Looking for someone to help me fix a bootable Vantage disk

[spystyle]

...When I type vantage and nothing else I get that error, but if I tell it to load up a rom then it loads it up with no errors...

Yes that's the crash I'm talking about.

Come to think of it, I didn't actually try it with a ROM ...

...OK, while it does crash without a ROM (which is weird) it works with a ROM (which I guess is all that matters)

I type :

cd vantage (enter)
vantage pacman (enter)

...and sure enough Pac-Man runs :



LOL now I feel like an idiot

It exits fine when I press ESC, displaying the FPS that was achieved.

So now I type cd\ (enter) and that brings me back to C:>

Then I type glaunch (enter) which fires up Game Launcher, and sure enough it works :

...I then burnt the .iso to a new disc and tried reinstalling it on the same laptop and only got to the screen in reply #16.

Make sense?  

That screen is not a "hang", it's a "boot to drive X"

See this :

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=99536.msg1052394#msg1052394

[spystyle]

What this disc of mine is supposed to do in theory is you just boot with it. It then formats the drive, installs DOS and appropriate drivers, then vantage and GL with all their files. All the roms, sounds and eventually snaps are there too. About a 10 minute process depending on the hard drive size. Then pull the disc, reboot and you are ready to go ...

If you want to do that, you would have an easier time starting with the SpyStyle disk and stripping it down, removing options and ect, until you have what you describe.

To edit the SpyStyle disk :

1. Download the ISO
2. Extract it's contents
3. Edit the extracted file "DOS.BAT"

This file tells the CD what to do, whatever is in this file is what will happen

When you are done editing it, save it and use MagicISO to make a new ISO :

1. Open the original SpyStyle ISO
2. In magicISO's browser delete all the original files
3. Replace those files with your now modified files
4. Save it as a new ISO

I show it here :

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=99536.msg1051918#msg1051918

Now that you have an ISO you can test it in MS Virtual PC, this saves you from making a million coasters.

And that's all there is to it Why reinvent the wheel? Fraggal made a great disk, I picked it up and added a lot, now it is available for you to pick up and make your own version.

GameLauncher as a front end is a common complaint, you could add a different front end like ArcadeOS as an option.

have fun!
Craig

[spystyle]

Oh but wait : I think Vantage lacks Dig-Dug !!!

A vertical cab without Dig-Dug is heresy at best, blasphemy at worse !!!

 

[spystyle]

OK I just want to wrap this up So I fixed your original ISO

Here is the ISO :

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JB60D86U

To use it :

1. Boot with it (on a PC or in MS Virtual PC)

2. type "install" (without quotes)

3. It will bring you to Fdisk - you can either create a partition (if needed) or simply press ESC.

If you create a partition you need to restart, if not, continue.

4. After it will format the hard drive, then you'll need to name the hard drive.

Then it will copy the files to the hard drive.

5. After it is done remove the CD (or ISO) and restart, and you should have a DOS install with Vantage and GameLauncher and ArcadeOS.

All you have to do is install your sound card drivers.

It is set up for a monitor rotated 90 degrees right :



Here are screen shots :





If GameLauncher crashes :



... That means you need to edit the Glaunch.cfg file. It crashed for me repeatedly until I put in a resolution that it and my video card could agree upon.

I guess in the end I was the DOS guru ?



Here is more information about Vantage and ArcadeOS :

http://www.geilom.at/content/view/38/67/lang,de/

And here is GameLauncher's FAQ which I used to solve my resolution crash problems :

http://www.geilom.at/content/view/38/67/lang,de/

Have fun!
Craig

[Masterful Gaze]

I guess you it's official then. You're the dos guru 

Maybe the Vantage programmers just didn't put in an error code for cases when Vantage is run without a rom. I don't know, but I don't have any problems with it.

I've looked at a few Fe for dos and it looks like GL is the best looking of the lot.

That's how I originally found the SpyStyle boot disk. I was googling for a dos bootdisk and the SpyStyle thread here on the forum showed up. I looked through it and it already did what I was planning to setup anyway so I figured why build it from scratch?

I do have a question through. Is there any performance difference between dos 6.22 and the dos 7 from windows 98? Dos 6.22 can't handle large partitions but if it runs better I could live with that. I might have to do a little testing.

Good to hear you got the old girl running! I didn't really help but it was fun following along anyway. 

[spystyle]

To test the performance difference I suppose you could compare FPS for a certain ROM for a certain amount of time.

[Masterful Gaze]

Yeah, I might test it out along with Dos 8.0 from windows me in virtual pc just to see how it goes. It looked like 6.22 booted up faster to me but that just might be all the drugs....

LOL, I'm sick so my heads all  from drinking nyquil.

[spystyle]

Ah NyQuil It brings back memories

I wonder what the speed difference between MAME 36 and Vantage is ? Vantage is pretty amazing but MAME 36 has all of the classics and I think Metal Slug too ! Not to mention Gauntlet and Dig-Dug and everything.



An arcade machine with no Neo Geo and no Dig Dug ? That's the definition of destitution

[IG-88]

What this disc of mine is supposed to do in theory is you just boot with it. It then formats the drive, installs DOS and appropriate drivers, then vantage and GL with all their files. All the roms, sounds and eventually snaps are there too. About a 10 minute process depending on the hard drive size. Then pull the disc, reboot and you are ready to go ...

If you want to do that, you would have an easier time starting with the SpyStyle disk and stripping it down, removing options and ect, until you have what you describe....

...And that's all there is to it Why reinvent the wheel? Fraggal made a great disk, I picked it up and added a lot, now it is available for you to pick up and make your own version.

And now confusion sets in...

OK. Where to start.

First off. Craig, thank you so much for putting all this hard work into my Vantage disc. Yours is a invaluable service to the community and I really appreciate it.

Secondly. Have you read thru my post(s) above closely? Either you haven't or I don't communicate very well, and my communication skills, I'm pretty sure, are the problem. So let me make it clear....

MY ORIGINAL DISC WORKED PERFECTLY FOR ME ON THE LAPTOP I AM USING! I have games on it now and they work. Audio and all. I didn't need to start over. I wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel. I JUST NEEDED HELP REBUILDING THE ISO. I made 2 small changes by adding roms and re-writing GL's header.

Which leads me to ask why you wanted to strip it down and rebuild it?

It's probably safe to say you are using that VirtualPC thing to test my disc out and it obviously didn't work. VPC cant possibly emulate my laptop can it? How can it test my hardware on your computer? My laptop has completely different ram, audio drivers, video drivers ect. ect. Therefore it didn't work right for you. So you decided to rebuild. Thats fine. I think it's great that you went to all that trouble. I just feel that you didn't need too. What you ended up with is not even close to what I have on my disc. The menu is completely different and it looks like the boot screen logo is gone too.

I am going to use your little tutorial above and try and rebuild my slightly altered iso and see if that will get me the results that I wanted.

Again, I want to stress how much I appreciate everything that you've done. But really this thing feels like it took on a life of its own and completely got away from what I was after.
I wish I could do a better job saying what I need and I hope I haven't wasted all your time. I've learned more from you than anyone on this forum and If I get this to work I'll snap some pics to let you see what I have.

 

[spystyle]

It's no problem. It keeps me out of trouble

Did you try the new ISO I uploaded?

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=99536.msg1052871#msg1052871

It works great and is rotated

have fun!
Craig

[spystyle]

Hey Dana, I see you are interested in keeping the old 'puters running. You should Czech out "Tiny Core Linux" :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Core_Linux

I tried it briefly, apparently it's a 10 megabyte OS with GUI and no programs - through a menu you connect to the internet and only install the programs you want.

So if I understand it correctly, you could just have an OS that surfs the web (and does e-mail) with FireFox and writes reports with OpenOffice - so that's an average student PC I think. You could make something practical out of some of those old anchors maybe

It looks like that works best with Pentium 2's - for anything slower you could try "Darn Small Linux" :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damn_Small_Linux

Keep them running forever  

Have fun!
Craig

[IG-88]

Thanks man. I will check it out.

I have not had a chance to try your new iso yet either. Bashed my head pretty good the other day. Been out of the game for a spell 

[spystyle]

Why do women always hit us with the frying pans like that?

Anyway, best of luck with your old 'puters. Be sure to test the PSU's and DIMM's - I recently had a Pentium 2 come in (12 years old) and it had a bad PSU and bad RAM... and the hard drive was noisy "ringing" and "crunching". The owner upgraded to a very nice dual-core Pentium-4 laptop (Gateway ML6720).

Cheers,
Craig