Mame DOS Specific Options?

[404]

I have successfully created a DOS hard disk and booted mame on an old pentium III era pc i have.

I started searching the net for any DOS specific  options i can add or toggle in the mame config but unfortunate i've come up with nothing. Does anyone have any know-how or links to any DOS specific mame configuration info?

[NOP]

do "mame -showusage" or "mame -createconfig" work on your DOS only version?  Which version are you playing with? 

[404]

do "mame -showusage" or "mame -createconfig" work on your DOS only version?  Which version are you playing with?

thanks for the response NOP. I did stay up until quite late yesterday figuring out some things. -su worked fine to show me some usage tips but unfortunately i still haven't found much in terms of options for the usage strings.

My issue is that the image won't stretch across the entire screen. I do believe however that the issue is with my LCD. Perhaps mame simply didn't have that kind of advanced options for LCDs back then. Games run terrific in dos without the windows overhead. Shame i may actually have to revert back. 

[Gray_Area]

Depends which build you're using. Essentially, hwstretch wasn't available till .37 , which I don't know whether works in DOS and whatever display adapter you're using. Also, look at Spystyle's boot CD stuff to see how it might get handled.

[404]

Depends which build you're using. Essentially, hwstretch wasn't available till .37 , which I don't know whether works in DOS and whatever display adapter you're using. Also, look at Spystyle's boot CD stuff to see how it might get handled.

thanks for the response.

I did use Spystyle's boot CD to install DOS, Mame and Gamelauncher. Still no such luck in getting proper stretch across the screen

[gonzo90017]

Why not use Windows 98 instead? It would still boot and run plenty fast.

[404]

Why not use Windows 98 instead? It would still boot and run plenty fast.

You just read my mind. Currently installing windows 98 on the machine.

It was running xp before and i was avoiding having to resort to 98 over the usb issues. Just have to sort out the encoder issue now.

[Rigby]

Why not use Windows 98 instead? It would still boot and run plenty fast.

You just read my mind. Currently installing windows 98 on the machine.

It was running xp before and i was avoiding having to resort to 98 over the usb issues. Just have to sort out the encoder issue now.

How did you do?  I had great luck many years ago with a Win98 boot disk, MAME for DOS, and autoexec.bat.  I used a PS/2 encoder (J-Pac) though so I didn't have USB issues.  I can't remember how I found a video card driver, though, but I remember having a huge floppy disk case full of floppies, one game per floppy.  Changing the game in a cabinet meant only changing the floppy & rebooting.  It worked amazingly well, and I'm sure similar results could be had on that old hardware today if drivers could be located.

Alternately, modern video cards and modern MAME versions could be handled similarly with USB keys and small Linux setups, though you won't get the bootup speed that DOS provides.

[Gray_Area]

Um, I don't see what you're going to get out of Win98 for image stretch.

...I remember having a huge floppy disk case full of floppies, one game per floppy.  Changing the game in a cabinet meant only changing the floppy & rebooting.

Eww.

[Rigby]

Well, I didn't know what the hell I was doing and it worked, so I used it.

[404]

Why not use Windows 98 instead? It would still boot and run plenty fast.

You just read my mind. Currently installing windows 98 on the machine.

It was running xp before and i was avoiding having to resort to 98 over the usb issues. Just have to sort out the encoder issue now.

How did you do?  I had great luck many years ago with a Win98 boot disk, MAME for DOS, and autoexec.bat.  I used a PS/2 encoder (J-Pac) though so I didn't have USB issues.  I can't remember how I found a video card driver, though, but I remember having a huge floppy disk case full of floppies, one game per floppy.  Changing the game in a cabinet meant only changing the floppy & rebooting.  It worked amazingly well, and I'm sure similar results could be had on that old hardware today if drivers could be located.

Alternately, modern video cards and modern MAME versions could be handled similarly with USB keys and small Linux setups, though you won't get the bootup speed that DOS provides.

Can't say i really fared better with windows 98....

I had the same image issues as i did before. I was however able to get the image to stretch by switching from directdraw to direct3d. Unfortunately the stretch looked like total garbage and was super blurry. No other settings i tried helped fix the issue. I sum this problem up to an old graphics card on the unit.

Then i had tons of issues with mamewah which never seems to like windows98 at all. Each time i solved one problem, another problem would pop up so I ended up just getting frustrated and reverting back to windows xp. Only problem i have with XP is that games seem to run a bit slower, probably because of the OS overhead.

Personally, I'm just calling this rig a failure at this point. It's an old pentium III unit, not a huge love loss. It was an interesting learning experience nonetheless.

[Rigby]

Personally, I'm just calling this rig a failure at this point. It's an old pentium III unit, not a huge love loss. It was an interesting learning experience nonetheless.

Given the speed at which my Raspberry Pi boots into MAME I think you'd have a good bit of luck with Linux.  I don't know enough about Linux to assist in that, or to do it from scratch myself, but if you don't reboot a lot, it can be a feasible solution.  I'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff in Raspbian that doesn't need to load for MAME to run, but that is being loaded anyway, and taking time to do so.  The MAME4ALL frontend on the Raspberry Pi isn't too bad, either.  It's certainly not full featured but it didn't require any configuration or set up at all.

The Raspberry Pi doesn't have a VGA out, so it can't directly run an arcade monitor, but HDMI -> VGA adapters exist, and VGA -> CGA adapters exist.  If you've the spare money or parts, that could be a worthy research project.

I can say that the composite out on an RPi looks excellent on a CRT TV, with the lone exception of the interlacing.

edit: Raspberry Pi seems to support very low resolutions over HDMI, also.  This would help in an effort to convert the signal to CGA.  http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt#Video_mode_options

[404]

Personally, I'm just calling this rig a failure at this point. It's an old pentium III unit, not a huge love loss. It was an interesting learning experience nonetheless.

Given the speed at which my Raspberry Pi boots into MAME I think you'd have a good bit of luck with Linux.  I don't know enough about Linux to assist in that, or to do it from scratch myself, but if you don't reboot a lot, it can be a feasible solution.  I'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff in Raspbian that doesn't need to load for MAME to run, but that is being loaded anyway, and taking time to do so.  The MAME4ALL frontend on the Raspberry Pi isn't too bad, either.  It's certainly not full featured but it didn't require any configuration or set up at all.

The Raspberry Pi doesn't have a VGA out, so it can't directly run an arcade monitor, but HDMI -> VGA adapters exist, and VGA -> CGA adapters exist.  If you've the spare money or parts, that could be a worthy research project.

I can say that the composite out on an RPi looks excellent on a CRT TV, with the lone exception of the interlacing.

edit: Raspberry Pi seems to support very low resolutions over HDMI, also.  This would help in an effort to convert the signal to CGA.  http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt#Video_mode_options

im not opposed to a rpi

I am far more opposed however, to junking old computers if i can re-purpose them. Especially considering this board seems to have out of the box support for CGA40, CGA80 and EGA in the bios. Although, i have no way of actually testing this.

[Rigby]

this board seems to have out of the box support for CGA40, CGA80 and EGA in the bios. Although, i have no way of actually testing this.

Electrically, the CGA/EGA connector and pinout could possibly be made to work on an arcade monitor, but it would not prove to be useful without MAME and/or OS support for EGA.  I don't even think that Linux supports EGA anymore except for a text console, and that would only be a textual mode, not graphical, I'd think.

I do share your desire for reuse, but I don't know what the heck you'd use that EGA port for without an EGA monitor handy.  Is this the same PIII PC you've been speaking about?

[gonzo90017]

What kind of issues where you having with Mamewah? I find the most stable version is 1.62b13a.

[404]

Electrically, the CGA/EGA connector and pinout could possibly be made to work on an arcade monitor, but it would not prove to be useful without MAME and/or OS support for EGA.  I don't even think that Linux supports EGA anymore except for a text console, and that would only be a textual mode, not graphical, I'd think.

I do share your desire for reuse, but I don't know what the heck you'd use that EGA port for without an EGA monitor handy.  Is this the same PIII PC you've been speaking about?

It's an oddball SIS based motherboard. the onboard video is dreadful but lots of the older SIS chipsets were able to natively output CGA and VGA. The later models were only able to output 15khz in software mode similar to using soft15khz.

I don't have an arcade monitor but nevertheless, i didn't want to toss this thing out just because i don't have one. I mean, it still plays most 2D games fairly well.

I have tons of pc parts to play with here. I was just tinkering around with this thing for the hell of it. 

What kind of issues where you having with Mamewah? I find the most stable version is 1.62b13a.

Gonzo, I was having the dreaded msgexecCMD error. Lurking around some other sites i noticed that windows98 users tend to get this error more than any other group. After fixing that error i started getting an illegal operation error but nothing would output in the mamewah.log so i got sick of tinkering with it and switched to XP.

[Gray_Area]

I have a PII with an ATI Rage IIc chipset that jumps through hoops at 15khz. Loves AdvanceMAME.

[404]

I have a PII with an ATI Rage IIc chipset that jumps through hoops at 15khz. Loves AdvanceMAME.

Advancemame doesn't like the LCD that's attached to this poor PC. It's one of those all in one Point of Sales units.

I'm going to give windows 98 another shot come this weekend. Been  thinking of reverting down to an older mame set lower than .106. Been eye-balling .084 but so far haven't found a complete romset.

Also been contemplating having one of those small pcb print companies print a few of these for me. Supposed to work great with LPTSwitch on DOS-WinXP

http://arcadeforever.forumfree.it/?t=54423564

[404]

so i managed to install windows98 again, roms and all of the drivers in just over an hours time.

I worked around the mamewah win98 list issues and have my first full list.  I then generated a filtered list and that worked fine but didn't take out all of the roms i wanted out of the list..

I tried romlister and unfortunately it removes way too many roms. Even the most basic roms such as Donkey Kong are missing even though i believe i set the parameters just fine.

Does anyone know where i can get a copy of Buddabing's listgen? Can't seem to find a binary of it anywhere or perhaps someone knows an alternative list generating tool for mamewah?