Stability

[CurmudgeonlyBastrd]

     Hi all! Everyone seems to have moved to Windoze. I've experiemented with the command line Windoze MAME and various front ends, and without fe's at all. On various systems the speed boost is huge for the new versions of MAME, however, the stability sucks. Random crashes, lockups etc. Has anyone managed a setup as stable as DOS MAME 036b? Can you tell me exactly what you've done/used to achive this? I can run MAME 036b in DOS mode with a win98se install all day with no crashes. The lockups and crashes in Windoze seem really unproffesional and out of place in a cab to me.

     P.S. I've been searching for info but I can't find anything on the progress of the Burning Force emulation. The last one I've tried is under 036b and the background graphics are all screwed up. Has this been fixed? I enjoyed this game a lot on the Genesis and despite the unfinished EMU I can tell that the arcade version in way superior.

[Minwah]

XP is the stable-est Windows ever, give that a go - it doesn't crash!

[CurmudgeonlyBastrd]

     XP has been worlds better in my trials but it still crashes from time to time. Argh. If they were consistent crashes I could avoid them but they are just random. Maybe it's the latest version of Windoze MAME thats at fault? Are any prior version better? I'm not getting hardly any crashes using XP for regular computer junk, but Windoze MAME is crashing it more than I would like. Are there any install tips for XP or configurations that could smooth this out? I'll be runninig as a bare a system as I can, with XP and MAME, possibly a couple console emu's and a front end. I like the bare-bones look of Game Launcher.

[SirPoonga]

Weird, I have yet to crash window xp using it normally.  i;ve crashed it in programming but not using it normally.

[Chris]

If it weren't for the Act-Labs gun I would just go back to DOS.  DOS simply doesn't crash.

[Minwah]

When you say XP crashes, does it just randomly restart itself??

If so, then you may have a hardware problem or something...when I went to XP from '98 exactly that happened.  Took me ages to figure out why but flashing the BIOS cured it (something to do with my ATI video card I think).  It hasn't crashed since.  This *could* have been the cause of a fair few blue screens when I was running '98 too I suppose.

Anyway, may be worth just checking your system over...

[Howard_Casto]

You can't get windows xp, if properly setup, to crash under normal use.  Period, enough said.....

As sirp said, somtimes under abusive circumstances (programming, resigtry hacking, ect) you can get it to crash, but it's EXTREMELY rare.  

[jets]

I haven't rebooted in about a month  

[eightbit]

XP is very stable for me, I can't remember having it lock up on one of my mame cabs.

[PacManFan]

Maybe I'm not using XP under "Normal" circumstances, but I've gotten XP to crash a bunch of times. I'm a programmer by trade, and I've seen XP lock up or crash as often as 2000, NT, or 98 during application development. (And I don't want to hear any cracks about being a bad programmer.)
I think the main culprit is DirectX programming in MSVC++ 6.0 .
After locking the screen for direct pixel access, if you read/write to memory outside your application (illegal page fault), you can pretty much count on causing system instability.
Maybe it's just me....

-PacManFan

[Howard_Casto]

Read above... ALL os'es can crash under development applications.  It's because you are doing some non-normal stuff, like directx, which gives almost direct hardware access.

Like it or not it is your code.  Being a bad programmer has nothing to do with it.  It's the fact that m$ development tools don't always run well until the app is compiled into an exe.  

[Lilwolf]

Actually... Linux doesn't....

Linux you dont' have the ability to do it.  XP and all NT's shouldn't... because you can is just scary...

It is MUCH better then 98 where you can do it VERY easily... but your not suppost to be able to... that IS a bug in the OS.  Applications are not allowed to trounce on each other.

btw, Howard... What happened to Jack?  I can't picture you as anyone but Jack!

[Howard_Casto]

btw, Howard... What happened to Jack?  I can't picture you as anyone but Jack!

Every newb on the board picks jack as their avatar.  Apparently I'm a trend setter.  

So I picked the one avatar that nobody in their right mind could relate to but me.  This avoids confusion.  

[CurmudgeonlyBastrd]

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to look into the bios issue since random restarts are one of the most common crash types I'm getting. I'm just trying to sort all these bugs out BEFORE I install this puppy into the cab!  

[Jakobud]

I'm using Win2000 in my cabinet and have never had any problems crashing it or crashing Mame.  Sounds like it might be a hardware related problem for you.

[Minwah]

Go onto your m/board manufacturers website and they should have a list of BIOS revisions, and what's changed - you may spot what is causing your problem.

I hear bad RAM can also cause this symptom.

Good luck

[Brad Lee]

Warmth is my problem
Good air-flow is a must have
Heat rises- know this well





I was crashing during game play, hard lockups. I added some fans and that helped a great bit. I'm planning on picking up an Athlon 2100/2200 so I'm going to have do some relocating in order to deal with the extra heat I'll be looking at

[Minwah]

Good point, I was a little worried about heat so I got a decent PSU (I had a crap one with only exhaust fan), and I also got some round IDE cables which seem to help air flow quite a bit.