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Hey guys, I'm running Mame 0.153 on a dell dimension b110 desktop circa 2004ish. Pentium 4 3.0ghz CPU, 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD. I'm having some trouble with sound skipping on a few games. I've spent the last two hours thoroughly lurking google and I've played around with a few things in the ini file with no luck. Please help me, I really don't want to have to buy another pc with a dual core cpu. Thanks.
Name some games...
Also what video card/chip set does that comp have?
I am going to presume this is not a sound card/chip set issue though but no harm in looking for up to date drivers for both sound and video (PC drivers not mame drivers)
Mame in general runs so many different hardware/software varients and not everything works yet (this will always be the case because even if they fix every issue now there will be new beta and alpha drivers added and new rom dumps both good but lacking full driver support and partial rom dumps) and some of the emulation only works on very very high end smoothly
You may also want to try out windows gui versions of mame like MameUI32 from http://www.progettosnaps.net/mameui_en that has more video & sound options ect to play with.
Mame is also about accuracy and due to that can be slower than other emulators that use more hacks and tricks to get quicker emulation
There are tons of specialized emulators around for certain hardware and other emulators a bit like mame in that they cover a few systems, though not as many as mame but will play some of the games better, a few of those are listed at http://nonmame.retrogames.com/
Other I would look at for general all round emulation are the likes of Final Burn Alpha (There are plenty of others but I personally like the FBA range, but that is up to you what you like to use), that handle CPS to CPS2, possibly CPS3 also, Neo-Geo and more systems
If you are wondering about my uncertainties I tend to just use my xbox for arcade emulation rather than a Pc now though I do have a full 0.152 MAME set (yet to update to 0.153 though)
Drivers are all up to date. Graphics card is an old one I chose that has a composite output so I can connect the pc to a tv. It is an ATI Radeon 9200 with 128mb. The games I am having issues with are NFL blitz, gauntlet legends, gauntlet dark legacy, and a few others. After spending a while on google I think my problem is likely not enough processing power for theses games so I have been looking at quad core pcs on ebay. I also really want to play carnevil and newer 3d games. Please let me know what you think.
ALSO (sorry for so many questions), I just got a namco guncon 2 light gun originally made for the ps2. The gun connects through usb and splices into the composite video feed as well. Through using a driver called wingun I have gotten windows to recognize it, however I am having a hell of a time getting mame to see it. The driver basically makes it work as a mouse (moves the cursor and trigger clicks, etc.). It works fine on my desktop but not in mame, any ideas on this as well? Thanks for your time.
MAME ios CPU heavy, it uses the CPU for the majority of its emulation so that may be why its choppy, try frameskipping or trying Final Burn Alpha and Raine, especially Final Burn Alpha, its good .
I tried messing with the frameskipping settings and nothing helped. I messed around with a bunch of the settings in the mame ini with no luck at all. I finally caved and bought a new pc for the cabinet I'm building on ebay. I got a pretty sweet deal. $110 for a dell with intel core 2 quad 2.4ghz, 4gb of ram and 250gb HDD.
Any ideas on my light gun problem?
There is a guide to this online (Lightgun guide that it) I don't have time today to dig that out but just google for it, I remember it getting a little complicated to set up initially plus Mame does not handle mouse setup very well for lightgun games or at least it didn't works too well last time I was trying (as you say the lightgun acts as a mouse)
Also check the controls via the TAB menu in game and make sure that is all correct especially if you are using a mouse and a lightgun, you may need to install something like dual mouse (I don't know the exact name of the prog but a guide would tell you)
Awesome, I was able to find everything I needed from a couple solid hours of googling. I got all my light guns working in mame which is a huge relief. If I want to run games like area 51 and carnEvil do I need a powerful graphics card? To use my light guns I need to use a card that has composite out so I am using an ati radeon 9200. If i run this card with a core 2 quad 2.4ghz cpu will these games run well or do I need to upgrade my video card or cpu?