Posted by StLouisRod on January 05, 2002 at 22:55:49:
In Reply to: ATI Xpert@Play98 ......more posted by Rocket2600 on January 05, 2002 at 12:17:08:
Thanks for your input! The Xpert98 is the best card I've used so far for my Mame cabinet. I see you cheated and used a card with S-video to hook to a PC monitor. True, this seems to be the most failsafe way of displaying output, but I (along with most people) are using an arcade monitor through a J-Pac (or I-pac) connector. Therefore I'm heavily dependent on the various DOS TSR's like VGA, VBE, and AdvanceMame's video drivers to down-convert the video signal to 15.75 khz. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a card that works well with ALL these utilities. In fact, none have worked with VBE, and only 1 has worked with VGA (the Expert98). The big problem is that most DOS emu's don't have an option to turn-off VESA mode usage, so the VGA TSR is never invoked. I may have to recompile many of the EMU's I use to disable VESA! Yikes! Oh well, at least I can get AdvanceMame to work well, avoiding any NeoGeo games with raster effects (PC slows to a crawl!!!), and Genecyst too (since you can disable VESA on it).
: ATI Xpert@Play98
: I bought this video card about 2 years ago for like $70. You can find them now around $40 or less. It's a great card with S-Video. I use mine in this setup. Pure DOS (no Windows)with PC monitor. In the future I'll update my PC in the cabinet and run in a DOS box in Windows and take advantage of the S-Video on a bigger TV. Right now I use pure DOS to take the fullest advantage of speed for MAME. I use several emu's Nesticle, Stella, No$Gmb, ZSNES, and others in pure DOS without any special command lines. I use Game Launcher as a frontend (basically a list of games). Just click a game and there it is. You don't have to have the latest greatest video card of the market for emulation UNLESS you're doing the 3D games like Street Fighter EX+ etc. But for MAME, NES, Atari stuff just about (but not all) video cards in DOS or Windows work fine. Some need tweaking, but my ATI Xpert@Play 98 was a great buy and works super in my Joust to MAME cab. I see no need to replace it even when I slap in a newer CPU. Oh and I'm running a Celeron 400 (o'clocked to 500) with 128mb of memory. More than enough for Galaga, MsPac, etc. Even Neo Geos run fine and full speed. Only slowdown is with a few like Stun Runner, MK3, etc. But the biggest thing to consider with the video card is the output. Are you going with a PC monitor, TV, arcade monitor? Running in pure DOS or a DOS box in Windows? All these things make a difference. Same with sound cards also. Stay away from PCI cards if you are running in pure DOS. They are a nightmare. Yes, you can get them working (somewhat), but are't worth the headaches. I bought a new mobo with a ISA slot just to go back to my SB AWE64 Gold. The best sound card for pure DOS IMHO. Well that's my 2 cents. Hope some of this helped. Good luck ...
: and Game On!
: ~Rocket2600
: : As I've been through 4 or 5 different video cards trying to complete my Mame cabinet, I've found problems with every one of them. Some don't support 15 or 16 bit modes in AdvanceMame, some aren't supported by Scitech Display Doctor 6.53 or VGA.com or VBE.com, some aren't VESA 3.0 compliant, some produce warbly wavy pictures at certain resolutions (until they warm up!), etc. So, it would be invaluable to find out what video cards the Mame cabinet community is using to get the best all around performance for ALL DOS emu's, NOT just AdvanceMame. And please describe how you got those other DOS emu's to work with your card. Did you load VBE, Unirefresh, VBEHZ, Scitech, ArcadeOS, to get the video horizontal rate down to 15.75? Did you specify a certain option on the DOS emu (like -novesa)? Now I know some people go through Windows using a Matrox 200/400 and the hacked display drivers, so list that too if it works!