Frontend for DOS

[Lee Fuller]

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice, as I'm a little bit confused.

I'm building a cocktail cabinet based around an old Compaq 233 mmx and a 17 inch monitor. (using the keyboard hack as well).

Because the machine is a bit slow, I'm going with dos emulators.

I need a frontend which can handle: mame, zsnes, genecyst.

Is arcadeOS specifically for arcade monitors?

I had a quick go with gamelauncher but didn't get very far with it.

If anyone can help, please reply / email.

Thanks

Lee

[Jakobud]

I'd keep working with Game Launcher. It's a little difficult to get configured correctly, but it's PERFECT for your situation.  It's the best DOS FE while I think ArcadeOS is nothing less than a headache.

Jakobud

[Howard_Casto]

agreed... Game Launcher is pretty much your only choice.  People don't use Arcade Os because they want to, but rather because they have to.  

If your not satisifed with gamelauncher then you really only have one choice.... save your money, buy a decent machine and put windows on it.

[fullerlee]

(I've registered now).

Thanks for the advice, I'll give gameLauncher another go.

I'm going to make this a pure dos box with dos 6.22 (not enough space for windows). Do you think I'll encounter any problems with this? (aside from the 8.3 filename pain).

Thanks,

Lee

[ErikRuud]

Let me know of any problems you have with GameLauncher.  I have had great success with it.  I have no experience with arcade monitors though.

My setup is a 200mhz mmx and a 17" Packard Bell monitor.

I am running three emulators, two of which are not even mentioned in the GL documentation.  

[bhille]

I've loaded up Game Launcher the other day.  So far, I'm not that impressed.  I like being about to put ROMS and SNAPS into different folders (Arcadeos's doesn't work), but it just seems slow.  When I goto my z26 emulator (Atari 2600) it take forever to bring up the list.  Scrolling through the list is painfull too.  I thought I'd just make a .rom file...nope...thought okay, fast machine will help this.  Let's work on the .map file....doesn't work.  I looked in the z26.cfg file and made sure the pathes are right.  Is there something obvious I'm missing?

Thanks,

Brian

[ErikRuud]

Let's see, here are a few things to think about.

The pupose of the .map file is to give full names to the rom files.  ie. bzone displays as "Battle Zone".  Capitalization matters! The rom name in the map has to match exactly to the rom name in your rom directory.  ie. If you have Bzone in your map but the actual file is BZONE on you hard drive they won't match.  Do not include the file extension in the .map file.  Just bzone not bzone.zip

The purpose of the .rom file is to create a list of roms that you want to use.  If a rom is not in the list, GameLauncher will not display it.  The names must be exact just like the .map file.

How many Atari roms in your list?

Double check the size of the snapshots, large snapshot files will slow it down. Try reducing the number of colors, most, snapshots do not need to be in 24bit color.  Also try setting the snapshot delay to a higher number, this way it waits before loading a snapshot.  This lets you zip through the list without GameLauncher trying to show you every snapshot along the way.  You may also want to turn off the text animations.  On slower machines they can be annoying.

[bhille]

Ah, I think the caps in the .map file are what screwed me.  I will try all caps and all lower case (not sure what DOS 6.22 thinks it is).

I have A LOT of Atari ROMS.  That's why I thought the .rom file would help not having to scan the roms folder.  Either it don't have the .roms file setup right, or it doesn't help.

I don't have any snaps loaded yet.  I'm still trying to figure out which I like better...Arcadeos or Game Launcher.  I didn't have any config issues with Arcadeos after I figured out the roms and emulators HAVE to be in the same folder...oh and the key remap doesn't work.

Do I need to load smartdrv to make this thing run better?  I didn't try that because Arcadeos runs fine without it.

Say, is GameLauncher still under development?

Thanks,

Brian

[ErikRuud]

smartdrv may help, I don't think I am using it.

DOS can be funny about caps.  DOS itself is not case sensitive, but GL is. My files are apparently all lower case, but if I do a direcory listing in DOS they appear to be upper case.  You best bet is to view the directory with windows expolorer and then rename the files to all lower case.

GL is under developement as far as I know. But I believe David only works on it as time allows.

[Dave Dribin]

Do I need to load smartdrv to make this thing run better?  I didn't try that because Arcadeos runs fine without it.

Yes, I would think smartdrv would help a lot!  How fast is your machine?  I know I put all my Atari 2600 ROMs in one directory and there is no noticeable slowdown at all.  That was even on a K6-2 300, if I remember correctly (these days I'm on a Duron 700).  I'm using DR-DOS 7.03 vs. MS-DOS, but that should not be much of a difference.  DR-DOS uses NWCACHE instead of SMARTDRV, though.

Say, is GameLauncher still under development?

Yes, but at a glacial pace, these days.  Just too many things to juggle in my spare time.

I'm aware of the whole caps thing and plan to make GL have an option for case-insensitivity in places where it makes sense (i.e. when comparing file names under DOS).

-Dave

[bhille]

I'm running a P-150 with 196MB RAM with DOS 7 on it.  I realize that I need to upgrade machines, so I'm not really attached to it...  I did put a "#" on the line to list my snap path (which I currently don't have any snaps anyways) and it works *much* better.  Not sure what the deal is.

Hey, since you collect the Atari roms, can you email me your a zip of your snaps directory?  I really don't want to have to load each game and take snapshots!

Thanks,

Brian (brian@hille.org)

[Mike]

One thing I didn't see pointed out is that you'll want to run dos 7 not 6.22. If I remember correctly Dos 7 is the only way you can get support for drives larger than 2gb.

[fullerlee]

Thanks for the help.

I've got gamelauncher up and running on my big machine and I'm very happy with it. Just need to burn everything to cd and copy it over to me emulation machine.
I think I'll go with bootgui=0 and leave win98 on my emulation machine if I can squeeze enough space out of the small harddisk.

Lee

[Rick Sigouin]

Thanks for the info guys,
I might try switching to GameLauncher today and seeing how it goes.

Thanks!!