Can't get zinc, model 2, or Daphne to work.

[loganm187]

So I got all my mame games, artwork, and everything running in gameEX than i find out that that almost every 3D game runs like crap and so find out about zinc and model 2. I download both of them and then go through the advance gameEX setup which asks you where the exe. is and such for both emulators, but nothing helps the performance whatsoever and it's obviously not working as I don't even have a model 2 or Zinc category listed. I need a tutorial or something as I can't find anything online. As for Daphne if I go through game ex and say "yes" I want to set it up, when i start gameEX it just comes up with an error screen about Daphne and i have to tell gamex "no" I do not wanna configure Daphne. I read online that newer versions of MAME don't need zinc to run the playstation based games and I have the newest version (.147) but it's 32 bit. My system specs are pretty good as well(for a mame box). ANY help would be greatly appreciated!

system specs for mame box

AMD Athlon xp 2500 1.83 GHZ

2 gigs of DDR2 RAM

Nvidia 6800 geforce card

[nullPointer]

Hi logan, and welcome to the forums!

Looking at your system specs I would suggest using zinc for emulating ZN1, ZN2, and System 11 (Playstation) based hardware. Your system specs are alright, but MAME requires a bit more horsepower to run these games at acceptable levels. This is a blessing and a curse, as zinc is notorious for being difficult to configure and run properly (not impossible mind you, but it's something to know going in).

So one of the big first questions we tend to ask around here is. Do you have everything running outside of GameEx? Being that GameEx is a frontend it really helps to insure that your emulators are running properly outside of GameEx before you attempt to setup those emulators to run within GameEx. So that will be the first question I have for you. I'm not quite sure whether you're asking for assistance in setting up zinc and Daphne outside of GameEx or whether you're asking for assistance to set up zinc and Daphne within GameEx.

If everything appears to be running fine outside of GameEx, the next thing I would request is that you post a copy of your GameEx config and you log (after having attempted to run the problematic emulator(s)). This will be the biggest asset you can provide in terms of helping us to troubleshoot. Here is a great thread providing some details on how to do that.

Thanks logan!

[loganm187]

Thanks! I have mame running fine but, I can't get either model 2 or Zinc to run just by themselves (haven't tried Daphne) When i launch the Zinc exe. it just flashes and that's it. Nothing runs and on both of the emulators I don't see any directory where I can point to where the roms and such are? When i launch model2 I get a screen where i can load roms and it lists the model2 games but there is no directory to show it where to load games from. I'm a total noob when it comes to emulation, but these seem very un-user friendly unlike mame and GameEX is awesome!.

[nullPointer]

You are absolutely correct in saying that these emulators aren't particularly user friendly (and especially not noob friendly). They even cause some veterans to cringe at the mere mention! Where there's a will there's a way though! So let's get started. We might as well start with zinc as it's the first emulator mentioned in the thread title. Please report to this tutorial. It's probably the best zinc tutorial out there as far as I know, and honestly any information I posted here would probably be paraphrasing that. No need to reinvent the wheel. Obviously you can disregard any of the Maximus Arcade information since you've made the fantastic choice of running GameEx.

Let us know how you get along, and we can move on to setting zinc up in GameEx. Good Luck!

Edit:

I almost forgot to mention (and the tutorial doesn't mention it either), Zinc doesn't like to live in a directory with spaces in it (i.e. "c:\Heres My Directory\Zinc"). At least it didn't the last time I used it, which admittedly was quite a while back. Don't make that mistake! (actually the this is a pretty decent rule of thumb to follow for emulators in general). Make sure your zinc directory doesn't contain spaces.

[loganm187]

Thanks for all the info. I moved my mame files over to my main PC and it can play all the 3d(model 2 and ps based games) games fine with just MAME.... Which makes me just wanna build a new cheap pc unit just for mame instead of using this old PC and fighting with the other emulators to get games working. The machine I have now is def overkill for mame. What do you think good specs would be for a PC to build to run all mame games fine?

I have 6 gigs of DDR3 lying around and and an ATI 4650 graphics card as well. That paired with a good cpu and I should be good to go? Yes? what motherboard/CPU would you recommend as I know that's what MAME hogs the most. Thanks!

[u-man]

hello and welcome to the forums ....

what kind of bus is your ATI card? AGP or PCI-E? depending on the bus you will need either a AGP or PCI-E supporting mainboard.

going for worst case and your ATI card is AGP, then you would need to decide, if you stay with AGP you can not use your 6GB DDR3 Ram. if you want to use your Ram then you can not use your ATI card. if this is the case, i would go with the Ram and the newer PCI-E and sell your ATI card.

if your ATI-card is PCI-E, i would recommend go with a cheap and good clockable Intel Core2Duo. i dont want to start a religious war here, but Intel is the better choice IMO. buy a mini-ATX Intel mainboard which is compatible with CPU and your RAM and you are good to go. all in all, this is about 100-150 bucks.

[fRequEnCy]

If using integrated support then GameEx uses MAME's roms for these emulators. So there is no need to have a section where the roms are located.

Also if these emulators are not working then there are ways of troubleshooting.

These roms will be available in the MAME section (Playstation and Sega I think. Don't quote me since I'm not at machine) once setup.

[loganm187]

Yea the ati card I have lying around is pci as it was in my current system that use to have the 6 gigs of DDR3 and this card. I upgraded the gpu and ram awhile back. Thanks guys!