Need Mame/Hardware setup help!!

[steve_pss]

OK then. So I started confirguring my low end machine I got for a classics cab. Man o Man I'm having some issue.

Machine is Dell Optiplex GX1
P2 400
ATI Rage Pro on board (98SE drivers)
128Mg RAm
DirectX 6

I'm using a fairly up to date version of Mame (67?)


1. Cannot iniatize Direct3D. Does anyone know if an updated driver for the card will fix? Will I need to update directX as well?
2. Most all horizontal games run perfect. 4:3 aspect set. Vertical games, which I made seperate Ini's to run at 3:3 aspect are "ballooned". Is this a refresh rate issue? I methodically changed refresh rate setting in the Mame Ini to no avail. This is killing me. On my current modern computer changing the monitor refresh down to 60Hz seemed to fix this for all games. The current refresh on this system is 60hz and it's not helping.

3. why do basically all games work great but ateroids is a slide slow?

Any help is appreciated.

[steve_pss]

forgot to add i tried running a lower mame version (36b) on my current machine as a test and it wouldnt work at all. Was that due to my current machine being on XP?

Does anyone have a lower, pre-alpha blending version of win32 mame they can share with me?

[SirPeale]

You're running XP on that machine?  Reformat, install DOS, and play freely.

[steve_pss]

i'm running XP on my modern machine. I couldnt get the reccomended lower mame versions to run on my xp machine so i havent tried them on my P2400 yet. I was wondering (in addition to my other questions) if the lower versions would run on 98SE but not XP.

[Tiger-Heli]

>1. Cannot iniatize Direct3D. Does anyone know if an updated driver >for the card will fix? Will I need to update directX as well?

I've never messed with Direct3D in MAME, dunno?  You shouldn't need to update DirectX, but it wouldn't hurt.

2. Most all horizontal games run perfect. 4:3 aspect set. Vertical games, which I made seperate Ini's to run at 3:3 aspect are "ballooned". Is this a refresh rate issue? I methodically changed refresh rate setting in the Mame Ini to no avail. This is killing me. On my current modern computer changing the monitor refresh down to 60Hz seemed to fix this for all games. The current refresh on this system is 60hz and it's not helping.

Ensure HW stretch is enabled and "Keep Aspect" is enabled.

Then what I did is use Multires to set my Windows refresh rate at 85 Hz and run MAME at 800x600 (and leave switchres and matchrefresh off).  Then all my games run at 800x600 at 85 hz and the screen stretch works properly.

3. why do basically all games work great but ateroids is a slide slow?

See next reply

[Tiger-Heli]

forgot to add i tried running a lower mame version (36b) on my current machine as a test and it wouldnt work at all. Was that due to my current machine being on XP?

Does anyone have a lower, pre-alpha blending version of win32 mame they can share with me?

Lower versions work on 98SE, not sure about XP.

Alpha blending affects vector games with artwork, Astdelux and Bzone should have problems, but asteroids itself should be okay.  Asteroids has gotten progressively slower as MAME has advanced, though.

The last pre-alpha blending build was R36B12.  You can get R36B9 from here: http://www.mame.net/oldmame.html but it's a dos build (works under Win98SE).  You might find an older MAME32 build at MARP or somewhere.

[steve_pss]

ya know i spend countless hours in the garage building the hardware side but god am i a noob when it comes to actually getting mame working.

whats MARP?

or..
will the dos build work with Mamewah under 98SE?

[Tiger-Heli]

>whats MARP?

Mame Action Replay Page, but specifically, you want

http://marp.retrogames.com/diffs.htm where all the binaries are.

>will the dos build work with Mamewah under 98SE?

Yes!

[steve_pss]

thanks for the help so far tiger. I hope i can get an updated direct3d driver for that card. the nice little blur it adds on hardware stretch is sorely missed.