Setting Up Mame For The First Time

[KingPaul]

I'm sure this has been gone over a million times however I'm new to this and would like to ask for some help. I've installed MAMEUI32 on a Pentium III running windows XP Pro. I can get Star Castles & Astroids to work however I can't get any color games to work. It seems that only the one that say "Vector" under the "Type" column work where as the "Raster" ones just come up with a white screen. I have no idea what to do and have been trying most of the afternoon.

Any help would be great

KingPaul

[FatTrucker]

Your system is way underspecced for modern versions of Mame. if you're running with a PentiumIII go for builds prior to version 0.106. (you can get old builds of Mame32 Here).

The second thing with Mame is that it and its roms are constantly modified and updated. You need to find roms that are compatible with whichever version you're using (so you would need to find roms verified for version 0.105 for example if you were using mame32 v0.105).

The boards rules prevent discussion of romsites etc but use a rom management tool like ClrMamePro to audit your romset (using the .exe for the version of mame you're using) to produce a report telling you which roms have files missing.

[KingPaul]

Great advice. I was able to get some games to play after I updated the video drivers however I thought I'd try what you said and it works so much better. The games play a lot fast than they did with the newer version. I know that ROMS aren't allowed to be discussed but do they usually come with the sound file? Also, since I own the arcade game Pole Position, do I have the rights to the ROMS as I have them on the original PC board?

KingPaul

[FatTrucker]

First up the copyright thing, even if you own the original board its illegal for you to download the rom (and for the site you get it from to distribute it), you can dump it yourself if you have the necessary equipment or you can download it safe in the knowledge you're bending the law just a little bit but you're not hurting the industry by doing so.

As far as sounds are concerned, particularly in older versions of Mame where some of the sound chips weren't emulated, Mame uses samples for many games (including Pole Position). You can grab these from Here, you'll want the older ones for use with older versions of the emulator. Just put them in the mame/samples folder and mame will use them automatically when it needs to.