video card, arcade monitor, advancecd help

[Trimoor]

I loaded the latest version of advancecd onto my hard drive, but it won't work with my video cards.  I tried sis 6326, diamond stealth 3D 2000, and diamond stealth 64 dram.

I looked for Linux drivers, but can't find anything.  Should I even bother?  Are any of these cards capable of working with an arcade monitor?  Can anyone reccomend a cheap card that would work? (Not arcadevga.  Too expensive.)

Lastly, how do I configure advancecd to use a standard vertical arcade monitor?

Thanks.

[dabone]

Advancecd doesn't support arcade monitors..


Try the advancemame mailing list at

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=advancemame-users




Later,
dabone


oh, and those video cards blow..  except the 6326, I've used some of those that work with advancemame, and others that won't sync up at all. Just the luck of the draw with that chipset I guess.

[Trimoor]

Any suggestions on what mame flavor to use with Linux?  What about frontends?

Yeah, the sis cards really suck, but it's all I have lying around.  I hope I can get it to work with something.  I recall being able to drive an arcade monitor through arcadeos, but I would like to use Linux. (I need to write a LPT-switch driver and don't want to waste my time doing it for dos.)

[elvis]

Old S3's might work OK.  I've had issues with SiS stuff also.

I've had good luck with ATi cards over the years.  I'm currently building a Radeon 7000 + AdvanceMAME + SVGALib setup on Slackware 10.0 with kernel 2.6.9, and the results are quite pleasing.

The AdvanceMAME page has a complete list of linux-supported cards under each type of driver (SVGALib, FBDev and X):

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-cardlinx.html

I notice they say SiS are supported, but again they've only ever annoyed me.

Remember that for better or worse the ArcadeVGAs are just Radeon cards with hacked BIOSes.  Technically speaking, anything an AVGA can do, AdvanceMAME should be able to do also, with direct modeline programming (except boot-time modes, of course).

Lastly, how do I configure advancecd to use a standard vertical arcade monitor?

In advmame.rc you need to modify one of the rol or ror commands to force all games to rotate left or right.

For the AdvanceMenu frontend, just hit the "0" on the numerical keypad, and the screen will rotate 90 degrees (keep hitting it to continue rotating). 

[desmatic]

The best cards for Linux in your price range are

Riva TNT2 (built by PNY or Visiontek)
Matrox G400
ATI Rage 128 Pro (built by ATI)
ATI Radeon 7000, or 7500 (must be built by ATI)

My top pick would be either a TNT2 card (very cheap) or a Matrox G400.

[Trimoor]

It says the SiS6326 is supported, but when I try to start advancemame, it plainly tells me it's not supported.  I assume this is because I don't have the driver, but where do I get the driver?  I tried searching, but found nothing but dos and windows.

[desmatic]

It says the SiS6326 is supported, but when I try to start advancemame, it plainly tells me it's not supported.  I assume this is because I don't have the driver, but where do I get the driver?  I tried searching, but found nothing but dos and windows.

Ya, it's a driver issue.  SIS's 6326 is supported in svgalib, but probably will never be supported by linux's kernel fb, which is what advancecd uses.  On my site you'll find directions for installing svgalib.

What distro you running on?

[Trimoor]

I'm using advanceCD copied to the HDD, which uses busybox.  Should I scrap the advanceMAME it installed and use the latest version?  Is busybox acceptable for MAME?  How is svgalib different from the kernel fb?

My priority is speed, (obviously), but I would like to be able to understand how it works too.

[rockmes]

Desmatic, l just wanted to ask - the tsr driver for the Trident blade t64, is their one for windows XP? l used to use win 98 with advmenu + advmame with 15khz arcade monitor , but now converted to mamewah + win mame with ArcadeVGA card.
By the way your site inspired me many years ago to go with the trident blade t64 with win 98 and the tsr driver cos you said it was the best card youve seen bar none.

[desmatic]

Desmatic, l just wanted to ask - the tsr driver for the Trident blade t64, is their one for windows XP? l used to use win 98 with advmenu + advmame with 15khz arcade monitor , but now converted to mamewah + win mame with ArcadeVGA card.
By the way your site inspired me many years ago to go with the trident blade t64 with win 98 and the tsr driver cos you said it was the best card youve seen bar none.

Ya, unfortuneately, there isn't.  NT based operating systems make if much more difficult for software to control hardware.  The only toy I know of that might work, though i've never personally tried it, is powerstrip.

[desmatic]

I'm using advanceCD copied to the HDD, which uses busybox.  Should I scrap the advanceMAME it installed and use the latest version?  Is busybox acceptable for MAME?  How is svgalib different from the kernel fb?

My priority is speed, (obviously), but I would like to be able to understand how it works too.

You're not likely to see any difference in speed between svgalib and linux's fb.  If you do, it's a driver bug.  Svgalib is the older driver set.  Before linux's fb ever existed, there was svgalib.  But now that there's a lot of work being done on linux's fb, svgalib development is kinda at a stand still.

The only problem with advancecd is that you can't modify / add anything, including svgalib.  You'd need to use a proper distro for such things.  I'd recommend Mandrake if you're new to linux.

At this point, I think you'd be better off just getting a Matrox G400 card.  It'll work fine with advancecd and it will enble you to easily run advancemame in Linux on an arcade monitor.

[Trimoor]

The problem I see with a full distro is it's huge and slow.  It's full of so many things I don't need, and I can't get rid of the startup screens.

More importantly, I can't understand it.  With just a dozen files like busybox, I can make sense of it all.  With thousands of files scattered everywhere, I have no idea what I'm doing.

[elvis]

The problem I see with a full distro is it's huge and slow.

I can get a slackware install down to 200MB in usable form, including a compiler and tools to build software and/or custom kernels.  I can get it down to 80MB without compiler and tools, as just a usable network/internet capable device with SSH access.  I used to build 80MB slackware boxes on old hard disks for people who wanted Folding at Home farms.

And slow it ain't.

Don't confuse something slow and bloated like RedHat or Mandrake with the Linux kernel and userland tools.

[Trimoor]

80MB is still hunge compared to the busybox advanceCD distro.  I don't really care about disk space, but I'm fairly new to Linux, and I can't figure out how to use/examine/edit 80MB worth of files.  I do have an advanced linux user to help me, but he keeps insisting on fedora.

I just don't understand why a dedecated Linux MAME box needs 80MB when DOS can do it in 2MB.

[desmatic]

80MB is still hunge compared to the busybox advanceCD distro.  I don't really care about disk space, but I'm fairly new to Linux, and I can't figure out how to use/examine/edit 80MB worth of files.  I do have an advanced linux user to help me, but he keeps insisting on fedora.

I just don't understand why a dedecated Linux MAME box needs 80MB when DOS can do it in 2MB.

While you can get Linux to be just as small as DOS (and, in fact, substantially smaller), such systems are typically far harder to operate.  No documentation, no LSB tools, rarely FHS compliant, these are systems written by gurus for gurus.  Busybox systems being a primarly example.  Typically used in embedded solutions for highly tailored services.  You really want to be very comfortable with linux before you mess around with such advanced configurations.  LFS would be a great place to start for such projects (and it's what I use, btw) however, it's far from user friendly.

And while you may know this, I thought I might mention it as you're new to linux, but the amount of disk space a Linux OS uses, or how much software you install on a linux box, won't ever effect your system's performance.  Linux != Windows.  All that matters is the number of services you have running.  Debian, Slackware, and LFS are very lean even though they take up a decent amount of disk space.  They just don't run that many services at bootup.

Also, be careful of fedora.  Its by far the hardest distro to get MAME running on.

[critofur]

I had an easier time compiling xmame and advmame on Fedora (FC3 installed EVERYTHING from DVD) than I did on Suse 9.2 or Mandrake 10.1.

Seems to work well on the ATi 7000 card I have in the box now.  I like advmame much better than xmame, though my favorite (until I customize the source code and figure out how to get advmenu setup nicely) was mame32 plus! (running on Windows XP).  I need to edit the source code and take out the "type OK to continue" annoyance and recompile.

If you want to run some of the newer 3d games on you mame setup then I would guess you have to be more particular about which video card you get in order to have 3d hardware acceleration working?

[elvis]

If you want to run some of the newer 3d games on you mame setup then I would guess you have to be more particular about which video card you get in order to have 3d hardware acceleration working?

MAME does not support 3D accelleration.  If you're after hardware-accellerated rasterization, then check out Zinc instead.

http://www.emuhype.com/

Under linux, Zinc needs X and OpenGL+SDL to work.  AdvanceMAME can use framebuffer or SVGALib instead, which is great if you want an X-less install.

[desmatic]

I had an easier time compiling xmame and advmame on Fedora (FC3 installed EVERYTHING from DVD) than I did on Suse 9.2 or Mandrake 10.1.

I assume you compiled MAME for an X11 setup and not a kernel fb or svgalib setup.  Kernel fb compiles on Fedora are non-trivial.  As there's no source package for the Linux kernel on Fedora, svgalib builds are also complicated. 

X based MAME setups should be trivial on any desktop distro, including Fedora.  Kernel fb and svgalib setups are easiest on LFS, Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo.  Mandrake fb setups are a little more tricky, but deffinitely doable even for Linux newbies.