hansolo77

I can agree to this. I'm also in a dual boot setup right now on my main PC. I got Vista because I wanted to use the new Media Center on my MCE/GameEx box. It's a helluva lot better in some way, and needs a helluva lot of work in others. I'm reinstalling it over again now. I've reinstalled Vista now 3 times on this box, and still can't get it to work right. When I first built my MCE box last January (has it been that long?!) I had this same problem. It just seems to randomly crash whenever it feels like it. I don't get it. I'm pretty sure my solution before was installing the VIA-AGP drivers before installing the actual video card drivers. Problem now is that Vista takes over driver installations, and you don't have and option to "CANCEL" their driver to install your own. So there's no way to get a "clean" install. Plus to make matter's worse, VIA doesn't have VISTA capable drivers for my MB yet, and the manufacturer considers this board an obsolete and "no-longer updated" antique, even though it's only 1 year old! So I'm probably gonna be stuck going back to XP. As for my main computer (using now to type this) I finally fixed the mouse problem with the help of a kind buddy. I haven't gone back over to it to install more things yet since I've been busy racking my brain on the MCE box. I agree with everybody though. It does seem like VISTA has a lot of "expected" bells and whistles that just don't seem to be all that great. A big feature that I'm interested in using is it's hefty security features. Most "normal" people aren't to worried about ID theft and such, at least not as much as they should be. My next door neighbor had their ID stolen via a web site, and they were evicted from their home, car was repo'd and their bank wouldn't deposit their pay check. That's some real serious shit, and you better be protecting your self as best you can. I try to keep everything personal off the computer, but when I need to do stuff with it, I have a seperate login account to the OS that I use ONLY for that, to keep prying eyes away from seeing it when I'm not using it. Anyway, the price is worth the package if it holds up. Like most things that are new, there are going to be problems. Remember when XP first came out? People were wanting to sue Microsoft for years because their systems crashed. Now it's the most stable version of Windows ever released! We just gotta wait out the storm.

Awesome! I congratulate the team on a splendid job, and look forward to the next 10 years!

The man is a God I swear! I never even thought of that. I tried moving the plug do a different jack, and wouldn't you know it works?! That's so retarded. Anyway, I got it to work now. Thanks for the idea! Now all I gotta do is figure out why my Vista Media Center keeps crashing. It used to do it all the time with XP Media Center too until I fixed it, but I don't remember what I did to make it work! UGH! There goes my weekend...

Yeah my problem is that it doesn't see it. Its crazy too, because my BIOS sees it. When I turn the computer on, my little cordless charger light comes on showing green, and flickers when I move the mouse around. Then when Windows is loading up on the "logo" screen, it goes out and doesn't flicker anymore. Next thing I know, I'm at the login screen with no mouse. When I go into the Device Manager, it doesn't even have a "Mouse" section. The only yellow question mark is from my old (never used anymore I guess) 56k modem. I just don't understand why it doesn't even want to recognize it as a generic mouse, which would be fine until I had some money, even though the BIOS does. Go figure! I'd still like some drivers, even if they're beta, if anybody can find them.

I've been googling everything I can think of, and I just can't what I'm looking for. I need a Vista x32 compatible driver for the Medion MD-9470 Wireless Optical Mouse. I installed Vista, and wouldn't you know.. everything works perfectly EXCEPT the friggin mouse! It just doesn't even recognize that I plugged it in (it's USB). So I've given up for the night. I was hoping, MAYBE, somebody here would be willing to help a guy out. I know it's off topic, but this is just about the best "tech" forum I've talked in. You guys are great, and I'm sure you can help me out. I gotta run to bed, hopefully the mods won't erase this message so I can at least get people to say they're stuck too. Thanks a bunch!

Awesome Tom! Can't wait to try it out!

This is a stupid reply from me, but if it's really annoying you, just unplug the cables from the drive in the case. If you frequently need to use it (why?) for some reason, you could just disable the drive in the CMOS bios and then just enable it when you need to use it. If the drive's not "there", Windows (and any programs) shouldn't try to access it..

Darn it! I got 2 wrong.. 80% too!

I put that on there so if in the future somebody DOES decide to make them, it would be infringing on my idea. I'm just cheap and trying to make a buck ok? Yeah, the EMS v3.2 drivers sucked. First of all, they wouldn't install without causing my computer to crash. Then they took over all of my mouse controls and I couldn't do anything. So I found the SMOG drivers after searching in Google earlier today. Everything seems to look good. I'm having a hard time with the edges of the screen. When I have the gun controlling the mouse cursor, I notice a strange phenomenon. Everything lines up perfectly in the center, but as I move away, the mouse seems to go faster. So by the time I'm at the edge (IE; a corner) the mouse arrow was there long before I was. It makes it very difficult to control. I also notice a lot of jittering even though I tried to hold the gun a piece of wood for stability. I realize there's some tweaking involved that I haven't done yet. So overall, everything seems to be working nicely. I was actually able to play some Area51 today which I haven't done in probably 10+ years when it was out in the arcade. Man technology has progressed since then! My next test is to get it to work with my Sega Genesis Menacer games and then Duck Hunt on the NES.

YAY!!! MY GUN ARRIVED!!! It was a bitch to get the LED stands to stay in place. My TV is covered in invisible tape. I tried to use some double sided tape, but it wasn't sticky enough. Then I moved up to brown packaging tape. I rolled it into a tube and stuck it on the back of the stands. That tape was even worse! So I used tom invisible tape and just sorta "hung" them at the top and bottom of the screen. From that website posted over on PAGE 1 (http://wizardsworks.org/chod/gun/topgun.htm) it sounds like mounting horizontally on the top/bottom will let you get closer to the tv, which is important since it's a large screen in my little bedroom. So I plugged everything in and it popped up your typical "hey, there's a new device plugged in but I got no clue what it is" box. I just cancelled it's install and tested the "recoil." From everything I saw in videos, the recoil action seemed pretty cool, but in hands on, it's leaves a lot to be desired. It looks like your typical Beretta when firing, the top part of the gun slides back then forward. Sounds really neat, but the thing is made out of plastic. There's hardly any weight to the gun at all, and the recoil part seems to be lighter than an empty pop can. I imagine having it on all the time will eventually cause a catch to snap somewhere, and it will shoot off and stab me blind in the eyes. Nice idea-Needs Improvement. As for everything else, There is a LOT of cables. I wish everything was more modulated. The LED stands have a small female plug like the "IN" jack of an A/C adapter, while the gun has it's male counterpart plug. So the gun is wired, and the modular connection point is that plug. Also on the gun wire is a USB plug that goes into your computer, and apparently an XBOX plug. I don't own an XBOX so I can't say for sure that's what it is, but its the only other thing the gun says I can run on... Finally there is another female plug (like the LED stands) that looks like another A/C adapter receiver. It plugs into ANOTHER set of wires. This set has the male counterpart plug, another USB and another "XBOX" plug. Essentially, this 2nd set is for your recoil, so the gun can get the power from the USB or XBOX plug. So make sure you've got enough ports! Back to the modular thing though. I like the quick connect plug idea they got going, but I'd like to see plugs to add/remove the other connectors. I don't have/use an XBOX, so why keep it on there? Just quick disconnect it. I also feel the use of wires is going a bit far. I mean, we're in the 21st century. Using wires to connect the LED bars to the gun is so ancient. I mean, my parents have a VCR with a wired remote.. It's like this gun was made in the 70's! So basically, the way I see it, the gun works like this... Picture your tv set with a remote. Your remote has a little infrared emitter on it (looks like a little light bulb). That emitter (LED) sends the signal to the receiver on the TV, and your TV does the function you commanded. The gun is just that, only in reverse. The LED stands by your tv screen are the remotes, and your gun is the TV. From the gun's point of view, it's stationary. The LED bars are moving around, and the gun's receiver picks up where the LED's are. Then it sends this recorded data through the USB cable into your program. Pretty simple setup, and I'm surprised nobody thought of it sooner. If the company didn't close out (as I've read), they could have further increased the technology to be completely wireless. The LED's plug into the USB port along with a built in receiver. They transmit, the gun picks it up in it's little camera, and sends information wirelessly back to the LED bars' receiver, which goes back to the USB. You wouldn't have recoil right away, because it takes a lot of juice, but no more than your typical wireless rumble pad for you game console. Throw in some rechargeable batteries and a "gun holster charger" and you'd be set. Hell, if nobody further progresses this, who wants to help me build it?! In fact.. just in case: [This paragraph is © Copyright January 5, 2007 by Aaron Lloyd. All Rights Reserved. This copyright is legal and in place for the life +50 years of the author as according to Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution. This copyright is legal and adheres to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. All violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.] So anyway.. I can't wait to try it out! I'm going to install the drivers that came with the gun first. I don't know where to find these "smog" drivers, and if it doesn't work I know how to UNINSTALL. Plus, I'm currently running a complete ghost image backup of my "C" drive incase I have trouble uninstalling. Here's to having a good, fun filled evening! - Han

Yeah you're right. Make sure MAME itself can play the game with the bezel before trying to get it loaded up in GameEx. Basically, you just need to make sure it's in the right folder, and enabled in the GUI (or if you're using the command prompt version of MAME, make sure you have it set to run with the bezel with the appropriate command line flag). The way mine is setup, the bezel artwork remains ZIPPED, and goes into your MAME/Artwork folder. The inside of the zip may be different depending on the version of MAME you are using. The latest versions (anything above 110) uses a new format where the files are xxxxx.lay and xxxxx.png. I believe the older version had 3 files in it. Your best bet though is to just download a torrent file or complete collection of the artwork and copy the files 'AS IS' to the MAME folder. Hope that help you out some. Let us know if you need any more help, and welcome to the forum!

Never heard of it...

I think it was me that first saw the picture and reported it. It was something like somebody was watching a porno through their GameEx media player. In theory, the extender should only be used when it's in a game running mode rather than just "anytime GameEx runs". I also think the name of the function should be changed to something else, like "GameEx Previewer" rather than Extender. Extender is too closely resembling an X-Box extender, in which case people are led to believe they can play games through GameEx on their X-Box via the "extender" which doesn't exist.

I just used the link in this thread and ordered it online from Play-Asia... http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-1i-49-...un-70-16s7.html

Utils you might be looking for would be stuff like AutoIT scripts. They are helpful when running pinball games to bypass warnings and auto-select the right roms and stuff. If you don't have it, you must use your mouse and click the right stuff. Cab users typically don't have mice on their control panel all the time. Some might have trackballs, but a script would just be better all around. Another example would be batch programs used to mount a cd image to a virtual drive so the emulator would be able to run it. I use this feature to execute a set of commands to change the button assignment profile for my controller. I've got a PC controller that looks like a playstation controller. If I wanna play a Sega Genesis game, I program the buttons in a certain way and save the profile. Then I have GameEx load that profile before launching the game. When I exit the game, I have it unloading the profile back to it's original settings. Then If I load up an Atari game, Nintendo game, or something else, they all have their own settings, which are enabled and disabled through this option. There are other things you can do, like load up LEDWIZ to play stuff on a LED board, connect to the internet (with dialup....) before running an online game like Counter-Strike... there's TONS.

Yeah, wireless kb's are nice but they always seem to cause more problems than they're worth. I've got a wireless kb/mouse combo that I use for my Media Center. When I first started setting up GameEx I was having a problem with it. It would be detecting keypresses when I wasn't even using it. Interesting thing for me, was that the keypress was the DOWN arrow key! I couldn't use the menu system of GameEx because it wouldn't stop moving before I could select the game. Hehe. I took the kb back because it was cheap $20 generic "wannabe". I ended up buying a super expensive $120 set and haven't had a problem since. So it all kinda depends on the quality of the device I guess. The 1st one I bought was a line of sight infrared that only worked when you had the thing pointing right at the receiver. What sucked about it was if you had a key pressed then moved the kb out of linesight, the receiver never gets the "release" command from the kb and assumes it's "still on". This new one I've had since is RF (radio frequency) and works great. If you decide to go back to wireless, for whatever reason, be a little investigative on the functionality and receiver end. RF is way better than infrared in this case. Remote controls are probably the same (better in rf than ir).

I just bought my LCD Top Gun (FINALLY!!!!!) yesterday. It's a Christmas gift for me from my brother. Of course, I had to buy it, he'll pay me back. Hope it's as great as everybody says it is!

Merry Christmas to all!!!

Actually, using the torrent I have downloaded, I extracted all the "complete Games" to their own folders. The DOS games I can't get to work, but the Windowz versions work great. I copied the shortcuts to a /mugen/shortcuts folder and told GameEx to look for the *.lnk files. Properly named of course.. Then when I get my own Mugen running, I'll have it at the top of the list by making the shortcut something like ".M.U.G.E.N." so the first period would put it at the top. I really like watching the street fighter complete game. Especially Dragonclaw. That guy is fucking sweet! (pardon me francais!) Yeah, everybody's all getting into building arcade cabs and stuff. Those of us here who pretty much have the setup process and everything going, we got the time to spend on stuff like this. Mugen is totally awesome, I just wish I knew about it sooner!

Simple as it sounds, I would reinstall the .NET if it happens all the time. How much investigating have you done with the issue? Does it do it like every 5 games, or every 5 minutes? Or does it appear random? Does it happen when you're inside GameEx, playing a game, or only during the Attract Mode? It might be something simple like a newly installed emulator that's flaky and whenever GameEx tries to access it, everything crashes. Try and narrow it down before just reinstalling .NET.

I thought GameEx was now to the point where it detects if there is a new change in it's settings and forces an update. For example.... It knew that I was using Mame110 and I just put Mame111 on. So shouldn't it recognize the new version and force an update to find the newly available roms? I could be wrong though, just checking cause if I'm right.. it didn't do it.

Haven't gotten the program, but I got the roms already!

I think I just need a basic walkthrough, or simple setup wizard to get things going. I know it's just like everything I start that's new; once you DO it, and the more you do, the easier it gets and then you wonder why it was so hard in the first place. That's how new jobs are, just like setting up GameEx for the first time. You have no clue where to begin, but once you start to figure it out, you can do it in your sleep.

Yeah I think that would be awesome. Now that I've got a job, and Christmas is coming soon, I should be able to get myself a nice big empty hard drive for it. I'm also planning on getting a boat load of more songs for Stepmania, and getting all my Sega CD games loaded onto the drive. Shouldn't be to much work once I get the drive. All in all though, you're right on the money. I love fighting games, and when i saw those torrents I just had to investigate. Some of those videos people made on YouTube are sick! I just gotta have it.

Make sure you have a complete set, and that you have the "have.txt" file that matches your roms. Thats about all I can suggest. Personally, I just download sets from somewhere that's already got them merged and don't mess with it all too much.