Old PC, GAMEEX GPF

[gryhnd]

For a brief background, I've been using Gameex for over a year now (registered) on a stand up cab running XP and am VERY pleased with it!!

So, when I managed to resurrect my old Vaio PIII 500-Win 98SE-192mg laptop my thoughts turned to perhaps building a cocktail cab with it.

Mame32 works fine. I cloned the mame folder from the stand up machine over to the laptop and tweaked it a bit. It's an old version (0.81) but it runs all the ROMs I want it too and I've got no reason to upgrade to the latest and greatest just to chase around for ROM updates when everything is otherwise working fine.

I installed gameex, but unfortunately the newest version (9.86, I think) didn't play nice with my MAME version and would do strange things when a game was selected from the main list. When I copied the year old version of Gameex ( 9.29 ) from the standup cab over to the laptop I could now select games properly.

Gameex of course required its own tweaking in the area of graphics so it wasn't a slug on the laptop.

So everything seemed to be in order: mame worked great on its own, GX actually worked better than anticipated given the weak video hardware.

Then I hit a wall. When I choose to play a game, GX goes through the usual loading motions (HideOS is active, loads MAME and the requested game), but then it GPFs in "user.exe" consistently as the game is loading...almost as if during the transition/hand off period. Mame will continue and the game runs.

I'm no slouch when it comes to Windows, so when I say I've done everything I can think of, I truly mean it. The Win98 install is pretty clean. HD is sound, defragged, deleted/recreated paging file, etc. Registry has been sanitized, all updates and patches (including an obscure one for Net2.0) are in place. I even ran memtest overnight and all my RAM checked out. No virii I can find, etc. No other programs exhibit any problems of any sort.

I don't have the original system disk for this laptop so I can't reinstall W98 from scratch, and I'm loath to "upgrade" to Win2K because I am afraid of driver issues (I really need the special toggle-key-sequence to enable the external display to work, for example). Ditto for XP even if I had an extra license.

I know I can't expect much from you guys given the dated hardware, OS, and MAME32, but I thought I'd toss out a cry for help and see if anyone has any ideas.

I did manage to get a couple of dumps via Dr. Watson, but I don't know how to read them or what to look for, and I didn't want to arbitrarily post them here.

Oh, and the gameex logs don't show a thing.

My only grasp-for-straws thought is that perhaps I need to run a clean install of the 9.29 version, rather than a copy and paste of 9.29 on top of the 9.86 Is there somewhere to grab older builds?

Thanks gang.

[gryhnd]

  gryhnd said:

My only grasp-for-straws thought is that perhaps I need to run a clean install of the 9.29 version, rather than a copy and paste of 9.29 on top of the 9.86 Is there somewhere to grab older builds?

Correction. I didn't C&P on top. I renamed the "new" GX folder, then copied the 9.29 GameEx folder over. Nevertheless I wonder if running the installer again would help fix things up.

[Tom Speirs]

Im happy to fix the latest version if it can be done. What exactly is the issue with the latest build?

[gryhnd]

  TSpeirs said:

Im happy to fix the latest version if it can be done. What exactly is the issue with the latest build?

My observation is that gameex queries mame for the info of the game you have selected (this is the step before "play" where game history, snaps, etc are shown), yes? What happens with 9.86 against mame32 0.81 is that gameex displays the desktop, and the desktop icons 'flash' (blink) unceasingly.

Let me double check that and get back to you.

[Tom Speirs]

Well GameEx does not even touch MAME when displaying the game info page, so its probably not related to the version of MAME. What is new though is it does sometimes call hittotext.exe. if its sort of "braching off" from GameEx and showing the desktop it might be that I guess. does it happen on all games?

Just to confirm, the issue is not when launching a MAME game, but showing the info page?

[gryhnd]

  TSpeirs said:

Just to confirm, the issue is not when launching a MAME game, but showing the info page?

All the game lists are updating now, so it'll be a while before I can confirm. I never made it to the launch phase before so I can't answer you at the moment. I'll be back and update you when it is done (I'll try a "play random game" which skips the info page).

In the meantime, is there a place to download older builds of GX?

[Tom Speirs]

  gryhnd said:

In the meantime, is there a place to download older builds of GX?

Not that I provide as I am against it as it hurts development of the project.

[gryhnd]

  TSpeirs said:

Not that I provide as I am against it as it hurts development of the project.

Understood. Would that be a red herring anyway, in terms of my original post with the GPF in USER.EXE?

[Tom Speirs]

I really dont know. I rarely get a chance to test on win 98, but GameEx replaces the OS completely in a lot of situations so Id like it to work with win 98 at least for the moment, but only the core features. However MAME is a core feature, so ill take a look.

[gryhnd]

  TSpeirs said:

Just to confirm, the issue is not when launching a MAME game, but showing the info page?

Selected 1941 World to view: as described above, Gameex minimizes, desktop icons blink forever.

Selected Joust: after a lengthy pause and several screen blinks, the info page popped up OK.

So it's not across the board. Bummer for me though, when I tried to play Joust it GPF'd after loading MAME just like the older GX version. #@&^%&^!!!

"Play random". Three out of three went through and played (GPFs aside).

[gryhnd]

  TSpeirs said:

I really dont know. I rarely get a chance to test on win 98, but GameEx replaces the OS completely in a lot of situations so Id like it to work with win 98 at least for the moment, but only the core features. However MAME is a core feature, so ill take a look.

Do you want me to post (or send) the two Dr.Watsons I have?

[gryhnd]

I found a copy of Win2K Server laying around, and there turned out to be drivers for the laptop from the mfg for it.

I ended up nuking W98SE altogether.

No similar problems with W2K and GPFs in user.exe

AFAI am concerned this issue is closed...but whether or not there's a real problem with W98SE or it was just my install is unknown.

[bkenobi]

Glad you got it going! Have fun...

[gryhnd]

  bkenobi said:

Glad you got it going! Have fun...

Let the games begin Yesterday I came across a guy on Craigslist getting rid of a Dell P1230 for $25.

The P1230 is a 22", flat screen monitor with two inputs. Wow. It's a thing of beauty.

Here it is on end, attached to the seen-better-days Vaio.

I suspect it will be a few months before I move forward on this project. I still have to wrap up the last 15% of my home theater...just waiting for it to warm up so I can spend quality time in the shop.