MAME: possible resolution problem

[PCTech714]

Hi guys,

I'm kinda at my wits end with this problem. I've been struggling with it for over 2 days and could use some help.

Note:  I built my cab about 4 years ago or so and have never had any major problems. Also, I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to both emulation and PCs in general. For those looking for my system specs -- they are at the bottom of this message.

Lately, whenever I start most games, the monitor will flicker and go to a black screen. I can still hear demo sounds in the background (for those games that have them), but there's no video. My D9200 usually displays a "No Signal" message when video is out of range, but I'm not seeing that.

Now here's the really weird thing -- sometimes games will work once, then will stop working. As an example, I brought up Xenophobe at one point, played it for a while and then quit out. Tried to start up Gauntlet II but only got the black screen. Then, I went back to Xenophobe and it was also giving me the black screen.

At first I thought it might be something with my front-end (MaLa v1.745 beta) but this exact same problem occurs by just running MAME from the command line, as well. My MAME version is 0.147.

I'm using the ArcadeVGA 3000 with the drivers from the Ultimarc page and resolutions set by the ArcadeRes utility. Just to cover all my bases, I've tried to get things working by removing the .ini files that ArcadeRes created and even removed the ArcadeVGA and just used my motherboard's onboard video -- no luck. I've also deleted mame.ini and mame.xml then recreated them with no success.

What makes me think this is some sort of resolution problem is that certain games (like Track & Field, for example) work fine and consistently, but if I quit out and try another game, that game doesn't work, then when I go back to Track & Field again, it's still ok (making me think that whatever resolution Track & Field runs in is good). One other thing: all of my DAPHNE games (Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Thayer's Quest) which are in a forced 640x480 resolution run fine and the Windows desktop (at either 640x480 or 800x600) never has a problem.

I haven't tried a fresh mame.exe (I compiled my own and I've been using that). When I boot up the cab this afternoon I'll give that a shot, but I'm just a little burned out on this right now.

Finally, I'm hoping it's not the D9200 that's the problem. About a month ago I turned the cab on and the display was a lot brighter than normal. Still viewable and playable, but significantly brighter (as if the brightness was turned up a good 25%). Still -- I was able to play all of the games fine when that first started, it's just this last week or so that's been a problem.

Hope someone can help me out on this. I've got some friends coming over on Christmas day and it would be nice to have this beast working again.

Thanks,


Joe


System specs (let me know if you need anything else):
* AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ CPU (stock cooling, no o/c)
* MSI K9N6PGM2-V motherboard (with latest BIOS revision)
* 2 GB RAM (2x 1GB Corsair XMS2-6400 4-4-4-12, no o/c)
* Generic 450w power supply
* Generic 16GB SSD (for OS and frontend)
* Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS (for emulators, roms, etc.)
* ArcadeVGA 3000 video card
* Wells-Gardner D9200 multi-sync monitor (running at 640x480)
* OS:  Windows XP Professional SP3 32-bit (updated)
* Front-End:  MaLa v1.745 beta

[PCTech714]

UPDATE: Using the unmodified mame.exe (still 0.147) made no difference. However, just on a hunch, I went into one of the .ini files that AVRes created and changed "switchres" from 1 to 0 and now there's an image (albeit fairly small).

I think I've almost got it, but I'd rather not eliminate the reason for having an ArcadeVGA in the first place.