AdvanceMame/WinXP Problems

[Antix]

Hi guys,

I have my J-PAC now, all connected and am starting to play around with AdvanceMame and MameWah.

The problem am having is, I do the advmame -default thing, and then try to use advcfg.exe. When I click on this, or try to run from DOS nothing happens at all. If I unload the svgawin, advcfg brings up an error, when I load svgawin, nothing happens again, not even an error. So I cant set up the monitor.

My setup is;

Windows XP
AMD XP2000+
512MB RAM
J-PAC
Arcade Monitor
MameWah
ATI Radeon 9600XT

I can get mamewah running, and can play games on my PC screen using advancemame or command line mame. But as soon as I try to go to the arcade monitor, I just get the double screen (In mamewah). As far as I can understand, I should run advcfg to sort out the video modes. But I cant.

if I run advv, my screen goes blank and I have to reboot my PC. (no display on the arcade monitor either except for loads of garbage)

Am I missing something really basic? Sorry once again if this has been asked before. I did search but there is soooo much here. If anyone has a tutorial for how to do this I would really appreciate it. I cant seem to find a tutorial for setting this up in windowsXP, just in DOS. I would prefer to use windows if I can.

Next step is the AdvanceCD but as I say, I would prefer windows.

Thanks for any assistance

Oh and I cant buy an ArcadeVGA card, I just cant afford it

[Antix]

OK I managed to get a weeeeee bit further

I grabbed some settings from here that I found in someones post... checked them in my advmame rc file
device_video_pclock 5-50
device_video_hclock 15.75
device_video_vclock 50-60

And now, I have Mamewah frontend displaying fine..... (yipee!!) But, when I try to launch a game, it freezes and I have to reboot my machine.... (not so yipee) So Im getting there.... any suggestions?

[Antix]

damn, previous info was a bit wrong.... I had installed Powerstrip to test, and it is what has allowed me to see the MAMEWAH screen on my arcade monitor, not the settings in AdvanceMame. (makes sense really, cause those changes wouldnt have registered when I load Mamewah )

Back to the drawing board

[Antix]

Monitor:
* Orientation: Vertical
* Size: 25"
* Type: Raster: Standard Resolution
* CRT: Color CGA
* Model : Wells Gardner K7191 manufactured by Zenith
* Picture Tube: G-A63ADG25X

This is my monitor so it is CGA.... just gotta get this damn advv or advcfg working.... no one else had this problem before?

[Antix]

Has anyone managed to get advancemame working in windowsXP? Nothing seems to beworking for me. I ave read the manual for the monitor etc, but, the fact that I cant even get advcfg to work under windows makes me think that the binaries they have on their source page are not working or something....

Cause it just does nothing, so how can I set up the pclock etc if I cant even get the thing running? (Same goes for advv....)

Ah well, I guess I will keep plugging away, Im going to now move onto try DOS and linux.... maybe they will work.

[jam80920]

I have the same monitor, and I have advmame working on it. I've still got some work to get a front end displaying on the arcade monitor. What I did (about a dozen times now cause I'm trying to play with settings to fix my vertical scroll problem) is delete advmame.rc. Then, when you run advcfg, hooked up to the PC monitor, you get to provide the pclock and such. Once you give it the info and go into a test mode, it will change the clock to arcade monitor rate (blanks the PC monitor). I switch the cable to the WG 25K7191 (my hacked cable) and get the test pattern on the screen to work with.  I had to poke around different video cards to find one capable of sending the 15.75 ish signals. Luckily, I found an old PCI Jaton card based on the Trident 9685. I am using DOS 7.0 (Win98 SE, GUI turned off).

If you happen to get to the point of a very sensitive and hard to control vertical roll, let me know. I've been beating my head against that for a couple weeks. If not, that would be good to know too, since it means I should call a WG tech and him/her do the stuff in Randy Fromm's troubleshooting flowchart.

[Antix]

Well, I managed to get my first couple games working on the cabinet. I ran them from Mamewah, but that wont display on the arcade monitor.

I did have a lot of vertical roll when I started the first game up, but I opened up the back of the cabinet and played with the pots a bit. This fixed that up.

In my cabinet, there are a number of pots, but the one that I needed was the larger one (stuck out more) closest to the outside of the cabinet. I turned this anticlockwise a bit and all was well in the world.

Now If I can just get Advance mame to recognise my roms.

Give me a yell if I can be of any further help. Im not sure if I can, but I will give it my best shot.

I didnt even have to buy and arcadeVGA