Deadly

Ok - Well ....... I guess trying to find some sort of commonality between yourself and a few other users might be the key. Changing themes make any difference? I use Nextgen What service pack are you using? I use SRV 2 Is your OS completely patched? I am current Chipset of video card and driver being used " As in ATI card using ATI Catalyst or Nvidia card using Forceware driver? I use the latest forceware Are you utilizing an OEM software load or retail? I use retail Honestly - I've had my share of GameEx issues and maybe you need to pull your drive-slap in another one and give it a fresh load of XP and pacth it with the necessary.NET stuff. Load 7.09 fresh and use a basic MAME config and see if it works. There has got to be some dumb little thing we are all over looking.

If you are splicing/lengthening the power wires you don't need to worry about pos or neg. By pressing the power button you are creating an open or closed circuit. If you are building an arcade, then just buy a smart strip. If you want one buton to power on everything this is it. http://catalog.bitsltd.us/ I have one of these which allows one button "Which is wired directly to my PC as the source power on" to fire up my Marquee, TV, Sub woofer, USB hub and my PC. My whole fricken arcade! WARNING!!!! - if you are using a TV and don't want to use the TV remote as the main power on - use tooth picks and jam the TV power button in the on position and use your PC as the main source "if you buy one you'll understand what I'm talkiing about." For those using a regular PC monitor or actual arcade monitor then this section doesn't affect you. Simply a MUST for any cabinet owner.

Just out of curiousity, has anyone by chance made sure that: A.) Windows screen saver is set to none and B.) Power Management features are disabled? I was having the attract mode issue happening for awhile and I'm fairly certain these were two items I disabled and now my attract mode will run as lng as I want it to.

http://forum.alcohol-soft.com/index.php?showtopic=15002

Thanks for your input. I actually deleted the pagefile Rebooted which should and did delete c:\pagefile.sys "was around 800 meg" Defragged the drive and then recreated the pagefile and set it for system managed and rebooted. It actually created a page file that was twice the original size. The drive wasn't at all fragmented but clearly there was someting jacked with the page file. There is still an ever so slight and random stutter/glitch but it's not even close to how bad it was before. Thank you for the direction!

That's a great idea. Also, depending on what IPAC you have...... are you using the PS2 or USB interface? If you are using a converter remove it - in othe rwords PS2 to USB or USB to PS2. As a last resort make sure your motherboard bios is current.

I had a party last night and one of the "normal attendees" hopped on and decided to play her favorite game which is Ms. Pacman with Speed Hack. She was complaining the joystick was screwing up. After investigating - there is a slight random video stutter is about the best I can explain it. I also saw the stutter with Donkey Kong and Golden Tee to name a few. What changed? Only one thing. I had freshly installed 7.09 utilizing my old config file. No Mame updates, No Windows Updates, no config changes So after recovering from last night, I have done some experimenting. changed from Nexgen theme to GameEx default theme I have tested Mame32 OUTSIDE of GameEx and the stutter/glitch doesn't happen. I have upgraded from .111 to .111u as a last resort and no change. I am certain the issues started with using 7.09. I cannot tell you what previous version of GameEx I was using " pretty sure not more than two revs behind" but for sure the 7.09 has introduced some odd video stutter. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks! Deadly

I'm curious if this happens with extreme button mashing in Mame as well...your original post makes it sound like it only happens in GameEx. You can also shut off system restore - defrag your drive too. You might have an issue with your IPAC as well. If you can load up a fresh drive and it still happens then by all means contact Andy at Ultimarc and ask him. You just might have a flakey chip on your hands.

IPAC's by default use escape function of holding player1 and player2 at the same time.

"EDIT: It appears I have a botched install. Seems weird quirky things happen after a few upgrades LOL!" I will be playing a game and if I use reload it acts just like using esc and bails out of the game. Any help MAJORLY appreciated LOL! Deadly

What???? - It get's rid of my sack rash. Anyway moving on. Was this real or bogus. I don't know. Let me give you the story by numbers 1.) Opening a new shop in 2 weeks - add several phone calls with no answer 2.) He met the land lord and hated the person - decided not to take the shop 3.) Found another place to rent - add several phone calls with no answer 4.) Decided to move into a place already being rented by his buddy - he answered his phone 5.) Said he'd call me when he was setup - still hasn't called me This person is obviously an idiot SO I have washed my hands of this flake. So beings as the nice AMD owners have posted their specs and FPS for Carnevil and show NO difference to my Intel stuff I will chalk this up to an idiot with an opinion that doesn't know his head from his ass. I'm just happy to have come across GameEx and have enjoyed hearing from other people in this community.

I use an IPAC4 and it stopped working last night. What I found is that in Device Manager the USB driver screwed up and had a yellow SPLAT on it. It will show up as a "splatted" USB HID device. Right click it, click uninstall, then hit refresh/redetect and it should install perfectly and your IPAC will one again function.

I use Mame32 and hopefully you use a GUI version as well. Open Mame - default game options - controllers tab - click enable mouse input

Windows sees the trackball as a mouse. The first question .... are you able to use the trackball to move your mouse pointer around on the Windows desktop?

Read this thread and on page 2 Headkaze tells about how to make GameEx use Daemon tools to mount Dreamcast images. It's the same theory. http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=3&st=0

I guess by the spec of your PC, I would have to assume GameEx is taxing the heck out of your system. Read the sticky on "If GameEx is running slow." BTW PC Specs are 1.8GHz 512M ram 40G HDD running JPac and ArcadeVGA2 in an old Neo cabinet under winXP.

Does gameex run as a stand alone version? "Not trying to launch out of media center" What does your log file tell you? As a side note, 64bit version of any windows OS gains you nothing for performance when it comes to Mame "Aaron Giles" Mame doesn't take advantage of the 64bit architecture "yet" Needless to say I've had this conversation with aaron giles. Since you have the RC1 beta of X64 then you either have an MSDN account or have an avenue for the x32 as well. Check out this thread-the person lists the same concern you have with GX shwing up under Media Center http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=1846 I will play with Vista X32 ultimate and load GameEx. I will post results later.

I found what's causing it and I have NO clue why as nothing changed from the last rev. Edit the launcher .bat and what I did was remove everything BUT: gameex.exe - quick save it and then try your luck.

Here's my cabinet with specs, some pics are old and computer hardware has been replaced with the following: GAMEEX of course!!! Intel Pentium Extreme 3.2GHZ proc (2) Gig Corsair 667mhz RAM (1) Intel 955XBK motherboard (1) EVGA 7800GT PCIE 256 meg PCIE video card (2) Seagate 120 gig SATA drives with Mad Cat fans on them (1) 10" powered sub woofer (2) Harmon Kardon surround speakers mounted below marquee (1) USB powered hub "needed for the Act-Labs guns as there is a non admitted USB power timing issue. (47) buttons (4) 8 way joysticks (1) 4 way joystick (1) 3 inch trackball (1) Tornado spinner (1) Powermate USB volume knob - the friggin best idea by the way (2) Act Labs laser guns (1) 27" Samsung flatscreen TV (1) Bits LTD Smart Power Strip - everything powers on by one button (2) Original Lethal enforcers gun holsetrs not mounted yet! (4) Cup holders not mounted yet Games include "and still adding" All American Laser games such as Mad Dog McCree, Drug wars etc, the original Daphne Lasergames that alot have since been removed from the package now available, Current Mame collection 6228 games, Virtual Cop 1&2, Die Hard Trilogy 2, House of the Dead 1-3. I personally designed the control panel top "after slikstiks quad unit" had a guy CNC it for me and had it shipped with t-molding for $45.00. I made the bottom half of the CP myself. The cabinet is actually a 1984 Williams cabinet which I gutted and framed in the TV and everything else. Added new light fixture and removed all the old original crap. The back board has 2 fans mounted. The bottom fan is 4 wire plugged into the motherboard which allows me to adjust speed to cool the bottom half "cabinet is sepearted into two halfs" and the top fan is one constant speed to keep the TV hot air moving it's way out! Lastly, you learn so much by building your first cabinet. Good and bad things happen but you most certainly will want to build another. I am going to sell this cabinet and build yet another. I can't wait! [PICS!!!] - I won't bore you with every step of the build "ok well almost not all of it" just the important stuff Excuse some of the crappy blurry pics. I have $1400 into this and it is well worth every penny.

LOL! Yeah, the wiring took me about 4 hours. Needless to say my hands hurt for a few days afterwards.

Here's the CP I built. I'm posting this here as there has been alot of questions/interest on this lately. This is an IPAC4 running all of this garbage Since there is so many buttons on this, I used a Brother P-touch to make labels to label this so others can actually use this without me standing there being the driver Excuse the dust LOL! All HAPP equiptment except the Ultimarc IPAC4 and slikStik tornado spinner. I'll post the rest of the cabinet pics in the cabinet section today.

Slikstik quad setup turned me on. But I couldn't afford to shell out $800.00 all at once. So I decided to build my own. I actually designed a control panel top that was modeled like the SlikStik quad one. Cost me $45.00 shipped. Nice! Came with the T-molding as well. So long ass story short, it took me 6 hours to design the bottom half of the control panel including painting and so forth. 5 hours to install the hardware, strip wires and program it. I use an IPAC4 which is the friggin best IMHO. (4) Happ 8 way sticks, (1) Happ 4 way stick, (50 some) buttons, (1) SlikStik tornade spinner, (1) Happ 3" trackball. Amazing results - works just like a SlikStik quad for $300.00 less. ( sarcasm meant and applied) Do you bill yourself for time? Well, you aren't doing jack with your life anyway so my answer is no! $300 dollars saved is $300 dollars saved PERIOD! So since I was $300 richer - I order the Act-Labs guns. Hmmm, that still left me $100.00 to play with ..... what to do what to do??? Well, I bought some authentic Lethal Enforcers gun holsters for $20.00. That's right $20! Right place right time. $80.00 left ..... The friggin SATA hard drives are just friggin hot! Bought (2) MadCat Hard Drive coolers for $30.00 total and mounted them on the drives. Really helps by the way I recommend those. $30.oo left.....yeah I suppose I'd better buy a bunch of the American Lasergames off eBay. Sweet only $3.00 a game.....purchased (5) with shipping LEFT me $15.00. So because I was in such a good mood I took the wife and kid to McDonalds so I was broke again. Finally life was back to normal Moral of the story is if you have the time, you have the WANT to learn you too can end up with a bunch more shit for your arcade rather than paying someone else to build it for you. As a last note - I'll post pics of my arcade and the control panel wiring and so forth. "Wiring pick will be posted later" In the proper section tomorrow "9/15/06" so go check it out.

Do some looking around one the net. I've seen alot of people actually hook up cherry switches to the coin mech slot so when a coin is put in it ends up acting just like you hitting a button to "coin in."

By default all applications are set to use multiple cpu's but...the application must take advantage of it BINGO! Unless Mame itself is specifically written to take advantage of both cores "as you can see from my setup" it doesn't mean jack! I use Mame32 which hasn't had the Hyperthreading incorporated as of yet. Since Mamedev mentioned 10GHZ to run Gaunlet legends I was hoping the horsepower would help Carnevil thus.......the whole AMD verses Intel thing was started by me. I was hoping that there was some truth to this even though my experience knew better. I'm old school and have seen how games and such can be de-railed due to a crappy chipset and or driver. Being old school certainly doesn't mean I understand and know what the mamedev team are thinking or trying to implement but with that in mind.... maybe these guys use AMD and are trying to ramp up Mame to shine with AMD and Intel will come later??? I am NOT trying to say there is any anti Intel mamedevs, but rather you have to start some where and if improvement starts with AMD that's great. I look forward to the day when NFL Blitz and Carnevil run smooth. I would gladly go buy an AMD setup. What ever rocks - rocks. Time will tell I'm sure.

Two quick questions: Play donkey Kong .... does the screen go black and then come back to the Play game option in GameEx? Play a game like Mortal Combat or Killer Instinct ...... does that play ok? IF so read on. What you probably are seeing is one of two things. A.) You have Mame located some where else other than c:\mame32. In Mame you need to click default directories and change the path. B.) The games you are trying to play are vertical which by disabling the option for "use bezel for vertical games" will allow them to play.