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Hey kids, here's the story, if we take the time to hep you out, pleez take the time to read this:

Below you will find a FAQ with solutions to the most common problems from getting satrted with an emu to sound and joystick problems. The database will grow permanently, every problem we're addressed with and its solution will be put up here. Check the FAQ first. If your problem is not addressed then...

Contact RocLobsta or contact Me

We will try to solve your prob and get back to you as quickly as possible, normally within 24hrs!

Note! We are not professionals nor are we programmers. We usually get our emus running but we don't know everything. We do this in our spare time to give something back to the emu scene. So DO NOT FLAME if your question is not answered immediately. DO NOT beg for roms!!! This is and emuadvice domain and not a rom search engine. Check my links if you cannot find what you're looking for.

- Getting Started

- Joystick problems

- Sound problems

- Video Problems

- Posters, Flyers and Pics

- Tweaking your autoexec.bat

- Tweaking your memory and RAM

- Tweaking Mame Performance

- Using Memory Cards with NeoGeo emulation

DOS EMUS in general:

Most problems occur with DOS emulators because people are not used to typing commands anymore. It is, however, not so hard to learn how to use an emulator in DOS if a few general rules are obeyed. All the emulators operate along a similar pattern. I will use the example of the MAME emulator for the simple reason that it is the most popular and therefore the most common. These are the most important steps to get going:

1) After downloading your emulator you will usually have to un-zip the file into a directory. This is done by double-clicking the zip file, clicking on the extract button and specifying a directory (you will need winzip which you can find in my "useful files" section): ie c:\mame

2) In order to play any game you will also need the ROMs, which are the images of the games. Similarly, they are usually downloaded in zip format and will have to be extracted or just simply copied (this depends on whether the emulator supports zip files, MAME does) to the ROMs folder within the MAME directory: ie c:\mame\roms

Note! Not all the emulators require the ROMs to be in a certain folder, sometimes it is enough to simply extract them into the same directory as the executionable a file: ie mame.exe within the c:\mame directory

Some emulators also allow you to specify where you wish to locate your ROMs.

Please refer to the readme text which comes with every emulator's zip file on where the ROMs will have to be placed.

3) Once this is done, your emulator is ready to play your favourite game. You can now either access the DOS box by choosing "start -- programmes -- MS-DOS Prompt" from your desktop, or by shutting down and choosing restart in DOS mode. The latter generally being the quicker for game play, but also more troublesome to configure.

4) Once there, you will find yourself at the DOS prompt which looks like this: C:\>
change directory to where the executionable file of your emulator is by typing: cd mame and then pressing enter

You will then be in the MAME directory from where you can start the emulator.

5) To start the emulator and run the desired game you will have to execute the emulator's executionable file and specify the game which you wish to run. This will look like this: c:\mame>mame pacman and press enter

This will run Pacman from MAME.

6) If you wish to run the game with further options such as sound and joystick support these will also have to be specified in the command line: ie c:\mame>mame pacman -souncard 1 -joy 8 then press enter

This will run the game with a Sound Blaster and a Microsoft Sidewinder joy pad. Again refer to the readme text, there will be a section called "usage" which will outline all the different commands available to you. This will allow you to customise the emulator for your needs, ie specify your sound card, specify your joy pad, adjust the emulator to your PCs speed etc.

This general outline should enable you to get your favourite emulator running on most systems. Please check the more in depth sections of this FAQ or contact us at the above address if you have more specific problems.

One of the most common questions is about problems getting your Sidewinder (or Gravis) to work with emulators such as MAME and ZSNES which claim to support the pads officially but when you enter the appropriate command they are not recognised. This usually happens in Windows or in the DOS box.

There is quite and easy explanation for this. The Windows drivers, and the drivers provided by the emulator conflict. Therefore only one of them can be loaded at one time. To make your Sidewinder(or Gravis) operational change to the joystick panel in your settings menu and remove the pads from it. This will remove the drivers Windows uses for these. If you now start the emulator and use the appropriate command your joystick should work

Sometimes after changing between several games your joy pad might not be recognised again. There are two ways to solve is problem: either start a new game without joystick support, exit that game and then restart a game with joystick support, or change to your joystick panel again, add the joy pad, click OK, then re-enter the panel and remove it again.

In Mame32 make sure to uncheck both Direct Input cases and check "use joystick" under "Input devices".

A second solution to any possible problems with Sidewinder or Gravis game pad detection if nothing else helps is to use the software to create profiles. Both pads are supported by such software. What it does is to emulate keystrokes whenever you push a button or the directional pad on your joy pad. Check your emulator which keys it is using for directions and buttons and then map these keys to your pad using the software. Then start your emulator without joystick support. The emulator will then read the joystick input as if it was keyboard input. This is very helpful on emulators which do not support joy pads or when nothing else helps with an emulator that should support your joy pad.

The only drawback is, that in some cases the emulator might have difficulties reading two keystrokes at the same time when they are sent from your game pad. This means that for example you can only either fire or move but not both at the same time. (Note: It might not be necessary to emulate keystrokes for the directional commands. Only use the buttons and leave the directional pad alone, then load the Sidewinder of Gravis pad as a generic 2 or 4 button pad. This allows you to work around the drawback of inefficient simultaneous button detection)

An advantage is that you can use this for games like pacman which are sometimes more difficult to control than they used to be because modern joy pads have eight directions and in the old days the arcade joysticks for these games only used four directions. If you only map the four directions to your joy pad and not the diagonals this can make it easier to use.

How to create profiles (check Useful Files for profiles I made earlier :-))

To use Game Device Profiler to map keyboard commands, follow these steps:

1.  
2. 1) In Game Device Profiler, click the device to which you are mapping a keyboard command, and then click New Profile in "File"
3.  
4. 2) Name your profile e.g. Mame, ZSNES, etc.... press "enter"
5.  

   3) Press a button on the SideWinder 3D Pro or SideWinder game pad or use the mouse to click the button on the screen, the button will be highlited in the righthandside tab. Click the field next to it, then click on the black empty space in the box which opens up. Press the key on the keyboard you want to map to that button (these should be the keys listed in the readme.txt of your emu as ingame control keys, or the ones you have configured to be used by your emu). When you press this button in the game, the key is activated.

6. 4) Do this for all the buttons. It is of advantage to leave the directional pad as is and to use the Sidewinder as a regular 2 or 4 button pad (-joy 2 option in Mame). Only map the directional controls for emus which have no joystick support at all!
7.  
8. 5) Make sure to enable the profile for the correct pad by ticking it in the list of all available profiles!

NOTE: You cannot map the Windows key on keyboards that support this key (such as the Microsoft Natural Keyboard).

How to connect a spinner and mouse without a switchbox

This works for the "Twisty Spinner" with the DOS version of MAME and probably most other DOS emus, too. If you have a PS2 mouse you can connect your Spinner to the first serial port. Run a hardware detection routine from your control panel and it should be picked up. Configure it and presto, you've got two devices controlling the same mouse pointer. The "Twisty Spinner" will work as a horizntal spinner sort of thing while the mouse retains all of it's functions. No more plugging your mouse in and out for a quick game of Arkanoid :-) (Thanks to Kevin Butler for the tip)

A lot of people are experiencing sound problems in DOS. Usually the reason is either that the sound card is not properly installed, or that the actual settings of the sound card are not adopted by DOS the way they are supposed to.

First of all many emulators do not work with sound by default. It is therefore necessary to switch to sound on. Refer to the readme text to find the appropriate command. If this is not the case, verify the following;

1) Making sure that your sound card is properly installed: in your Windows directory (c:\windows) you will find a file called: autoexec.bat. By right clicking on this file and choosing edit you can view the content of this file. It should contain a line which looks something like this: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6 (this particular line is for the Sound Blaster)

This indicates that your sound card has been installed. If this line is missing, use the software that came with your card to install it properly.

2) If you do find this line, or a similar one, but you still cannot hear any sound when playing your emulators in DOS the problem might be, that DOS is not properly applying the settings it should. In your Windows directory (c:\windows) there should be a file called ctcm.exe. You can run this from DOS by changing to the Windows directory, typing ctcm and pressing enter. This should make DOS use the appropriate settings for your sound card.

This command should be run automatically every time you start DOS. You can achieve this by editing your autoexec.bat. Just insert a line like this: c:\windows\ctcm.exe and saving before exiting.

PCI Card probs in DOS

Many people are experiencing sound problems with PCI cards in DOS. This is because PCI cards do not use memory addresses anymore like the ISA cards used to. You emulator, however, will look for the use of these memory addresses and therefor refuse to initiate sound if it cannot find these. The way to prevent this, is to fake the use of a memory address, by assigning a virtual address to your sound card. If your sound card is properly installed their should be line referring to its in your autoexec file. Check this section on autoexec in this page in order to find out how to verify this.

If you do not find this line, insert the following line into your autoexec.bat file: SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T2, or try a different IRQ with this line: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T2 These are both correct lines for a Sound Blaster PCI. Your emulator should now recognise your sound card in DOS.

If you're still having troubles you can also do the following(works for SB Live!, hopefully also for the rest of Creative's PCI cards):

1) Run the program sbeset.exe in the creative/sblive/dosdrv directory where your sblive files were installed and configure your sb16 emulation port to 220, irq to 5, low dma to 1, and high dma to 1 (read sbeset.txt for docs).

2) Restart your system and voila! Sound emulation should run in real DOS mode

This assumes you have sbeinit.com somewhere in your autoexec.bat (check above and below for details on how to use your autoexecbat) . It's also a good idea to confirm that your BLASTER variable is set from your autoexec.bat by typing 'set' in the dos prompt. You should see something that says 'BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P330 T6' somewhere depending on what sbeset.exe settings you set in real dos mode. If you're in a windows dos box, it should be your original pci irq, dma, etc which should be different from the sb emulation settings.

DOS Sound in a Windoze DOS box works fine as long as your card is properly installed and doesn't require change to the sb16 emulation settings. (Thanks to dodo for the latter procedure)

If you still cannot get any sound after al this the best solution is ot get a cheapo SB16 and stick it in there with your PCI card as explained just below. Check here for more details on the reasons for DOS incompatibility and limitations of PCI cards in DOS.

How to get 2 soundcards to work in one system

If you can't get your PCI card to do what you want in DOS, you can always disable the legacy emulation from the SB128, SB LIVE! etc. in the setup panel and then to put your old ISA SB16 card back into your system. In order to be backwards compatible the PCI card emulates an ols ISA card, a feature which does not always work or sound like the original. You can however make both cards work in your system so that the old SB16 kicks in with your emus.

Install the SB16 exactly as lined out in your manual with the proper drivers from CL. Make sure that there are no lines relating to the PCI card in you Autoexec.bat and everything should go smoothly. The best settings in your Autoexe.bat are the default settings: IRQ5 Low DMA 1 High DMA 5. (Check below if you don't know how to edit your autoexec.bat file) You can match these for both your Windoze and DOS settings and everything should work fine.

Set up your windows multimedia properties so that the SB128 is the preferred device for direct X and that the SB16 only kicks in when a program looks for a soundblaster.

You need to join the outputs from the two cards or have two sets of speakers (please note that if you join the amplified outputs i.e. for speakers/ headphones that are not externally amplified then you will get feedback interferrance which will distort the sound.) Two sets of seakers, or switching the speakers from one card to the other are the better solution.You will also have to balance the volume settings.

Once set up you will have the best of both worlds. PCI direct X acceleration and good old ISA sb16 compatability. (Thanks to Looker for the advice)

If you are having video problems such as not being able to fit the complete image on your screen this is due to your video card not supporting all the resolutions needed for many of the emulators. A number of these resolutions are not usually implemented by any Windows or DOS programs but needed for emulators since they emulate the resolutions of the old arcade machines or television screens. There are a few things you can do to resolve this:

1) The most useful tool is Scitech Display Doctor which you can get from here: http://www.scitechsoft.com It will allow you to display resolutions your video card does not naturally display such as EG 400x300. It will also upgrade your display to Vesa two or a Vesa 3, which are display modes that can produce an image quality and speedadvantage.

2) Many emulators support Mode-x graphics. This will also allow you to display unnatural resolutions which you video card could not normally cope with.

3) If you are having problems with your monitor of going into sleep mode this is usually due to the fact that your emulator is attempting to a display a resolution which is supported by your graphics card but not by your monitor. There is nothing much you can do about this except again attempting to use the Mode-x resolutions, playing with the scanlines option or simply attempting to play in another resolution.

Frequently people inquire on how to use the poster, flyers and screenshots archives which are available for download at a number of sites. This is an explanation kindly donated by Dutch on how these are meant to be managed.

Mame32 supports 3 file formats for Images (screenshots) and Flyers. They are: BMP, JPG, and PNG. Note that Mame32 does NOT support PCX. (I hear there is some thought to move all image formats in Mame and Mame32 over to PNG, since it would unify image file formats in the drivers.)

1) "Images" are the screenshots. The BMP, JPG, or PNG files for these must be placed in a subdirectory underneath the Mame32 directory called "images". Alternatively, all of the image files can be zipped up into one single file called "images.zip." This file must reside INSIDE the "images" subdirectory. (Example, c:\mame32\images\images.zip.) Mame32 can be pointed to *any* directory that contains UNZIPPED BMP, JPG, or PNG screenshot files using the "directories" setup option for the "images". HOWEVER, if you want to use an "images.zip" file, it MUST follow the "\[mame32 directory]\images\images.zip" protocol.

2) "Flyers" can be thought of as alternate screenshots. Ideally, you would put scans of flyers or posters here such as those available from http://mameflyers.retrogames.com. Here's the catch though: currently, XRAY1 posts his fabulous updates to his Mameflyers collection in GIF format. If you want to use these with Mame32, they must be converted over to BMP, PNG, or JPG files. I used Hijaak Pro to convert mine to BMP. (Many other paint programs such as Paintshop Pro also offer the opportunity to do a "batch convert" of all your files in one go within seconds)

Place these convverted flyers in the images dir as explained above. Alternatively, all of the flyer files can be zipped up into one individual file called "flyers.zip." This file must reside INSIDE the "images" subdirectory. (Example, c:\mame32\images\flyers.zip.) Mame32 currently does not have a way to select an alternate directory for "flyers" via the "directories" option.

After some experimenting and some bugginess (which I won't go into to avoid confusion), I have found that the BEST way I reccommend setting this up is to have an "images" directory underneath the Mame32 directory, then place "images.zip" and "flyers.zip" in this directory, using BMP as the file format of choice.

Don't forget: YOU HAVE TO CLICK THE SCREENSHOT IN THE MAME32 WINDOW IN ORDER TO TOGGLE BETWEEN THE FLYER/SCREENSHOT IMAGE! :) Dutch

Many driver conflicts which can make a DOS emulator crash or perform poorly can be resolved with a "clean boot". This means restarting your computer with a clean autoexec file. The procedure is the following:

1) change into your root directory and find the file called autoexec.bat. Right click on this file and choose edit. The window will open and the content should look something like this:

SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
C:\SDD\UNIVBE32.EXE -w
TShoot: C:\PROGRA~1\MCAFEE\VIRUSS~1\SCANPM.EXE C:\
@IF ERRORLEVEL 1 PAUSE

REM --- By HiSpeed CD-ROM Drive installation program. 12/3/98 ---
rem C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000

PROMPT=$p$g
mode con codepage prepare=((850) C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ega.cpi)
mode con codepage select=850
keyb gr,,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\keyboard.sys

These lines refer to the drivers of the hardware which will be started with DOS. To run most emulators the only lines you will need are the ones referring to your sound card or your mouse. You can turn off all of the others for the use of you emulator. To safely do this without losing any of the information you can just type "rem" in front of the line. This means "remark" and indicates to DOS to disregard this particular line. This will look as following:

rem SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
rem SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
rem C:\SDD\UNIVBE32.EXE -w
rem TShoot: C:\PROGRA~1\MCAFEE\VIRUSS~1\SCANPM.EXE C:\
rem @IF ERRORLEVEL 1 PAUSE

REM --- By HiSpeed CD-ROM Drive installation program. 12/3/98 ---
rem C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000

rem PROMPT=$p$g
rem mode con codepage prepare=((850) C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ega.cpi)
rem mode con codepage select=850
rem keyb gr,,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\keyboard.sys

Note that I did not place a "rem" in front of the " set blaster" line. This is the one needed for your sound card.

If you restartin DOS mode now the only hardware that will be operational will be your sound card. Should you also need a mouse, make sure not to "rem" the mouse command, or refer to the mouse troubleshooting section on this page.

If you are trying to place sum of the bigger NeoGeo games on 32 MB RAM or less you might get a message warning you with that not enough memory could be freed in order to initialise the game. This is because the emulator needs to load all of the ROM files into your RAM, and if there is not enough of it, the initialisation will be refused. There are however a couple of ways which allow you to trick your PC into using some of your hard drive as extra memory. This were only work in your DOS. I found these two procedures on other message boards and have not tried them myself due to the fact that I have enough memory. I have however that they work for many people.

1) restart your computer in pure DOS

2) type : "smartdrv 32323"

3) launch neomame/mame

Or of the second procedure:

1) Quit into DOS

2) Type SMARTDRV 10000 This loads the Disk Cache Program, quite useful.

3) Go to the directory where you have CWSDPMI.EXE

4) Type CWSDPMI c:\swap.temp

If you have more space on another Drive (Say D:\) use that instead of C:\

If it says Protected Mode not accessable you are more likely than not in a Windows DOS prompt, like I said, it won't work in a Windows DOS Prompt, you must be in true DOS. If all is well this should tell CWSDPMI to use space on the drive you said \par as Memory, theoretically if you have 2gb of space you could run a rom upto 2 gb in size.

1) CWSDPMI

For anyone using MAME in pure DOS, you'll need the CWSDPMI utility to go with it. There are two versions of it knocking about and it depends on how much memory you have in your box for which one to use, a lot of boards post the wrong version if at all. Version 3 is designed for systems with UP TO 64mb RAM and Version 4 is designed for 64mb RAM plus. Obviously, if you're playing big neogeo games, having the right version should speed up the loading time/disk swapping a lot. You can get both versions (with documentation) from JJones or the Useful Files section

2) General speed

Remember that setk6 utility on Daves? Well theres a utility called PowerTweak that does the same and more, it will definately speed up mame and all general cpu hogging programs just by tweaking various cpu/bios/gfx settings. 30 day trial downloable from JJones or the Useful Files section. Make sure to watch out not to alter your PCI soundcard settings in a negative way!

Thanks again to JJones for these tips :-)

Firstly, if you haven't got a directory in your mame folder called memcard, please create one.

Right, start MAME up thru your favourite front end or whatever, making sure you are running a neogeo game.

By the way, these tips are for arcade mode and not console mode although it will probably work the same.

If you have never used a memory card before, you will need to create one (press tab/MEMORY CARD/CREATE MEMORY CARD) and then load the MEMORY CARD (u'll get a message "Card Loaded OK"), say for instance you have filled your memory card you can move the cursor left or right on the top setting to create up to 999 memory cards.

Ok, the memory card is loaded and also u're game is waiting for you to insert coins, put one coin in and play as normal. If u wish to continue after dying, insert more coins. To use the memory card once the game has started, when you lose the last life and you don't insert any more coins to continue you will be given to option to save the game onto the memory card. For instance, if you play to level 2 on Puzzle Bubble and die, when you don't insert any coins it will ask if you want to save the game, next time u start the game with a memory card inserted it will ask you if you want to load the memory card, if you click load you will start from level 2.

If you click "Call memory card manager" from the MEMCARD menu in MAME you can enter a name for your memory card and also see what files are stored on it (same as the PSX memcards :) ).

You'll have to reset the game and re-load the memory card if u go into this menu btw.

(Thanks to JJones for these tips :-))