AGP graphics card for MAME?

[Paul Williams]

Hi Everyone,

Last night I decided to convert my MAME cabinet from Windows XP
to pure DOS and run "dmame" with arcadeOS frontend. Hopefully
will be setting up arcadeOS tonight; and will try the 686 optimised Mame
also. Main reason to switch to DOS is that I want to boot everything
from compact flash card eventually, making the system quicker and
quieter.

The PC in the cabinet is a Pentium 3 overclocked to 933MHz, 256MB RAM,
8GB harddisk.

The monitor is a Hantarex Polo 19inch VGA Gaming Monitor.

I have tried several video cards:

1. Hercules Geforce 2 GTS Pro AGP: Works fine with Windows XP. In DOS it
works fine when PC posts, but when DOS starts the monitor seems to lose
sync.

2. Millennium 2 (I think), AGP: Same problem as Hercules

3. Virge S3 PCI: Works fine in DOS and Mame, but doesn't support lower
resolutions and so sometimes the display is shifted, too small etc.

I have read that the best card to get is one of the ATI Rage series.
There are a few Rage Pro AGPs going cheaply on EBay at the moment. But
the problem is that they are AGP cards again. I have also heard that
with the ATI card you can get a DOS TSR driver.

What is the best card to use?
Should I be able to get an AGP card working in pure DOS?

Thanks for reading!

Best regards,
Paul

[Caged animal masterbator]

"Paul Williams" <pa...@informatics.bangor.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:co4ls0$ht2$1...@fantastix.bangor.ac.uk...

Can i suggest using advancemame, worked with both voodoo and NV AGP cards
and gives better resolutions.

[Sune Salminen]

Paul Williams wrote:

> What is the best card to use?

That depends on the display type, if it's an arcade monitor ideally
you'd want to run the games in native arcade resolutions without
stretching, scanlines or effects, if it's a regular PC monitor other
settings will look better.

> Should I be able to get an AGP card working in pure DOS?

Shouldn't be a problem as long as AGP is set to primary in the BIOS.

-Sune

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[Jim]

Paul Williams <pa...@informatics.bangor.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
<snip>

Would this be of interest?

<http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html>

Jim
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[Darren Wilkinson]

"Paul Williams" <pa...@informatics.bangor.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:co4ls0$ht2$1...@fantastix.bangor.ac.uk...

perhaps for the Virge S3 you should try using Scitech's Display Doctor. It
should add support for the other resolutions. It is now available for free
from their own website.

http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/ent/free_titles.html

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[Paul Williams]

Hi,

Thanks everyone for the information.

I had trouble getting advancemame working with ArcadeOS. ArcadeOS
wouldn't pick up the ROM list and dropped out with a "Bad Command
or filename" error just before the list processing began. I have checked
and triple checked the config, re-installed etc.

So I have gone back to dmame (DOS mame) with arcadeOS. My GeForce 2 GTS
AGP card works fine in arcadeOS and dmame games! Still out of sync
in DOS, but I automatically run arcadeOS when I boot anyway, so not
a problem.

I plan to experiment with different cards anyway and I have downloaded
the SciTech software as suggested. Will play with that over the weekened.

Jim: I did consider arcadeVGA card when I started the project. But then
realised that Hanarex do the POLO/2 SVGA gaming monitor so I bought
one of those. For my next project I hope to have learnt a lot from this
one and will have a clearer picture of the best things to use.

I plan on rotating my monitor to play the vertical classics displayed
larger. This makes sense too because if I want to experiment with
booting from a compact flash card then I would only want to put the
smaller ROMS on the card.

My next project will hopefully be a "sister" machine with a horizontal
screen, probably with a faster processor.

Is there a web site with info that compares graphics cards and the
various modes that they offer? Does the SciTech software produce a
text report showing all modes of the particular card? (I guess I'll find
out soon enough :-) )

Best regards,
Paul

[keith corcoran]

i actually just saw this today regarding graphics cards and mame.
looks like any ati card is the way to go for mame as that's what it was
developed on.

http://www.mameworld.net/pc2jamma/mamemon3.html

not sure if that will help but there ya go.

k.

"Paul Williams" <pa...@informatics.bangor.ac.uk> wrote in message

news:co7nra$2om$1...@fantastix.bangor.ac.uk...

[Paul Williams]

Hi k,

OK thanks for the info. No harm in trying one.

Best regards,
Paul

[m1t0s1s]

I think everyone agrees that Matrox cards are simply the best
all-around 2d video cards, for their sharpness and visual quality,
thats what the advancemame website says.

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