VOGONS


First post, by rwirch@yahoo.com

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Hi,

I made a MAME box around 2001 (I actually submitted a code change that made MAME 40% faster back in the day). After a while the Hard disk died, I got a new HD and now it died too. I copied the data to a SATA solid state drive and got a SATA->IDE converter. However, I doesn't seem to boot (don't know why). It's an old beast with ISA slots and an ISA Soundblaster card.

I have a newer computer (Athlon 4 core) sitting around which supports SATA and plugged drive in and it boots to DOS (good), but I can't get MAME to understand the Realtek ALC892 audio. The newer computer has PCI slots. Do I need to buy a soundcard for MAME to work? Can I get it to work in DOS with the onboard realtek audio?

Sorry for the many questions, but I have another. The reason that I am interested in DOS, is back in the day DOS worked better than Windows because it plays smooth as butter. Under Windows the games played perfectly fine except occasionally Windows decides to contemplate its navel and the game freezes for maybe 15 milliseconds or so and that makes it hard if you were trying to time a jump in a game right when it stutters. Is this still true? Am I better off with DOS for MAME than Windows?

Thanks,
Rick

Reply 3 of 7, by jtchip

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The Realtek ALC892 is a HD Audio codec, SBEMU/VSBHDA need to support the HD Audio controller. Fortunately by that time most chipsets were compatible with Intel's implementation (there are a few exceptions), unlike in the AC'97 days. "Athlon 4 core" is sufficiently vague that it could refer to a K10 Athlon II X4 CPU, construction-core Athlon X4 APU-with-disabled-GPU, or a Jaguar Athlon 5x50/5370 APU. All should have a HDA controller supported by SBEMU/VSBHDA.

Reply 4 of 7, by darry

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rwirch@yahoo.com wrote on 2024-09-22, 16:07:
Hi, […]
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Hi,

I made a MAME box around 2001 (I actually submitted a code change that made MAME 40% faster back in the day). After a while the Hard disk died, I got a new HD and now it died too. I copied the data to a SATA solid state drive and got a SATA->IDE converter. However, I doesn't seem to boot (don't know why). It's an old beast with ISA slots and an ISA Soundblaster card.

I have a newer computer (Athlon 4 core) sitting around which supports SATA and plugged drive in and it boots to DOS (good), but I can't get MAME to understand the Realtek ALC892 audio. The newer computer has PCI slots. Do I need to buy a soundcard for MAME to work? Can I get it to work in DOS with the onboard realtek audio?

Sorry for the many questions, but I have another. The reason that I am interested in DOS, is back in the day DOS worked better than Windows because it plays smooth as butter. Under Windows the games played perfectly fine except occasionally Windows decides to contemplate its navel and the game freezes for maybe 15 milliseconds or so and that makes it hard if you were trying to time a jump in a game right when it stutters. Is this still true? Am I better off with DOS for MAME than Windows?

Thanks,
Rick

Is MAME for DOS still maintained ? If not, when was it last updated ? If it hasn't been maintened in years (over a decade ?), it is extremely likely that the current Windows and Linux releases/builds are now much better than the latest DOS build/release. Of course, this would apply to running on modern-ish hardware and Windows releases. On more retro hardware, an old DOS build will probably have better performance and latency.

Reply 5 of 7, by leileilol

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The last DOS MAME was 0.50 in April 2001. DOS MAME never got along with PCI sound cards well and runs slower with them

(also for personal safety's sake, don't bring up the subject of old versions to the current public-facing MAME team)

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 6 of 7, by kokerich

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Few decades passed and I still have a DOS/WIndows98SE machine with DOS MAME on it. It's a Chaintech 7AJA2 AMD socket 462 board with Athlon 2400+, the board has one ISA slot suitable for sound cards and CMI8738 onboard. If I remember correctly I found that it works best when running on Windows 98SE through MS-DOS prompt even with onboard sound. In pure DOS there is utility setaudio.com for onboard C-Media. DOS versions of MAME that I tried are 0.63 from january 2003 and 0.106 from maj 2006, also I think I used 0.37 before. Also I tried small 8GB SSD with SATA->PATA adapter, it works and boots with no problems. Hope this helps.

Reply 7 of 7, by amadeus777999

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kokerich wrote on 2025-01-16, 18:02:

Few decades passed and I still have a DOS/WIndows98SE machine with DOS MAME on it. It's a Chaintech 7AJA2 AMD socket 462 board with Athlon 2400+, the board has one ISA slot suitable for sound cards and CMI8738 onboard. If I remember correctly I found that it works best when running on Windows 98SE through MS-DOS prompt even with onboard sound. In pure DOS there is utility setaudio.com for onboard C-Media. DOS versions of MAME that I tried are 0.63 from january 2003 and 0.106 from maj 2006, also I think I used 0.37 before. Also I tried small 8GB SSD with SATA->PATA adapter, it works and boots with no problems. Hope this helps.

Last time I remember using Dos Mame was on a friend's brand new P4.