AdvanceMAME and ATI cards?

[bguss1]

Advancemame video related question..

My cabinet was running perfect with a Wells D9200, Geforce4 video card, and AdvanceMAME all under WindowsXP.  I had tweaked out the advmame.rc config file and everything was running perfect.  My trouble happened when I attempted to upgrade to a different video card that I had laying around, an ATI 9800 Pro.  

I did some thinking about it and thought that I wouldn't have to change any settings i my advmame config file but rather it should "just work" after switching video cards since I thought both cards had similair 2D resolution support (CGA,VGA).  But what happens is that I get a "no signal" error on the D9200 monitor as soon as a launch advancemame.  I even attempted running the advcfg.exe utility again to reconfigure my advance settings but when I got to the centering options of the utility  the monitor lost its signal again.

My first troubleshooting thought is that it has something to do with the lower arcade resolutions not being supported by the ATI 9800 Pro card by default.  I can't remember what I had to do originally to get the Geforce4 card working, or if I had to somehow add the lower 15kHz resolutions.

Any advice?

Thanks,
Brad

[whammoed]

Are you running in dos or linux?

[bguss1]

running WinXP actually with latest Catalyst drivers installed..

advmame runs fine in a window if I unload the svgawin.sys driver (svgawin /u) but that is obviously not what I want...

I figure the issue has to do with the ATI card not knowing how to support the lower resolution video modes that advmame throws at it..

[whammoed]

Hmmm...I believe there is very limited support for cards in WinXP and advmame.  This may be the problem.  I couldn't get any ATI or matrox cards to work for advmame on windows 2000 or xp.  You may want to stick to one you know works.

[Bill Mote]

My trouble happened when I attempted to upgrade to a different video card that I had laying around, an ATI 9800 Pro.

I want to live with you.  You had a Geforce4 card in your machine and just had a 9800 Pro laying around?!  Throw me the hand-me downs.  Yikes!

 

[bguss1]

Haha, well I just upgraded my pc with a Geforce6800 Pro to play recently released DOOM 3 at its best.  That is why I have the 9800 idle now.

BTW, here are a few pics of my cabinet:

http://gussnews.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=4

[Bill Mote]

7 Cities of Gold ... there's a classic (and on 5-1/4" no less!)  So, d00d, I'll pay the shipping and say $20-$30 bucks and you send me your junky old ATI 9800 Pro.

dot

[bguss1]

I guess nobody runs AdvanceMAME on a recent ATI video card with a Wells D9200 monitor... ohh well I may have to go back and reinstall my older trusty Geforce4 Ti4600 card.  any help is greatly appreciated though.

[wpcmame]

Are you running the latest advmame version? The 9800 was added to cardwin.txt only a few months ago (april/may if I remember correctly).

[whammoed]

Just because a card is "supported" doesn't mean it will work in windows.  See previous post.

[whammoed]

From the advance website:

To allow the Advance programs to directly control your video board, you must install the included SVGAWIN driver.
Please note that this driver is EXPERIMENTAL software and it works only for a few sets of video boards. More information is present in the `svgawin.txt' documentation file.

Otherwise the Advance programs are able to display in a window or to use the default video modes using the included SDL library.

The SDL library is also used for sound, and input controllers.

And

The `svgawin' driver is a subset of the Linux SVGALIB library.
This driver is experimental. At present it's only tested on Windows 2000 with a GeForce 2 board. It may not work will all the other boards.

[bguss1]

So in other words I am getting the feeling that running AdvanceMAME under Linux is recommended over Windows 2000/XP.  Ehh?

[whammoed]

Well, that is the way I chose.  A lot of people use dos too.  I chose linux so I could take advantage of my faster hardware.  Also I liked the idea of stripping down the kernel to just what I need although I haven't gotten around to it yet.  Check out the software section of my site in my profile if you decide to go that way.  I use a radeon 7000 without much issue.

[GMZombie]

bguss this might be your problem. look in your advmame.rc file and if i remember correctly there should be a line like...
display_expand 1
device_video vbeline vgaline   <-- Only make this change if you don't have an ATI video card
device_video_singlescan yes

im not sure ifyou have done this or not. but check that first. i beleive that is supposed to be svgaline instead of vgaline. here is a nice site that helped me the first time round using advmame
http://www.mame.how.to/
little older but works well. Also if you stil lhave the problem rename your advmame.rc to a diff name and then make a default one from the command line advmame -default
then do your changes for you video sizes by moving from one rc to the other. i had to change cards once or 2 times. by the way man great cab....i seen one on ebay once like that i think. im gonna build me one like that love the 33" monitor.

[bguss1]

Didn't work.  Looks like AdvanceMAME doesn't like ATI cards with a Wells D9200.  I reinstalled my older Geforce4 Ti4600 and things are back up and working well again, oh well..

[mattv]

I had the same problem; The geforce cards work well in windowsXP/advancemame (although I need to wind the pixel clock setting up to about 14) but the ATI cards don't seem to work at all.

its pretty weird really, in dos mame ATI is the way to go

[benwillcox]

My cabinet was running perfect with a Wells D9200, Geforce4 video card, and AdvanceMAME all under WindowsXP.  

Hi Brad,
Just wondering why if your setup was perfect you would want to 'upgrade' your gfx card anyway? I was under the impression that mame doesn't take advantage of the extra fancy features of newer cards, or am I wrong?

Cheers,
Ben

[bguss1]

I had a fre ATI 9800 pro from another machine so I thought it was a good idea to try it out... I probably shouldnt have messed with the working setup.. However I run some ohter things on the cab that do take advantage of the newer graphics card.

At least I was able to reinstall the Geforce4 card and now everything is back to working like normal.

Could some of my advancemame clock settings cause slowdowns in games?  Joust for example will randomly slow down quite badly in full screen advancemame.  By contrast if I run advancemame without the svgawin driver loaded the game runs in a window at full speed.  Also regular windows mame runs perfect full speed too.  What could be causing certain games to 'slow down' on my setup?

[daeven]

The real Joust slows down quite a bit at some points - like when there are a lot of enemies on the screen.  Mame is just being true to the original.

[Antix]

I have setup advance mame in XP. Took me a long time to get answers here as well....

I was trying to get it working using an ATI 9600XT card that I have. When I ran the ADVV and ADVCFG tools, nothing would happen. If I unloaded the SVGAWIN, it would just say that it needed it.

In the end, I swapped to a GeForce 2 MX that I had and it worked perfectly straight away.

So, even though the AdvanceVGA is basically a butchered ATI card, the newer ATI's dont seem to like ADVANCEMAME.

I havent tried the latest version of Advancemame, but was using the 83 one I think it was.

Go back to the Geforce for MAME'ing

[bguss1]

My system slows down on certain games when running via AdvanceMAME only.  If I run Mame32 for example.. it runs full speed.  The slowdowns are random and can happen even at game start.  The sound stutters and the entire screen slows down.

Anyone have advice?

[wpcmame]

In the end, I swapped to a GeForce 2 MX that I had and it worked perfectly straight away.

Earlier interlace wasn't supported on the GeForce cards in advmame. Has that changed?

Planning to get a new card soon but I thought ATI was the only way to get interlace (which I want to have for the vector games and tapper, popeye etc)and good 3D performance.

[whammoed]

Earlier interlace wasn't supported on the GeForce cards in advmame. Has that changed?

Planning to get a new card soon but I thought ATI was the only way to get interlace (which I want to have for the vector games and tapper, popeye etc)and good 3D performance.

wpcmame...I believe I asked around before without a definitive answer: So games like tapper and tron were interlaced right?  If so did the originals have a flicker to the screen that can be common when interlaced?

Sorry for the hijack

[wpcmame]

wpcmame...I believe I asked around before without a definitive answer: So games like tapper and tron were interlaced right?  If so did the originals have a flicker to the screen that can be common when interlaced?

Yes, popeye and tapper used interlaced displays but they don't flicker. Interlace only means that you draw odd lines on one frame and even lines on the next. If both lines contain (almost) the same thing it will look like a non-interlaced display.
Game designers used lot of tricks to avoid flicker (low contrast on non-moving objects, don't use thin horizontal lines etc). Sometimes you can use the flicker to your advantage. In popeye, the cans and thing that you knock down on bluto (bee-nest?) flickers but that only makes them easier to see.
Modern PS2 and XBOX games on your TV also uses interlaced display but you hardly notices the flicker (mostly due to a lot of moving objects and good antialiasing algorithms that remove sharp edges).

For some strange reason my graphic card (SiS6326) refuses to show resolutions below 300 lines properly so I always use double sized (i.e. interlaced) displays for all games with less than 300 lines. Advancemame automatically doubles the pixels both horizontally and vertically so the there is no difference in the displayed picture.

Unfortunatly MAME has messed up the interlaced games. Popeye is marked as 60Hz while Tapper is marked as 30Hz (or the other way around) so to find interlaced games in mame you have to look for games with more than 400 lines. Some recent games probably used 31KHz monitors so you have to exclude them.