AdvanceMAME no sound, amongst other things...

[noggsuk]

I have been upgrading my Mame cabinet from DMAME v0.58 to the latest versions to play the new roms I have got hold of. However when I try the latest DMAME the games are displayed squashed in the centre of the screen, whereas with 0.58 they are fullscreen.

I am using Dos MAME and ArcadeOS hooked up to a cabinet. The lowest version of MAME I have tried is 0.69 and that produces a squashed display as well.

Giving up on DMAME I turned to AdvanceMAME.  After a bit of twiddling I got it to display most games perfectly (some 'roll' down the screen - but I havnt looked into that yet).  However for some reason Sound doesnt bloomin work!!!  

I have a SBPCI 128 and am using the Dos drivers from http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/html/snddosdr.htm

The soundcard works fine in ArcadeOS and also works in DosMAME. I have tried all the sound drivers available for AdvMAME (seal, allegro and vsync) but on all of them I get no sound!

I have 2 questions:
1. Does anyone know why sound doesnt work??!!
2. Does anyone know why the screen is squashed in DosMAME (>v0.58)

At the moment I have gone back to using DMAME 0.58 because I can't live without sound in my games. Unfortunately games like RTYPE and KungFu Master produce a black screen  (those games produce a rolling image in advance mame).

Thanks,
Noggs

[noggsuk]

Ok bit of an update.  I have just tried the seal sound driver in AdvMAME and the sound worked!! I tried it yesterday but it didnt.  Dont ask me why... although I was fiddling with IRQ and DMA channels...

Anyway so I'm back to using AdvMAME v0.83 WITH sound.  

Unfortunately I'm a complete Advmame noob and I can't work out how to fix the rolling screen. The games I have seen it happen on are (there are probably others) :

1942
KungFu Master
R-Type (I and II)

I am not even sure why it's happening. If someone could point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful.

Cheers,
Noggs

[DaveJ-UK]

Are you sure your pclock, vclock and hclock settings are correct and that the hold pots are adjusted correctly on your monitor?

[noggsuk]

I'm not sure - as I said I dont really know much about all this stuff. DosMAME 'just worked' using -monitor arcade and thats all I learnt.

I have just gone through some roms that exhibit the problem (info via ArcadeOS):

GAME           RES            FREQUENCY
1942            224x256    55
rtype            384x256    60
sonicwings   224x320    60
transformer  256x192    60
kungfu mstr  256x256    55

a game that works:
SF zero        384x224      59

Some of these games roll faster than others. Also games that run at 30hz have a squashed double screen image (one above the other).  Obviously this looks like frequency/refresh rate problems.

I am not sure what monitor is in the cab, but it's the original monitor that runs at 15.75Khz.  I configured AdvMAME using advcfg and set the config to generic CGA arcade monitor.  Most games work brilliantly and therefor I think the hold pots are set correctly, but some important ones dont (rtype/kfmaster!)

My settings are:
pclock 5-150
hclock 15.75
vclock 50-60  (i think - hard to see on arcade monitor!)

Cheers,
Noggs

[Thenasty]

you need to run advv to make resolutions. Even tho, Advmame tries to make one for you Automatically, it is better to make it your own.

[noggsuk]

I seem to be replying to myself a lot here, sorry about that! Just another update for those who may be having the same problem.

Reading the 'install.txt' file incl with AdvMAME it says the modelines for a standard arcade monitor should be 5-50, 15.75 and 60.  Once I changed my advmame.rc file to those values all the 'rolly' games were fixed \o\  Thanks DaveJ for the tip!

The only issue I have left is that games such as Demolition Derby (and other games that run at higher res) are displayed out of sync.  What I mean is the top half of the picture is displayed in the bottom half of the screen!

Using advv to configure my modes I realised that past a certain point in the list, all the test screens are like this.  The last working mode is 640x240.  I dont seem to be able to do much to fix these modes from within advv (cant scroll up/down enough).

This looks to me like screens with a greater number of vertical lines are not working properly (ie 400x300). Does anyone have any idea why this might be? Or how to fix it..

Noggs

[Thenasty]

you can never get ?x300 on an arcade Monitor (15khz)
The max that I got on my Arcade Monitor is ???x275.

Arcade Monitors are only up to 220-240. Games like NARC (if you can't go over 240) will be squased because this game was a Medium Res Arcade Monitor (25khz).

So if your screen rolls when you tro to get as much as you can, is because thats all your monitor can handle.

[Thenasty]

seems like I can't edit my post but read here for info on monitors.


http://www.klov.com/monitor.html#R

[noggsuk]

Ah I see, thanks for the info.  I'm going to look into whether AdvMAME can run the games in a lower res and down-sample the output.

Either way if I cant get them working it aint the end of the world - there's nothing I particuarly want that doesnt work - I mean I have SFA3, Track n Field and World Cup 90

Cheers
Noggs

[GMZombie]

here is a good site
http://www.mame.how.to
this is where i startted first.

[Irrek0]

I am also new to advance mame but to fix my rolling screens on my games I just press the .(period) key on my keyboard until it stops rolling then I go into the menu and save the frequency for all games of that type. This only works if you have only a few rolling games while most of the others play completely normal.