Posted by buzzdat on January 28, 2002 at 17:05:51:
In Reply to: ArcadeOS - Win98 (Dos) vs. Raw Dos posted by ampapa on January 28, 2002 at 07:02:57:
Running under Windows, you have the advantage of all of the services that Windows provides (drivers, windows API, etc). The advantage that these services provide come at a price, though, namely in overhead in terms of processor and memory usage.
The main advantage of running under DOS is avoiding the overhead of Windows; if you have an arcade cabinet that is only used to run mame and a frontend, that's all you really need to run on the machine. Windows is often overkill for this type of application, IMHO. My MAME box is an AMD K6-2 400 with 64 MB of RAM - MK is unplayabe under Windows, but plays well under DOS. In my case, this is more than sufficient, because I am mostly interested in the classic "golden age" games that aren't very system intensive.
The biggest problems that people run into when dealing with DOS are drivers and hardware incompatibilities. Lots of the newer hardware that requires drivers to operate properly will not work well (or at all) under pure DOS because companies are no longer producing drivers for DOS (in most cases). You also need to pay more attention to your hardware and BIOS configuration, because you don't have Windows re-assigning your hardware resources.
Lockups under DOS when running MAME are often caused by bad sound card drivers; PCI soundcards can be a real pain to set up under pure dos as well. I run ISA Soundblaster cards in my DOS mame boxes to avoid the problems with PCI cards (and you don't even need to load any drivers).
Your lockup problem is probably due to either your sound card or a conflict between some of the hardware on your system. Try running mame with no sound support (dmame -soundcard 0 dkong).. Does it still lock up? If so, remove the sound card and try again. If it works with the card removed, try putting the card in another PCI slot. There are tons of resources on the web re how to deal with conflicts like these.
to wrap it up:
Run Windows if you want to use the machine for something other than MAME, if you have hardware that is incompatible with DOS, or if your machine is sufficiently fast enough to run MAME with the windows overhead.
Run DOS if you only use the machine to run MAME and a frontend, have supported hardware, and have a older / slower machine that you want to get more use out of.
Hope this helps...
Buzzdat
: What's the difference in running ArcadeOS in a Win98 Dos window versus running ArcadeOS in a pure dos mode using Dos7? The problem I am having is that ArcadeOs will run in a Dos window and use the S-video out correctly where if I run "pure" Dos my machine locks up?
: I don't get it.
: Thanks for any replies.