Please help! problems with Gameex as shell, running Mamewah

[empireguitar]

Good morning all; I would be VERY grateful for some help.

I have been using Mame and other emus for years, however I have just baught a converted Mame cab and am having problems.

I guess I should describe the machine spec (as far as I can tell;

Dell Pentium 4 (500 or so MB of RAM) running Windows XP not sure which graphics card it's using (possibly using onbaord). 19" monitor (I think it's an arcade monitor, as it has no back/case to it). It has arcade controls hooked up and from what I can see to one of the (JPAC?) things into the USB; they are recognised at keyboard inputs. 2 joysticks with 6 buttons each, plus player 1+2 start buttons; plus another "A" button which exits games back to the mamewah game select screen and another "B" button that doesn't seem to do anything. (the pc also doesn't have a DVD drive - but has USB ports)

It seems that the machine has been set up with GameEx as a shell; when I power the cab up, it breifly shows the Del screen, then shows the blue GameEx "loading please wait screen" for a few seconds - then it loads MAMEWah.

The problem I no matter what I've tried, I cannot call up the MAMEwah menu during the game select screen (to adjust teh display settings or exit to windows etc) - I have tried pressing player 2 start and also holding the button in incase i has been "locked".

I asked on the Mamwah baord and someone suggested that this could be something to do with Gameex.

In addition, for the life of me I cannot get into widows so that I can brows the HD, ad games, more emulators etc. I even tried to start the pc in safe mode to try and stop it from loading GameEx, but this just left me with a black screen (showing safe mode in the corners) and no opportunity to browse teh Hard drive.

The only way that I've been kind of able to browese the HD, was to connect a keyboard and mouse; hit Ctrl,Alt+Delete, call up the task manager and exit Mame/mamewah. This leaves me with a black screen.

From there i pressed Ctrl,alt+delete again and clicked to start a new program, "browse..." and then I could see windows and browse the HD and folders.

If somone could please give me some advice I would realy appreciate it. How can I stop the Pc from booting straight into gameEx? or idealy, how can i exit Mamewah or GameEx or call up menus? In addition, as I cannot call up the gameEx or Mamewah menus, the machine is not shuttin gdown windows each tim eproperly; which can't be good for the machine.

Do I need to change the Gameex config or something?; any help would be appreciated. Maybee teh best thing would be to set it up to not use Gameex as a shell and then atleast I can test things out before possibly one day having it as a shell or something again, once I have all teh emulators I want on there with the configs set up to my taste.

[Tempest]

Sounds like it's using instant sheller. You are close on how to get windows back...

1. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del

2. Select task manager

3. File->New task

4. Type 'explorer'

5. OK

Then find InstantSheller.exe on the computer, run it, and it will give you an option to undo (or something like that)

After that, it sounds like you would have to go back to the Mamewah forums. Unless of course you want to switch to GameEx, then we can hep with that too.

You can search the forum for more info on instant sheller if you need it.

[empireguitar]

Many thanks for your help; I will try it out tonight:-)

I could probably use some help setting up GameEx from scratch so that I can use muliple emulators with (Final Burn,MAME,Model 2,Daphne (maybee) - would be nice to shell it from scrath and have all the emus/setting I want.

I think I may use MAME GUI rather than a Dos based version, as it's easier to set up the video options; will that be possible with GameEx? (probably a silly question).

I beleive my cab uses an arcade monitor; would my best MAME setting be 640x480 with Scanlines? (I don't beleive that my pc has the ARcade VGA card - although I will be able to check tonight when I finaly get into Explorer:-)

Again, many thanks for your help:_)

[discgolfer72]

  empireguitar said:

Many thanks for your help; I will try it out tonight:-)

I could probably use some help setting up GameEx from scratch so that I can use muliple emulators with (Final Burn,MAME,Model 2,Daphne (maybee) - would be nice to shell it from scrath and have all the emus/setting I want.

I think I may use MAME GUI rather than a Dos based version, as it's easier to set up the video options; will that be possible with GameEx? (probably a silly question).

I beleive my cab uses an arcade monitor; would my best MAME setting be 640x480 with Scanlines? (I don't beleive that my pc has the ARcade VGA card - although I will be able to check tonight when I finaly get into Explorer:-)

Again, many thanks for your help:_)

take some pics of the monitor i bet its just a decased pc monitor

if no camera look for a set of 4 or so pots (usually white plastic nobs) if it has the pots its and arcade monitor if not is a pc monitor

[Brian Hoffman]

  discgolfer72 said:

take some pics of the monitor i bet its just a decased pc monitor

if no camera look for a set of 4 or so pots (usually white plastic nobs) if it has the pots its and arcade monitor if not is a pc monitor

I remember when pc crts had pots that were adjusted from the front, back... I guess Im old... Now its all digital.

empireguitar

You do not need to use the scanlines effect if you use a standard arcade monitor, The software scanline effect simulate the hardware scanlines the real monitors have.

[empireguitar]

Morning guys,

I think you are right and I have a pc monitor (de-cased); wheni checked in Windows, the res. was set to 1280x or something and as I understand it arcade monitors can't display resolutions that high.

I did also get suspicions when the monitor didn't have any natural scnalined effect.

Anyway, I managed to get into windows and have a look around - the PC (Pentium 4 with about 500MB of RAM is just using onboard graphics - seems to be doing the trick though.

I went in to the MAME config, set the res. to 800x600, scanlines and no filter; I got a great looking picture how I wanted it. Some CPS1+2 (Darkstalkers) looked better in 640x480 thouhg, so would like to be able to figure out how to switch resolutions easily.

For now, I'm leaving the GameEx shell on, as it is cool that it boots into MAMEwah (the uninstaller is on the HD if I need it so...).

I got the menu up in MAmewah by chaning the config, but it's still not right, as I couldn't actualy select from teh menu (had to use "1" key on my keyboard) - then i need to figure out how to switch to and from Emulators form the menu (to Snes,Model 2 ,Visual Pinmame etc).

Thanks again for all your help guys.

[discgolfer72]

just ditch mame wah if you want other emus on your list and use gameex its way to easy to setup compared to the other frontends i just got in a verbal fight over at the klov forums cause this guy swears by hyperspin and says its the most easy front end to use

i admit hypper spin is pretty but gameex is a great install and forget it frontend