Mame slow loading?

[bigfuz]

Does it take everyone else about 2 minutes for a game to startup from MameWAH?

[Tiger-Heli]

Does it take everyone else about 2 minutes for a game to startup from MameWAH?  I am starting from scratch on my system:

In your MAME.ini (see the stupid question thread up above if you don't have one), set:

-skip_validitychecks 1    
-crconly                    1

I think these are the right ones, there may be others at the end of the .ini file.  They added something which checks every single rom file before loading it and really slows it down.

[M3talhead]

Every once in a while (and I mean like, once every 20 start-ups), I'll have the same problem, but a quick reboot always fixes it. Doesnt happen that often so I kinda just deal with it. If you figure it out, please post it here.

[bigfuz]

Thanks for the tips!  unfortunately, there was no validity or CRC lines in the mame.ini?  Still takes over 2 minutes to load into Donkey Kong?

I was reading other posts...could it be using the latest and greatest mame is slower?  Maybe I should dumb down to version 66?

Think it is my system specs (i.e. not enough RAM)?

Any other ideas?

[cerebus]

You can create a mame.ini by running mame.exe -cc from the command line.

This is a different mame.ini than the one in the mamewah\ini directory.

[bigfuz]

Sorry, I was in the the wrong directory...I added the 1's on them CRC and Validity, ad it still takes about 2 minutes. (did not seem to speed it up at all?)

I did take for granted that this old 533mhz computer I got from a freind, was a pentium pro, but noticed it was a Celeron...I suppose using the Pentium pro optimized version for a Celeron is a bad choice?

Too many details...I need to amke a Mame/MameWAH Setup for Dummies after I get this straight.

The good news is the Radeon 7000 I picked up for this outputs pretty well on the cheap 27" TV i got, thru s-video.

[bigfuz]

OK, cabinet is all setup except for the slow loading issues.

[pointdablame]

With a 533mhz computer, the newest version of MAME is killing you.

Download MAME .55, put your roms through ClrMamePro to revert them to .55 roms and load that up.  You should see a HUGE improvement.

Your system RAM is also a bit lacking.  A jump to 128 or 256 would cost next to nothing, and should help a bit as well, especially if you run any newer/larger roms.

[bigfuz]

Thanks for the tip!

[pointdablame]

Thanks for the tip!  Will try that tonight. 

One question...why MAME .55?  Are there better versions of MAME releases than other (i.e. MAME .55 was real good, and .68 was scary?  )

No, not at all.  There just seem to be a few versions of MAME that people happen to use.  I honestly don't know the whys and hows of it, but people continually recommend .36final and .55

I tried both of them on older systems (I run .55 on my 900mhz bartop) and they work great.

The important thing is to use an older mame... which specific one isn't as important.  FWIW, .36 won't have as many games as .55 (obviously), but .55 seems to have 99% of anything that people play with regularity.

[Tiger-Heli]

Thanks for the tip!  Will try that tonight. 

One question...why MAME .55?  Are there better versions of MAME releases than other (i.e. MAME .55 was real good, and .68 was scary?  )

http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/arcadepanels/faq.htm#What%20are%20the%20significant%20MAME%20%22milestones%22?

Nothing really significant about 0.55.

I would try to stay with 37B15 and up as the hardware stretching makes it a lot easier to display games full screen.

Beyond that, 0.60, 0.61, or 0.63 all have some advantages.

I'm curious though, are you saying the games PLAY worse now, or they just take forever to load and then play fine???

[bigfuz]

Thanks

[Tiger-Heli]

Thanks  , they just take forever to load and then play fine.  Looks like 0.63 may be a good version to try first.

That's what I was afraid of.  I doubt your problem is your machine being too slow to run the current build then.  I still stand by my earlier statement that that added some kind of ROM verification routine somewhere in the late 90's builds that slows down ROM loading until you disable it, and that is your real problem.  Of course dropping back to 0.63 will take you out of this and solve your problem, but it's more coincidence than anything.

Is there a place where the Milestones or enhancements are listed up to the latest?  This is a great list!

Here's from the not-ready-for-primetime version of my page:

0.71.2 - Mc-Escher's Rotary Joystick Fix Files incorporated into MAME Analog +.

0.73.1 - Support for gamepads 5-8 added to MAME Analog + (and later to official MAME).

0.74.1 - New build of MAME Analog + supports multiple trackballs under Windows XP.

0.74u2 - TESTDRIVER system abandoned, what this means is games must be commented out of driver.c to remove them (previously you could just make them testdrivers).

0.75 - Beatmania added - 5 Gig of roms and 300 games added, 90% of them non-working.

0.76 - Timer system bugs fixed.

0.83 - MAME Analog Plus again saves mouse config settings.

0.84 - -listinfo removed, most older front-ends no longer work.

0.84u3 - Cruisin Exotica added

0.84u4 and 0.84u5 - controller.ini files disabled

[bigfuz]

Thanks Tiger-heli!

[bigfuz]

I switched to MAME 83, and the load time was cut in half.  2 minutes to 1 minute...

I figure 1 minute is typical...

[Tiger-Heli]

Still supports what I said earlier.  I'd bet there's some setting in 0.99 that would make it load in 1 min.  We just haven't found it yet.

[Tiger-Heli]

http://www.mame.net/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showpost.pl?Board=mamegeneral&Number=170700&page=&view=&mode=threaded&sb=#Post170700

See reply by our own u_rebelscum!!!

[2600]

Or what about this link:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=41067.msg373966#msg373966

[Tiger-Heli]

Or what about this link:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=41067.msg373966#msg373966

Ummmn, that's THIS thread!

[2600]

Exactly. 


Unless I'm missing something, the same answer you gave in this thread is the same one given by u_rebelscum.

[Tiger-Heli]

I was searching www.mame.net for a similar problem and figured u_rebel might have the wording more accurately than I did.

[bigfuz]

The skip validity checks line was not in version 83, but the CRC line was, which I changed to 1.

[bigfuz]

A final note for those using this as a reference later on,

I dropped to 0.74 or something close, now it takes less than 20 seconds or so to load a game, so if you are using an old computer, try not to use the latest and greatest MAME, if you dont need to!