Why buy a board when you can mame??

[cRacKh0rN]

I recently bought a mametopia board on this forum and I agree what it does very well is play pre-jamma games. I don´t need to get all those adapters of specific game to jamma along with the original pcbs.

That said, it still has some audio skipping here and there so its not 100% perfect substitute for any original board. I am probably still going to buy some pcbs if and when some game important to me is available for reasonable price. And I do intend to keep most if not all of my current original pcbs.

Are you using Groovymame? Check out the emulation section for cools' guide.
Setup with the correct resolutions, most games work perfectly with Groovy.

[Mendel]

Groovymame, according to cools´guide requires "An ATI card supported by CRT_Emudriver"
I have integrated Nvidia graphics and soft15khz
So I would need to buy a pci Radeon card to make groovymame work?

[Ex_Mosquito]

Yes unfortunalty, I had the same problem. I picked up my CRT_Emudrivers supported ATI gfx card off eBay for £20/25 delivered.

[cRacKh0rN]

Groovymame, according to cools´guide requires "An ATI card supported by CRT_Emudriver"
I have integrated Nvidia graphics and soft15khz
So I would need to buy a pci Radeon card to make groovymame work?

Yes. This is one of the caveats of using Groovy. You will need to read the docs to see what ATI cards are supported. I picked mine up from ebay for about £10.

[Mendel]

This writeup here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.p ... c=119768.0" ...

leads me to believe that I could just install groovymame for use with soft15khz without installing ati graphics card and without crt_emudriver

any comments on that?

[pubjoe]

Yes, from my brief experience you can install groovymame, turn switchres on and go with that.

I tried this but only for a couple of games so give it a good test and if it's working without issue you could point mala to groovymame.exe instead of the mame.exe it's currently using. There will be some difficulties with configuration, most of all you will need up-to-date roms, for this reason it's well worth backing up before you delve in too much. ...At least keep all your tinkering in a separate folder for starters.

As far as I understand neither driver add-on can provide "perfect" refresh rates and speed is usually a tiny bit off (unless you put up with tearing). Groovymame's magic here is in how it syncs the audio speed without stutter.

[Mendel]

I get a fast blinking black command line with various errors when trying to run game with groovymame, I suppose the romset is wrong

anyways, back on mgalaxy... I would want to try various settings to reduce audio skipping

here is instructions I found on google:

Enable -refreshspeed. This causes mame to run not quite the correct speed for most games, though.
* Set the correct -speed value. This will vary game to game, and enabling -refreshspeed should set this correctly. If it does not, you can hand set it instead with this option.
* Disable -waitvsync, -syncrefresh, and -triplebuffer. (This is the default settings.)
* enable -switchres.

That´s all nice but where and how exactly do I add/enable those things??? Is this done in mala options, in mame config or in some ini file? if so, which ini file?

edit: also...

Do you know what is the highest resolution a nac monitor can display without interlacing on 15kHz?
I´m looking to set up a modeline that I could use to play vertical games on mame without actually rotating the monitor such that I would have a small vertical strip on the horizontal screen, where pixels arent stretched and as little as possible is lost to overscan on top and bottom. (I dont want to use ega)

[vasilas432]

MAME is a powerful tool to try before you buy. It is for free and everybody can have it anytime.

For me there can't be more enjoyment and satisfaction from owning the real hardware that was the one you used to play at arcades as a kid.
It's really cool to hunt for a rare pcb and super exciting to finally lay your hands on it. Assemble it, tune up the monitor, hardware and software menus. It is a cool ceremony!
Most of the times you don't loose your money if you sell the real deal like you do on today's systems and games that just use disk formats and will be super common also in the future due to mass production of game copies today.
I don't have proceed at the moment to current gen: PS4 and Xbox one due to lack of games of my interest.

[gray117]

That´s all nice but where and how exactly do I add/enable those things??? Is this done in mala options, in mame config or in some ini file? if so, which ini file?

It'll be regular mame.ini file. To generate the default gooveymame ini run the your groovymame exe with the "-cc" switch (backup your regular mame.ini first if there's anything in there you want to keep) - easiest way to do this is rightclick drag the exe to make a shortcut and add " -cc" after the groovymame.exe in the target shortcut box.

Cools actually has this in his guide:
http://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=24216"


... you should only get rom errors when you load a rom so imagine your woes are related to not having a correct mame.ini setup just yet rather than roms?

Do you know what is the highest resolution a nac monitor can display without interlacing on 15kHz?
I´m looking to set up a modeline that I could use to play vertical games on mame without actually rotating the monitor such that I would have a small vertical strip on the horizontal screen, where pixels arent stretched and as little as possible is lost to overscan on top and bottom. (I dont want to use ega)

Depends what monitor exactly, but this probably won't work like how you want it to: Probably around 240-80 vertical max at 60Hz, you might get more at 50hz but presume that'd defeat the purpose of your setup. But at this stage wouldn't you be best off being at 31khz (assuming you've a trisync monitor in your nac) and getting 640x480 out of that for vertical games?

[cools]

One big positive about a GroovyMAME setup is a set it and leave it monitor tweak, I've not had to alter horizontal width or position, nor vertical position at all for anything. Games with crap video hardware (rayforce) or games with crap sound hardware (raiden DX) have those aspects fixed. Hiscore saving for a lot of titles that never had it.

[AeroCityMayor]

... Hiscore saving for a lot of titles that never had it.

Just curious, save states or hiscore.dat?

TIA

Cheers,

Ralph.

[cools]

hiscore.dat. Auto save states are excellent but don't feel right.

[cRacKh0rN]

hiscore.dat. Auto save states are excellent but don't feel right.

I am loving that Groovy is using hiscore.dat. Loving Groovy. Period

[trev1976]

Since ive installed groovymame nothing else has been in my cab.. its so good

[tinchen3112]

Anyone know where to get the Crossbox Version 2.0 or 3.0?
I have already installed the 1.0 vertical Version on my nnc and i´m very impressed about this great frontend in combination with groovymame / Crtdriver
I already tried to contact the author on neo arcadia but didnt got an answer.

[CraftyMech]

Like others have said, I like to use MAME for evaluating games before I commit to buying a pcb. It is also very handy for confirming how games should look & sound, when I am working on a pcb repair.

I agree with the idea that less choices will make you more satisfied with the games you are playing, while having thousands of choices always leaves me feeling like I don't know what to play. I'd rather have 30 pcbs, then 3000 roms.

[Ex_Mosquito]

Imo people that can't stick to a single game when they have 3000+ roms would probably have the same problems dedicating themselves to a single game if they had 30pcbs, from my observations anyway.

I have a complete Mame set and I used to play a single game for a month and nothing else just because I wanted to get good at it. If you REALLY like a game and want to get results then it shouldn't matter that you have other games to play, no matter how many you have.

[pubjoe]

Did you pass a kid-in-a-candy-store phase or did you never go through one?

[Ex_Mosquito]

A little I guess for the first day or so, but the fact that I had a complete Mame set didn't dilute the enjoyment of the games I decided to play. It didn't cheapen the experience in any way.

[wigsplitta]

I must've never shaken off that 'kid-in-a-candy-store' phase!
After a certain person brought home a Doctor V64...the N64 games list went from 15-20ish to all and everything! I went from playing games thoroughly, to playing games for 5 mins and then getting bored and moving on the the 'new', 'best' or 'greatest' without giving most of them a chance.
20 years later, I did EXACTLY the same thing when I got a mametopia board!

My own mame experiences before and after have been pretty rubbish, due to multiple failings of HW on all setups! What I did persevere with on those setups, was to load a minimal amount (4 - 5 at most) and play them properly, rather than adding 50+ million that i'd never get round to playing.

Does all the above relate to the actual OP? Not really! But, I do think that it really is a cool way, if setup correctly, to evaluate how much you'd enjoy a game, before buying it...if you're lucky enough to actually find it in this day and age.

Can I back that up? Sort of...
Bare Knuckle 3, heard about it for years, never played it (bit expensive) so mame'd it, enjoyed it...bought an original.
Vendetta...fond memories, mame'd it, still loved it...bought an original...love it even more!