No Arcadeos list in Mame0.36 / DOS 7.1

[chris2922]

I have a very sad old system shell im configuring for my firend as a classic MAME machine.
Ive got it running now.

PII 300
98MB RAM
Maxi Gamer Phoenix video card (16mb)
Creative Labs AWE32 PCI
3GB HDD.

Ive got DOS and the driver installed, and DMAME run PACMAN.ZIP with sound at about 33FPS with scanlines and HWSTRETCH, and 60FPS without. (67FPS without THROTTLING).

Question:
After i type "DMAME PACMAN" it takes about 25 seconds to initialise MAME.  This is before the ROM is loaded into RAM.  *Anyway of speeding this up with the system configuration?*
I have left out sound drivers and cd drivers etc.

In Config.sys I have:
DEVICE=C:\DOS71\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS71\EMM386.EXE NOEMS NOVCPI
DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO

And Autoexec.bat:
LH SMARTDRV
LH CWSDPMI -P

I thought that the disc caching service SMARTDRV might speed up the loading of MAME but without luck.

I intend to use ARCADE OS to front-end it, but want this to run quicker first if possible.

Can anyone offer any advice for configuring DOS or MAME.CFG?
Id really appreciate the help.  I have little experience configuring MAME for DOS as ive always used a powerful XP machine and MAME32 before.

I have SMARTDRV running in High Memory.
I also have CWSDPMI.EXE running in the upper memory block.

[Silver]

Mame is probably taking ages to verify the roms before running the game.

Trying changing

skip_validitychecks 0
 
to

skip_validitychecks 1

in your mame.ini (or dmame.ini maybe in your case)

[chris2922]

Tried it without effect - but thanks for the help.
According to the show usage option in dmame (DMAME -SU) there is no such command.  Maybe its Win only?  It is taking a very long time to start loading the roms into ram though.  The  when it does, its very slow.

Im thinking disk caching settings in SMARTDRV - but im not familiar with the options!

This system is running 1943.ZIP at about 7FPS and DDRAGON at 2.xFPS so i dont hold out much hope anyway.
Strangley though, its running GNG.ZIP at 60FPS with Scanlines and Stretch on, PACMAN.ZIP at 30FPS.

Spose i could just test the games and weed out the ones that run ok?

Any other advice?

[SirPeale]

You didn't happen to mention what version of Mame you're running.

skip_validitychecks didn't come around until .98, IIRC. 

And for that machine, use .36, anyway.

[chris2922]

Im using 0.89.
That would explain it then.

Why do you say 0.36?

[Thenasty]

version 36 (Final) was a true DOS MAME. There was no WINDOWS MAME (official) back then and that version had Speed Hacks that was remove in newer versions.
I had 36 running on P100 with classic games with nice FPS.

Also before jumping onto 36, maybe you otta try UDMA driver. Pacman should load under 15seconds.

[Wade]

Yeah, the key here is using an old version of MAME.  I would recommend 0.36 or around there.  Pacman should load almost instantly, it did on a similar system I configured.  Use smartdrv too.

Wade

[chris2922]

I got 0.36 from mame.net and its much better under DOS than 0.89 was.
It runs quite a few games a 30 or 60 FPS that 0.89 was running at 3 - 7 FPS.

Coupla questions though (again).

ARCADE OS 2.52 is configured correctly as far as i can tell.  Pointing to the correct MAME dir and EXE.
But it shows an empty games list.  Is it not compatible with 0.36?

Thanks for the help so far!!!

[lokki]

check the legacy support (or something like that) on ArcadeOS,
There are two ways of generating the game list depending on the version of MAME
it is 1 set it to 0 it it is 0 set it to 1 :-)

[chris2922]

Tried changing the option from 1 to 0, but it made no difference.

According to Peales post on PC2JAMMA:
"Set to '1' for Mame versions < .84 and '0' for versions > .84" So 1 should be ok for me.

Im now off to scour the net for the answer.
If anyone can help, let me know - ill keep checking back.

[chris2922]

Well,
Ive got Arcadeos 2.52 installed at c:\arcadeos
It points to c:\mame\mame.exe which is version 0.36.
Mame runs all the agme fine from the command prompt.
Arcadeos will start, but not find any games.

The arcadeos.cfg file points to the correct mame location in all the relevent places and the legacy option is set to 1, which as mentioned above is correct.

Im not sure what to do now.

The arcadeos website appears to offer little help and the help file within the download doesn't mention anything either.

Any advice?

[lokki]

Like I had said, if it is 1 set it to zero. Not sure which way is the correct way.
delete all the lst files and start arcade os, it should show you how it is generating the list

[chris2922]

Thank you. You are the man.
Deleting the LST files was the key.  Changing the legacy configuration was no good without that.
Again - thanks very much for your help.

[Thenasty]

if I were you, I'll just install AOS in the same DIR as MAME. AOS is not that big of a program. This will make sure that all path is correct. Give that  a try.

[brianoneill]

Hi, I've a similar PC that I just got that am gonna put into my cab.

Am about to download 0.36 from mame.net, however, I only have .99 roms !

How can I convert these to 0.36 compatable roms ?
Using clrmamame? if so, do I need a 0.36 dat file ?

Regards,
Brian.

[paigeoliver]

Hi, I've a similar PC that I just got that am gonna put into my cab.

Am about to download 0.36 from mame.net, however, I only have .99 roms !

How can I convert these to 0.36 compatable roms ?
Using clrmamame? if so, do I need a 0.36 dat file ?

Regards,
Brian.

Use .55 instead. It supports more games, has 90 percent of the speed of .36 and almost all the roms are the same between the versions (those that aren't are almost all from games you can't use anyway).

[chris2922]

Ok hold on.

First Peale says "And for that machine, use .36, anyway." and now you're saying use 0.55?

Where have you got the 90% figure from?  Is this figure a fact or not?

[brianoneill]

Use .55 instead. It supports more games, has 90 percent of the speed of .36 and almost all the roms are the same between the versions (those that aren't are almost all from games you can't use anyway).

Thanks. I've downloaded 0.55.
Some roms don't work as they've changed since then.
How do I convert .99 roms to .55 ?

Brian.

[AtomSmasher]

Thanks. I've downloaded 0.55.
Some roms don't work as they've changed since then.
How do I convert .99 roms to .55 ?

Brian.

THREAD RESSURECTION!

I'm loading mame onto an older computer (p2 400mhz) and am using v.55.  My problem is that a lot of the roms I'm trying to use are not "missing" parts, which I assume they just deemed unneccesary in the newer versions.  The roms set I have is v98 if that matters.  Some of the games that don't work are pac-man, pole position, and bubble bobble, so its pretty important for them to work.

I've tried using clrmamepro, which probably fixed some of the problems, but not the missing file problem.  Anyone have any ideas?

[AtomSmasher]

Looks like I may have been wrong on the roms being different versions.  I just realized that pacman needed the puckman file to run and something similar might be the case with most of the other games that I'm having problems with.  I guess I'll just go through each game and see if the missing files are in a file with a different name.

[AtomSmasher]

Well after quite a bit of work I've managed to get the number of bad roms from 44 to 9.  Basically I combined every version of the roms I could find then ran clrmamepro and hoped for the best.

Heres the list of the 9 I couldn't get to work along with either the name of the one missing file, or the number of files missing for each rom.  It really stinks that I couldn't get bubble bobble or gauntlet working.


romset polepos2 is bad - 3 files
romset mpatrol is bad - 2a
romset bublbobl is bad - 68705.bin
romset opwolf is bad - 2 files
romset flicky is bad - 3 files
romset gaiden is bad - 17 files
romset gauntlet is bad - gauntlt1.6p
romset gaunt2 is bad - gauntlt2.6p
romset mslug is bad - 4 files

[Silver]

I assume you are using the correct Dat file for your mame version in ClrMamePro? I.e you are using the 0.55 dat file?

You need to do this to ensure you pick up renamed files between versions.

If you still have missing files (and you would) then obviously you need to get hold of these.

Seeing as you have spoken of having a (complete) set, I would suggest looking for a Rollback set. A Rollback set for a particular version (e.g. v0.110) allows you along with a complete set (e.g. v0.110) to recreate all the needed roms for every previous version of mame.

A rollback set for v0.110 would be around 2gig, but obviously you only need a tiny number of files for your needs.

[AtomSmasher]

I assume you are using the correct Dat file for your mame version in ClrMamePro? I.e you are using the 0.55 dat file?

You need to do this to ensure you pick up renamed files between versions.

If you still have missing files (and you would) then obviously you need to get hold of these.

Seeing as you have spoken of having a (complete) set, I would suggest looking for a Rollback set. A Rollback set for a particular version (e.g. v0.110) allows you along with a complete set (e.g. v0.110) to recreate all the needed roms for every previous version of mame.

A rollback set for v0.110 would be around 2gig, but obviously you only need a tiny number of files for your needs.

ClrMamePro is set up correctly, the files just don't exist in the newer versions of mame.  I've never heard of a rollback set, but its a great idea and I'm now going to try and track one down.  Thanks.

*edit* good call on the rollback set, its exactly what I was looking for.  I already have the last 9 roms working, I just wish I knew about it earlier so I didn't spend so many hours tracking down the missing files for the other roms.  Live and learn