New Computer - MAME issues

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 7:44 pm

My old computer finally crapped out Friday night.

Oh well..it was time for a new one anyway.

I'm having some problems with MAME on the new machine that I didn't have on the old one. The previous one was a 400Mhz P2 running Windows 98, the new one is a 2.53 Ghz P4 with XP.

It's sort of satisfying being able to play Joust 2 with sound on, and watching other games that the older machine had to frameskip like crazy running at frameskip0 100% 60/60 without flinching.

But.....the old machine played every game I ever tried rightside-up with all the rotate options in the ini file disabled. The new machine on the same settings puts a lot of them sideways. I can get most of them straight by fiddling with the rotate options (but Time Pilot comes out sideways no matter what) but it's odd that I didn't have to do this on the other computer.

Also, about half of the games I tried would not run at all, the screen just went black. A little digging on Google gave me the suggestion of disabling "hwstretch". This worked like magic on those games that blackscreened before, but then the games that had worked before now blackscreened! Near as I can tell, about half the games only work with it enabled and the other half only work with it disabled. I haven't found any that blackscreen on both settings. Of course I can make an exhaustive list of which games need which setting, but is there a better way?

Has anyone else here run into any of these issues? Is this something that video settings on the new machine could affect? Is the problem with Windows XP or perhaps the different video card (its an Intel 82845g)?

The problem is the same on mame71, mame69, and alphamame70 (the latter two were what I was using primarily on the previous machine). Using Windows command-line versions. The new machine has DirectX 8.1, the other had an older version, not sure what number, in case that might have anything to do with it.

Any ideas would be welcome.

John

BBH · Post by **BBH** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 8:08 pm

Wow, this is sounding awfully familiar... I had a P2-450 on Windows 98 and just upgraded to a P4-2.4 Ghz running Windows XP too. :) (ok, so it's not exact, but close...) And strangely enough, I ran into that same problem at first too, and didn't know what was going on. Here's what I did:

Go to Control Panel, then Display. Go to Settings and then Click on Advanced. I had something here called "Intel Extreme Graphics", maybe it's on your computer too... but anyway, look for a box that has a "Graphics Properties" button. Click on that and you'll find an option for Rotation in there. "Enable Rotation" is turned on so just disable it. MAME should display everything correctly now. :)

well, as for the games that give you a black screen, I can't say I've had that problem myself so I don't know.

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 2:04 am

I had a P2-450 on Windows 98 and just upgraded to a P4-2.4 Ghz running Windows XP too. (ok, so it's not exact, but close...)

Damn close!

Go to Control Panel, then Display. Go to Settings and then Click on Advanced. I had something here called "Intel Extreme Graphics", maybe it's on your computer too... but anyway, look for a box that has a "Graphics Properties" button. Click on that and you'll find an option for Rotation in there. "Enable Rotation" is turned on so just disable it. MAME should display everything correctly now.

I would've sworn that tab wasn't there when I had looked previously, but sure enough, that's it. Rotation issue resolved. Thanks much!

What are your screen res, color depth, and refresh rate, just in case that has any effect on the hwstretch issue?

John

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 3:33 am

And now all games seem to work with hwstretch disabled. I had always had it enabled on my previous system, but as long as the same setting works for all...who cares.