 or something around there. I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work, though. Good luck to you.
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 21, 2005, 12:22:06 pm
Awesome..I will give it a shot and see what happens...any idea where to get older version of Mame?
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 21, 2005, 12:23:27 pm
NM  found it! :)
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 21, 2005, 04:43:03 pm
Ok I downloaded mame .37 and got it installed on the system.  I try and run it in MSDos Mode (as I downloaded the dos version.)  I get "Error: no DPMI" or something like that, so I downloaded csdpmi5b.zip and extracted cwsdpmi.exe to the Mame directory and ran it.  Now when I run "mame pacman" it just sits and hangs, but never does anything?  Anyone have any idea what to try?
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: AlanS17 on July 21, 2005, 04:44:33 pm
You can run it in a command prompt in Windows or through the run command in Windows. You don't have to run in pure DOS mode unless you want to.
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 21, 2005, 05:15:16 pm
Well it looks like this dpmi HAS to run in puredos...maybe i will try the win version of Mame?
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: elvis on July 21, 2005, 05:16:10 pm
Vantage is the king of "old crappy CPU" support:
http://www.mameworld.net/pc2jamma/vantage.html

Your P133 may actually be overkill for it! HA! :)
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: ahmer on July 21, 2005, 05:43:57 pm
CWSDPMI5 is for more than 64 Mb ram.

for 8 mb you may try Cwsdpmi3.
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: AlanS17 on July 21, 2005, 06:14:23 pm
You shouldn't have a problem runing an instance of MAME in WIN95 without using memory managers. Just run the pure DOS version in Win95. Win95 was a wierd operating system. It was more of just a fancy shell for DOS. Your DOS stuff should run fine in Win95. It just won't run fine in later Windows versions.

... at least that sounds right. I could very well be talking straight out of my butt.
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 21, 2005, 11:33:41 pm
well when I try and run cwsdpmi it tells me that it can only be ran in dos mode, and makes me reboot into dos to run it.  Do you think I should cwsdpmi3 and see if that is the same way?  If not, anyway to run it in like the autoexec so I don't have to load it each time i restart the computer??  Basically I just want this to be a STB (as it has RCA and S-Video outputs on board already) to run some classic games.  Perhaps I will try vantage on it as well.  I have been running what I believe to be the pure dos version of mame .37b16 but have never been able to successfully run it without getting the DPMI error.  Any and all help is greatly appriciated!
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 22, 2005, 09:52:15 am
Ok so I installed Vantage and ArcadeOS, but now the issue is that my roms don't seem to work for vantage...it says cant find ... files.  They are from the mame .97 romset I believe, so perhaps they won't work with Vantage?  Is there anyway to make these roms work?
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: elvis on July 22, 2005, 12:22:08 pm
Ok so I installed Vantage and ArcadeOS, but now the issue is that my roms don't seem to work for vantage...it says cant find ... files.  They are from the mame .97 romset I believe, so perhaps they won't work with Vantage?  Is there anyway to make these roms work?

Grab ClrMAMEPro:
http://www.clrmame.com/

And the Vantage DAT files for ClrMAMEPro:
http://www.logiqx.com/Dats/OlderEmus/OlderEmus.shtml

And use them to rebuild a proper vantage set.
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: electricd on July 22, 2005, 03:11:02 pm
Ok so I downloaded those files and put the vantage dat file into the datafiles directory, but I still am not sure how to procede in converting my romset to work with vantage??  Any one give me the quick version?
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: elvis on July 23, 2005, 04:07:42 am
Check out the ClrMAMEPro guide on EasyEmu:

http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/
Title: Re: OLD machine proof of concept question
Post by: pointdablame on July 23, 2005, 11:02:04 am
you .97 romset may also be the problem with your Dos mame.  A lot of your .97 roms won't work on .37.   Grab that .dat file for your version of mame, and rebuild them for your version of Mame as well.