LONG Pause loading games in dos.

[slicer_d]

Well I uncompressed mame.exe and it seems to help shaved off about 10-15 seconds.  I also uncompressed some roms and that helped about 5-10 seconds.

So now it loads in just over 1 min.  I'm still wondering why Peales loads faster than mine.  Is there anything not metioned in here that I might be missing?  I will check over my stuff agaim and maybe try MAME .90 and see if that changes anything.

[Witchboard]

Did you sprinkle chicken blood and dance around your system?  I find it helps load times... or maybe I'm just preoccupied while it's loading and it just seems faster.  Only my witch doctor knows for sure. 

Added smartdrv to my autoexec.bat and got a 2 second decrease in load time.  I'm down to 28 seconds.  Next I'll upgrade my dmame and try the validity checks.

[slicer_d]

Holy crap 28 seconds whats the specs of your system and version of mame?

[Witchboard]

It's at the beginning of the thread.

[slicer_d]

Hmm that makes me think the the version of MAME has a lot to do with the load times.  I will try out some different version later and see what results I get.

[JoyMonkey]

What game is everyone timing?

I've got a PIII 550 (it's a Dell Optiplex) with 128mb ram, running AdvMame (uncompressed) from a RAMdisk in extended memory. I unzipped pacman to a folder on the hard drive (actually not a hard rive, a CompactFlash card) and tried out a few versions:

AdvMame .67 will run pacman in about 2.3 seconds.

AdvMame .80 will run pacman in about 2.7 seconds.

AdvMame .94 runs pacman in about 3.1 seconds.

I could probably get it faster by copying the roms to the RAMdisk, but the CF card is really fast for small files because of it's extremely low seek time. Ah hell, I'll give it a try...

Edit: Nah, copying the pacman rom folder to memory didn't give a noticeable speed increase. Maybe 1/10th of a second- its kinda hard to tell. Maybe I'll try regular old dMame .36...

[slicer_d]

Holy crap JoyMonkey.

I'm usually loading Pacman or galaga and it take 60+ seconds to load.

When I get home I going to setup my ram disk and try AdvMame and see what results I get.
Whats the easiest way to transfer files to the ramdisk after you have created it?



And W00T 200th post

[JoyMonkey]

Congrats and the 200!

I doubt AdvMame is the cause of my speediness, since the AdvMame executable is usually bigger than the standard DOS version.

Here's what my Config.sys looks like:

Code: [Select]

DEVICE=C:\DOS\himem.sys
device=C:\DOS\umbpci.sys
DOS=High,UMB
Files=40
Buffers=40
And here's my AutoExec.Bat (this is set to copy advmame .67 and its config file to the RAMdisk, wait for a key press and then run pacman):

Code: [Select]

@echo off
cls
c:\dos\smartdrv.exe 16384

REM Setup for sb8bit mono ISA (onboard Dell Optiplex sound)
set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h6 p330 t6

echo Creating RAMdisk drive X...
xmsdsk 46000 x: /y

mkdir x:\mame67
echo Copying AdvMame 0.67 to RAMdisk X...
copy c:\mame\advm67.exe x:\mame67\advmame.exe
copy c:\mame\advmame.rc x:\mame67\advmame.rc
copy c:\mame\hiscore.dat x:\mame67\hiscore.dat

pause
cls

x:\mame67\advmame pacman
My advmame.rc file (that's the AdvMame config file) points all rom/sample/cfg etc. folders to the C drive.
I've never tried the skip_validitychecks thing

[slicer_d]

Very cool thanks for the info.  I dont know what most of the stuff in your config.sys even does.  Right now all I have is

device=c:\windows\himem.sys
device=c:\windows\emm386.exe noems

Should I use some of your settings if so which ones?

[JoyMonkey]

I'm no expert on the subject, but I think my config.sys is pretty standard. LasVegas put together a nice site years ago called Purple Mame that explains all kinds of stuff. Here's where he explains what each line of the config.sys and autoexec.bat do:
http://members.cox.net/mame1/software.htm#config

I think the last three lines of my config.sys are recomended.

[Witchboard]

I tried the uncompressed .87 dmame and it increased the load time up to 50 seconds.

[Witchboard]

I tried the uncompressed .87 dmame and it increased the load time up to 50 seconds.

[slicer_d]

Well that did it its loading at ~20 seconds now and all I changed was my config.sys.  It basically looks like joymonkeys I downloaded the UMBPCI package and changed it like the Joymonkeys link told me a too and its so so so much faster.

Next step is to try some different versions of mame and make a ramdrive.

Thanks a bunch for everybodys help.
Slicer_D

[Witchboard]

I went through the steps as well and haven't broke the 27 second barrier yet.  I'll try unzipping the romset and see if that helps tomorrow.  Do you just unzip it into a directory with the zip name and mame will find it on it's own?  I've never used an uncompressed romset before.

[slicer_d]

Yeah like the guy said above.  I used winrar bucause I like it.  Just select everthing you want unzipped right click and there is an option to extract it to a folder with the same name.  Then I you can delete or move you zipped roms and it should work.  You might want to test them before you delete everything though.

[JoyMonkey]

I went through the steps as well and haven't broke the 27 second barrier yet.  I'll try unzipping the romset and see if that helps tomorrow.  Do you just unzip it into a directory with the zip name and mame will find it on it's own?  I've never used an uncompressed romset before.

I remember when zipped rom support was added to Mame; I think I went a couple of months before I realized it had been added and couldn't believe how advanced everything was getting (ha!).

From the Mame 0.31 WhatsNew.txt:

- You can keep the ROMs in a subdirectory called "ROMS", if you want to.
  When loading ROMs for 'gamename', the program will look in these
  directories in this order:
  1) gamename
  2) gamename.zip
  3) ROMS\gamename
  4) ROMS\gamename.zip
  The same applies to samples, you can put them in a subdirectory called
  SAMPLES - therefore separating them from the ROMs.
  [Nicola Salmoria]

Amazing!

[JoyMonkey]

I went through the steps as well and haven't broke the 27 second barrier yet.  I'll try unzipping the romset and see if that helps tomorrow.  Do you just unzip it into a directory with the zip name and mame will find it on it's own?  I've never used an uncompressed romset before.

Hang on, are you saying that it takes 27 seconds for the computer to boot, run through autoexec and then run a game?
Or it takes 27 seconds from the time you run "dmame pacman"?

[SirPeale]

What is the ArcadeOS screensaver bug?  Is it where AOS launches the screensaver within seconds of starting AOS?

[Witchboard]

Hang on, are you saying that it takes 27 seconds for the computer to boot, run through autoexec and then run a game?
Or it takes 27 seconds from the time you run "dmame pacman"?

27 seconds from the time I run "dmame pacman".  I'm using Donkey Kong as my test game.  I'll switch to Pacman tonight and see if it makes a difference.  I didn't know we were using Pacman as a standard for this test.

What is the ArcadeOS screensaver bug? Is it where AOS launches the screensaver within seconds of starting AOS?

The bug I have, and hope he's talking about, is sometimes when you launch a game from ArcadeOS instead of the game starting the screen saver starts, but it's a block of scrambled graphics moving on the screen instead of the clear ball.

[SirPeale]

What is the ArcadeOS screensaver bug? Is it where AOS launches the screensaver within seconds of starting AOS?

The bug I have, and hope he's talking about, is sometimes when you launch a game from ArcadeOS instead of the game starting the screen saver starts, but it's a block of scrambled graphics moving on the screen instead of the clear ball.

Oh yeah, that happens to me all the time.  Usually on the first game run.

I hadn't even realized that I didn't have a lot of the things listed in my config.sys (important things, like files= and the like) so I fixed it, and now everything runs again.  Still takes over a minute for Pac-Man to start, though.  I'm going to recompress dmame, and we'll see what happens.

[slicer_d]

Yeah 20+ seconds after I type in "dmame pacman -soundcard 0" the game loads.

[JoyMonkey]

I can't see why my setup is so much faster than everyone elses. Is it because I'm using CompactFlash instead of a hard drive? Maybe I should try running from a hard drive and see if it makes a difference, but I don't see why there should be a huge difference since I'm running advmame from a ramdisk anyways. Hmmmm... 

[Witchboard]

It's probably because your romset is both uncompressed and on a flash drive.  I didn't get time today to decompress the romset and test it out today, but I did verify that Pacman took the same amount of time.

Here's a question... if you're using a clone, or different version of a game that requires a parent romset, does it increase the load time since it has to uncompress multiple romsets?

Example: Pacman (Midway) = pacman.zip + puckman.zip

[slicer_d]

Maybe it has to do with advmame?  If you wanted maybe try running regular mame from yours any see how long it takes.  But with your setup it might take a little while so I dont blame you for not doing it.  I guess th flash card could be speeding things up but by that much seems like a whole lot.

[SirPeale]

I just did some testing with AdvanceMame.  Pleasing!  Went from 60+ seconds down to roughly *20* seconds.  And that's on a P133.  Of course, nothing played anywhere near full speed.  I'm sure on a decent PC (something above 400MHz) it would be even better.

[Buddabing]

You guys could try using a tiny build of MAME. It'll take some work, but you can edit the tiny.mak file to include only the CPUs, sound systems, and games you have. It should make your executable much smaller.

With a bit of #ifdefing, you can eliminate some of the core modules as well.

[JoyMonkey]

Wow, regular DOS Mame just plain sucks! Running dMame91 un-upx'ed (uncompressed) from a compactflash card took me 37 seconds, running it upx'ed took 19 seconds.
Then I copied it to a RAMdisk and it took 22 seconds upx'ed and un-upx'ed. WTF? Now I see why they don't bother releasing dMame builds anymore.

Whatever AdvMame is doing, its doing it fast.

[2600]

Are you all using a version of DOS Mame > .87?  I'm not 100% positive, but I did a quck check through the source and it seems that DOS Mame did not add the user option of skip_validatychecks.  However, I think it is still in the Main source.  I can't right now, but it would be an interesting check if someone could go back to DOS Mame .83 and see if there startup times are dramatically different than DMAME .90 or .91.

Otherwise, looks like JoyMonkey has helped out a lot.  This seems to be the beginings of a new DOS MAME sticky or faq.

[SirPeale]

Are you all using a version of DOS Mame > .87?  I'm not 100% positive, but I did a quck check through the source and it seems that DOS Mame did not add the user option of skip_validatychecks. 

That would be interesting, and would definitely explain the massive amount of time it takes.

Think I'm going to play a bit more with AdvMame, though.  Last time I tried it in my cab I got some really, REALLY funky results.  Like odd colors and the like.

[slicer_d]

I should be just working on homework today but maybe I will try versions .88, .87 and .83 and see how much they differ.

Thanks for checking the load time out for me Joymonkey.  Its good to know that I wasnt doing anything wrong.  Its strange that advmame is so much quicker to load but games run so much slower.  I tried runnig it but got the same thing Peale got with the funky colors.  Maybe I will try it some more later.

I'm pretty happy with my 13 seconds right now but I will have to see how much longer it takes once I get the soundcard working.

[lokki]

Wow, regular DOS Mame just plain sucks! Running dMame91 un-upx'ed (uncompressed) from a compactflash card took me 37 seconds, running it upx'ed took 19 seconds.
Then I copied it to a RAMdisk and it took 22 seconds upx'ed and un-upx'ed. WTF? Now I see why they don't bother releasing dMame builds anymore.

Whatever AdvMame is doing, its doing it fast.

Not really Mames fault. It is DOS crappy memory handling. That causes that.
Also I think they stopped DMAME because the recent changes to the sound architecture meant that too many things would have to change to get it working on DOS and the developers maintaining the DOS version don't have the time.

[lokki]

Did you try uncompressing the mame.exe file (to the 34mg+ version).

[Witchboard]

Well, I unpacked a romset to a directory and I may have gained 1 second.  Not really worth the effort of unpacking romsets into individual directories.  I think I'm just at the mercy of my hardware and the MAME code.  28 seconds isn't too awful painful, so I guess I'll just stick with what I got.

[JoyMonkey]

Well, I unpacked a romset to a directory and I may have gained 1 second.  Not really worth the effort of unpacking romsets into individual directories.  I think I'm just at the mercy of my hardware and the MAME code.  28 seconds isn't too awful painful, so I guess I'll just stick with what I got.

You mean 28 seconds with regualr dMame right? 28 seconds sounds painfull to me, I wasn't aware of these huge waits since the last time I used dMame was .37something.
What problems is everyone having with AdvMame? Last I checked, it worked fine straight out of the box with a regular PC monitor.
I realize it can be a little tricky configuring the arcade monitor resolutions at first, but once you get used to it, it's easy to get every game displaying perfectly.
To set it up for use on a TV, you just set it to use a standard PC mode like 800x600 (or whatever your TV-out outputs) for every game.

[Witchboard]

Correct.

[JoyMonkey]

Correct.  I am using DMAME .87.  I have not used AdvMAME, but it looks like I may give it a try.  I re-read Peale's post about it not running games at a playable speed, but I think he was talking about his hardware and not AdvMAME.

Speed wise, if you're using that P233 of yours you shouldn't be too bad. I have a vertical cocktail running AdvMame 0.67 on a P233 here. Back in the day, I went through EVERY vertical game on that machine and the only one that didn't play at full speed was ESP Ra.De.. Using a more recent version of AdvMame might make it chug.

[Witchboard]

The reason why I'm using DMAME .87 is that I thought it was the version where they added the Donkey Kong samples.

[JoyMonkey]

The reason why I'm using DMAME .87 is that I thought it was the version where they added the Donkey Kong samples.  If that's not true, I could probably back up quite a bit.  I'm going to use this 233 as a vertical bartop, so I'll probably be in the same boat as you in regards to FPS.  Thanks for the heads up.

I thought you could use the newer DKong sample set with older versions of Mame no problem. Now that I think of it though, I'm still using the old samples. Don't think I've ever even listened to the new ones. Hmmm...

Edit: Here's a breakdown of 3 different DKong sample sets I have (the old one is for use with Vantage or a very old Mame, one is from Twisty's samples page, the other is the current 'official' set). I'm guessing that you could take the newest samples edit them a little and drop them into the old set, to get the new sounds working in older versions of Mame.

[Witchboard]

What is considered old/new for the DK samples?  The timestamp on mine are 3/12/04.  I would presume these would be the new samples since they aren't that old.

[SirPeale]

I realize it can be a little tricky configuring the arcade monitor resolutions at first, but once you get used to it, it's easy to get every game displaying perfectly.

The trouble I ran into was when that everything displayed with really funky colors.  I didn't do too much testing with it.  Centering the screen with AdvCfg made the screen do funky colors.