-= Welcome to Advance DOS MAME Support =-

One of the main issues with the DOS version of MAME is getting your soundcard to work at all under pure DOS

This can be misleading as you could launch MAME and it looks like the sound card has been successfully initialised, but MAME crashes at the OK prompt

When troubleshooting a "dead" MAME, the first step you should make is disabling the sound card

Use this guide to troubleshooting your setup. If you have one to add please let me know

PROBLEM	RESOLUTION
audio initialization failed Unable to initialize system	Check you are using the correct -soundcard x option Check DOS soundcard drivers Check environment variables in AUTOEXEC.BAT
MAME looks like it has successfully initialized the soundcard but locks up after loading ROMS	Make sure no other PCI interrupt is sharing with the soundcard. Force the IRQ in your BIOS to be used only by your soundcard by setting it to ISA, not PNP, in the PNP configuration section.
Memory problems	Make sure you are using CWSDMPI v5 which resolves a number of memory issues, or try a different version and some systems prefer older versions.
romXXX romXXY romXYY ERROR: required files are missing, the game cannot be run	You have ROMS missing. Visit www.mameworldroms.com
Exiting due to signal SIGILL > Invalid Opcode at eip=0033f9b5 > eax=0000003b ebx=00db0df4 ecx=0000003b edx=00aeffb0 esi=00000000 edi=00000006 ebp=0000001 esp=00db04f0 program=C:\arcade\mameppro.exe > cs: sel=00a7 base=10000000 limit=00dcffff > ds: sel=00af base=10000000 limit=00dcffff > es: sel=00af base=10000000 limit=00dcffff > fs: sel=00bf base=00000000 limit=0010ffff > gs: sel=00bf base=00000000 limit=0010ffff > ss: sel=00af base=10000000 limit=00dcffff > App stac: [00db0c38..00d30c38] Exceptn stack: [00d30b90..00d2ec50] > > Call frame traceback EIPs: > 0x0033f9b5	The error you're getting is an illegal instruction error, check you are running the correct version of MAME for YOUR platform or try running plain un-optimised MAME This seems to be a feature of v37B13 - use the latest version Try renaming or deleting your mame.cfg. This has been known to resolve this problem.
Sound is running slow or choppy	The quality of the sound and how "smooth" it sounds can be a function of the following variables : YOUR PC: CPU speed and type i.e AMD ATHLON 800Mhz YOUR PC: Soundcard bus type i.e. ISA/PCI EMULATED HARDWARE: Year of game EMULATED HARDWARE: Number of CPU's being emulated EMULATED HARDWARE: Number of custom sound or other CPU's being emulated As a general rule of thumb, the more CPU power your PC has is the ruling factor when it comes to speed issues with your PC - unless you have a hardware error.
In some neogeo games I get this message at the bottom of screen - Irq 2 enable, need raster driver.	This means the games use the raster interrupt to do display effects. In the case of neodrift and trally it should be doing the zooming, but the way the zoom code was written is incorrect and the game is broken if the raster driver is used. for pspikes 2 it looks like stupid programming because the raster interrupt is used for nothing.

I've always been a little disappointed with the performance of some MAME games. Games like Shadow Dancer always had jerky sound - even whilst running the demo.

So I'm sat at my cabinet, and I decide to run the PCI bus sniffer which is part of my cabinets maintenance menu, what do I find ? my Soundblaster PCI64 is displaying System Errors and Slow Timing.

PCI BIOS Version 2.10 found!
Number of PCI Busses : 2
PCI Characteristics : Config Mechanism 1 Special Cycle Mechanism 1

Vendor 1274h Ensoniq (Creative)
Device 5000h ES1370 AudioPCI
Command 0105h (I/O Access, BusMaster, System Errors)
Status 0400h (Slow Timing)
Revision 01h, Header Type 00h, Bus Latency 20h
Self test 00h (Self test not supported)
PCI Class Multimedia, type Audio
Subsystem ID 4C4C4942h Creative Sound Blaster AudioPCI 64
Subsystem Vendor 4942h Known Bad Subsystem ID - no Vendor ID readable
Address 0 is an I/O Port : 0000E800h
System IRQ 10, INT# A

IRQ Summary: IRQs 10,11,12,14,15 are used by PCI devices
Shared IRQs: There are no shared PCI IRQs

OK, so I go upstairs and quickly strip my better halfs PC and bring the Pine CS4281 sound card down to the cab and swap the two.

I run the PCI sniffer for a second time, no problems with this card! After installing the drivers and launching ArcadeOS I run Shadow Dancer - WOOHOO, no sound judder!!!

One interesting feature of this sound card is the DOS drivers do not require any DOS memory management via HIMEM.SYS or EMM386.EXE which may help with other memory driver conflicts.

The only problem you may encounter when installing a Cirrus Logic CSxxxx sound card is the drivers - NO DOS installation. What you have to do is install the Windows 9X driver and look in your AUTOEXEC.BAT to see if there's a DOS driver installed (See MY SOFTWARE CONFIG for more details).

PCI BIOS Version 2.10 found!
Number of PCI Busses : 2
PCI Characteristics : Config Mechanism 1 Special Cycle Mechanism 1

Vendor 1013h Cirrus Logic
Device 6005h Crystal CS4281 PCI Audio
Command 0006h (Memory Access, BusMaster)
Status 0210h (Has Capabilities List, Medium Timing)
Revision 01h, Header Type 00h, Bus Latency 20h
Self test 00h (Self test not supported)
PCI Class Multimedia, type Audio
Address 0 is a Memory Address (anywhere in 0-4Gb) : DA010000h
Address 1 is a Memory Address (anywhere in 0-4Gb) : DA000000h
System IRQ 10, INT# A
New Capabilities List Information :
Power Management Capabilities
Supports Power state D2
Supports Power state D1
Supports reduced clock speed (when idle)
Current power state : D0

IRQ Summary: IRQs 10,11,12,14,15 are used by PCI devices
Shared IRQs: There are no shared PCI IRQs