Step by Step Emulation and Arcade Construction

[Paul_Gio]

Hi All,

I have been using Mame32 with WindowsXP and it works great. However, I wish to heighten my arcade experience by building a proper cabinet. At the moment I have an old PC I plan on using with the following specs:

PIII 1GHz
320MB SDRAM
Creative SB PCI 64/128 Card
NVIDIA MX440 Graphics card
Stereo Speakers / Keyboard / CD Drive / Mouse etc

I wish to get this system to boot into an Arcade Frontend and MAME without having to load or install windows (if possible). I have experimented with ArcadeOS and AdvanceMAME but have had no joy as of yet. If anyone could direct me to a step by step tutorial or inform me on how to do this it would be much appreciated!

Also, I have just acquired an old arcade cabinet. It contains a 20" arcade monitor, coinslots, arcade controls (2 player), 1 and 2 player buttons, power supply and Jamma harness. I would really love to get the old PC working in this but I am also uncertain of the best approach.

I thought it might be best to purchase a J-PAC board and hook everything up that way. Anyone with experience or suggestions on how to build my machine would be great! I have found many sites with arcade projects but none of them seem to go into the specifics of setting up MAME and an appropriate frontend or detail monitor configurations.

Cheers,
Paul

By the way - I have tried using Fraggal's boot CD, but have had little joy in getting things working correctly. My sound never works, ROMS dont show up in ArcadeOS and the games look terrible on my PC Monitor. Any help would be appreciated!

[alcoatjez]

I don't know if it is exactly what you're looking for, but perhaps the AdvanceMAME website can be of assistance. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you will at least need Windows on your PC (or another compatible OS).

[hagbard]

I agree, AFAIK you'll need an Operating System compatible with your PC and off course with the frontend and emulators

[Paul_Gio]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. I have been looking at the AdvanceMAME link you offered and now have AdvanceMAME working to a degree. The problem I am faced with at the moment is video display settings. I cannot seem to get these right. Some of the games work but others come up with a message on the monitor which reads 'Signal out of range'.

I have tried playing with these settings in the AvanceMAME config file but still haven't got everything right. AdvanceMenu will not display either for the same reason. If anyone can assist with the clock settings etc that are needed it would be appreciated! I have a CTX 17" Monitor MODEL PR705F.

I had planned on using a J-PAC board to for the video feed into the arcade monitor, so anyone who has had experince in this and some does and dont's -I would love to hear about the best approach to setting this up also!

Finally (for the time being), is there a way to eliminate the messages displayed when starting up games? Can the roms be loaded straight to their test/startup screens?

Thanx again,
Paul

[Paul_Gio]

By the way,

I am also having trouble with audio. Does anyone know a good source for audio drivers for a SoundBlaster PCI 64/128 Card that work in Windows 98 or DOS?

Cheers,
Paul

[alcoatjez]

http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/

[hagbard]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. I have been looking at the AdvanceMAME link you offered and now have AdvanceMAME working to a degree. The problem I am faced with at the moment is video display settings. I cannot seem to get these right. Some of the games work but others come up with a message on the monitor which reads 'Signal out of range'.

I have tried playing with these settings in the AvanceMAME config file but still haven't got everything right. AdvanceMenu will not display either for the same reason. If anyone can assist with the clock settings etc that are needed it would be appreciated! I have a CTX 17" Monitor MODEL PR705F.

I had planned on using a J-PAC board to for the video feed into the arcade monitor, so anyone who has had experince in this and some does and dont's -I would love to hear about the best approach to setting this up also!

Hi,
Hope this link helps:
http://www.retroblast.com/articles/winmamemon_1.html

Finally (for the time being), is there a way to eliminate the messages displayed when starting up games? Can the roms be loaded straight to their test/startup screens?

Thanx again,
Paul

Open the "mame.ini" or equivalent, it should be named as the mame executable. If you don't have it, enter the following command "mame -cc"
Now go to this section:

### Mame CORE misc options ###
...
skip_disclaimer         1
skip_gameinfo           1
...

And make sure both options are set to "1", like in the example

[Paul_Gio]

Thanks for your replies. The monitor information is a good read, I will see if I can sort things out.

I am using AdvanceMAME version 1.04 and have tried adding the lines 'skip_gameinfo 1' and 'skip_disclaimer 1' to the configuration file (advmame.rc). There is no file called 'mame.ini' or 'advmame.ini'. I keep getting a message which reads:

Unknown option 'skip_disclaimer' in file 'advmame.rc
Unknown option 'skip_gameinfo' in file 'advmame.rc

Am I doing something wrong here?

Thanks again,
Paul

[hagbard]

Nevermind. Oops, I think you aren't doing anything wrong, I believed that options were also supported on AdvanceMame but looks I'm wrong, sorry for that I haven't fully check the official documentation tough, so perhaps there's a similar option.

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/

[Paul_Gio]

Hi All,

Thanks very much for your replies!! I have a working (although not yet perfect) setup for my MAME cabinet. I downloaded the AdvanceCD from:

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-readme.html

which has proven effective. I can now boot into the AdvanceMENU frontend and run most of my ROMS. However, I am having some minor problems (if anyone has any input on how to solve them?):

1. On the majority of roms music sounds a little distorted, which is distracting to say the least. I am wondering if this is something to do with my sound driver? I have a Sound Blaster PCI64 card and the closest driver set I can get is Ensoniqs PCI64 driver (which is actually on the AdvanceCD).

I have tried getting the original drivers from Creative's website, but with no joy (they no longer support the card and only have a few driver updates, not the original which I need to run in DOS/Windows 98).

On the other hand, is it something I might have to set up in the AdvanceMAME config file (advmame.rc)?

2. Mortal Kombat roms are very laggy for some reason. This includes MK, MKII and UMK3. The audio is also very messy.

3. For some reason there are a couple of roms that aren't displayed in AdvanceMENU but they work fine from the command line in AdvanceMAME. Not sure why they will not show up.

4. Some of the vertical roms will not show up on my monitor as they are out of range. However, I am not too fussed about these at this stage as I will be adjusting my VGA output for 15KHz to display on my arcade monitor (using my computer monitor at the moment).

Well, thats it. So if anyone has suggestions as to how to solve these issues you would make me a very happy man!

Cheers,
Paul