Mamewah crash

[ikyoto]

Well, first off I tried to search for a previous instance of this problem before posting, but didn't find anything I thought fit so here goes....

Okay, first off, I have a Hanatrex Polo 19" monitor, an older one...got that hooked up to an AVGA, that's pretty much okay...(some of the screen in cut off in 640x288..but nothing major, probably just need to tweak with the monitor adjuster knobs) Anyway...MameWah loads up fine, I have a custom layout set to 640x288 res, and the setting is 640x288 in the mamewah config...everything is still good...cycle through my list (picture seems a little dark though even with the brightness turned all the way up on the monitor end of things). I can load a game just find...play it...exit it...everything is still good. Now, say right after exiting the game I choose that same game again, it goes through the mamewah load message window, then goes black like it's going to start it...then I see some white junk for a second that's all distorted (like the v synce was way out of whack) and then nothing...blank screen. I open up task manager and everything looks okay, doesn't say anything is not responding, but can't hit esc to jump back into mamewah, I can only end the task of the rom which will then put me back into mamewah with a error message from windows that says DDHelp cause an error, standard error message. Same thing even if I then try to go to load another game.....An ideas what might be causing this? If you need me to post any more info let me know. I also had trouble loading the drivers for the AVGA, but that should be okay because I can bring up resolutions lower than 800x600.

Thanks

edit: Doubt this makes a difference but I had everything running smoothly on a pc monitor an an old ATI AIW card before I switched it all over to the arcade monitor and AVGA (I'm also pretty sure I got rid of all the old ATI junk before I installed the AVGA)

[mahuti]

Are you on 98? What version of MAMEWAH?

[ikyoto]

Heh, figures I'd forget the obvious......win98 SE, Mamewah v1.61

[mahuti]

I can't give you any specifics... other than to say... I finally gave up on win98se, with mamewah, and mame. The system runs fine for a few months.. then I start getting rolling vsync on games... random hangs and crashes, focus problems, etc.

Similar problem to yours. There's no easy diagnosis I've been able to make. My only guess with my system is that it has to do with an unstable combination of motherboard, processor or overheating, underpowering, something hardware related. I was having tons of problesm... power unit went out. Replaced it... no problems for a while... few months... then I started getting the same problems. It's really weird.

Anyway, I gave up on 98 and switched to XP. Luckily I had a newer computer around. I wish I could put the 98 machine in another cabinet... but it's just endlessly flakey.

[Minwah]

My guess is you are getting rolling problems due to your monitor not being adjusted right for certain modes.  I would firstly set a fixed resolution in mame.ini (say 640x480) and then launch a bunch of games to check it is ok.  Assuming all is good then you could try my 'Resolution Tool' (see my downloads page) which should be able to set suitable modes for each game (rather than relying on MAME's 'auto' setting).  Note that after doing this you will probably have to play with the v-hold on your monitor until all modes are set ok.

[ikyoto]

Thanks guys. As far as the rolling, I don't think I explained it well....it's not a continuous roll (that was the only way I thought to describe what the screen looked like before going blank, and it just looks like a small patch of white text all other screens are fine). I can run say Alien vs. Predator fine one time, after that, that is when I get the problem. I tested a little more last night here's what I did....

fixed a installshield error, so I properly installed the AVGA drivers and ATI control panel.

Booted Mamewah, ran The Simpsons. Ran Ok. Exited game and restarted simpsons again, still fine. Exited out of the game, and went up to Altered Beast, game started to boot up, but after mamewah game loading screen, kicked out to a dos prompt window and just hangs, when I close the dos window, everything just starts crashing from there. I checked the log and everything seemed okay...I'll post it tonight to see if anyone can spot something.

I was hoping not to go xp, but I may have to try it. I'm only guessing it's some sort of resolution issues, as everything was working ok when hooked up to normal graphics card and pc monitor. I also d/l the res tool from your site minwah, I'll give that a try tonight and see if that helps.

Thanks again

[Minwah]

Booted Mamewah, ran The Simpsons. Ran Ok. Exited game and restarted simpsons again, still fine. Exited out of the game, and went up to Altered Beast, game started to boot up, but after mamewah game loading screen, kicked out to a dos prompt window and just hangs, when I close the dos window, everything just starts crashing from there. I checked the log and everything seemed okay...I'll post it tonight to see if anyone can spot something.

Best thing to do is try this again but from a commandline rather than Mamewah...see what happens.

[ikyoto]

Okay....did some testing last night and I think it may not be as bad as previously thought.

Ran all the games I was having trouble with through CL, and everything worked fine..some of the game came up with something like "NO known good dump" or something to that effect, but didn't seem to bother anything. So I then ran minwah's res tool, set it up as it described in the help file, as far as I know everything is fine there.

So in mamewah, this is what's happening. I'll load alien vs. predator as long as it's the first game, everything's fine, run it again, or after any other game....the black screen I described above...well what I figured out is that after the mamewah load screen the game minimizes itself.....so if I hit alt+tab, the game comes up and everythings fine. Just doesn't seem like it should be doing this...have I missed a setting? Like I said, this only started happeing after the switch to AVGA/Arcade monitor....so is this still a resolution problem?

Also, in the case of some other games, after the mamewah loading screen, it pops up a MSDOS window overtop of mamewah, and then loads the game and I have to hit a key to continue in the DOS window, and then everything is fine.

So does this appear to just need some settings? At any rate, it doesn't seem as bad as I previously thought....and if all else fails guess I'll try XP.

[Minwah]

So in mamewah, this is what's happening. I'll load alien vs. predator as long as it's the first game, everything's fine, run it again, or after any other game....the black screen I described above...well what I figured out is that after the mamewah load screen the game minimizes itself.....so if I hit alt+tab, the game comes up and everythings fine. Just doesn't seem like it should be doing this...have I missed a setting? Like I said, this only started happeing after the switch to AVGA/Arcade monitor....so is this still a resolution problem?

I don't know.  You're not using DOS Mame are you?  Also, make sure you're not using frames_to_run 1 in Mame.

Oh, and try using {safelaunch} instead of {nosafelaunch} - that will probably fix it.

Also, in the case of some other games, after the mamewah loading screen, it pops up a MSDOS window overtop of mamewah, and then loads the game and I have to hit a key to continue in the DOS window, and then everything is fine.

This is what {autodosbox} does in Mamewah.  Some games have bad dumps and require a keypress which is why the dos-box pops up.  I believe MAME v0.100+ should not require this, and you can use {nodosbox} instead.

[ikyoto]

Minwah....I can't thank you enough for your help!

Updated my mame to v.100 and set the {safelaunch} and {nodosbox} and everything is running great now!

Thanks again for taking the time to help me.