Hello and welcome to Mame32, this quickdoc provides a checklist to get  started and up to date troubleshooting techniques.

Ensure you have at least DirectX5 for Win95/98.  SP3 or greater for NT4. (both available for download at www.microsoft.com)

1. Download the zipfile of mame32 aprox 1.2MB.

2. Create a directory/folder on your hard drive i.e. c:\mame

3. Open this directory and copy the mame32 zipfile into it.

4. Using an archive program like WinZip or Pkunzip, extract the contents of the mame32.zip (ensure you use the -d option in Pkunzip to get recursed subdirectories).

5. Place your game roms (readily available in convenient zip format) into the sub-directory called c:\mame\roms [note game roms are not distributed w/ Mame32].  It's easiest to leave the roms in their zip format, and just dump them into the \mame\roms directory.

6. Place your sample zip files into the sub-directory called c:\mame\samples [note that the sample zips will have the same name as the game roms] Donkey Kong's roms are called dkong.zip and Donkey Kong's samples are also dkong.zip.

7. Double click Mame32.exe, select your game and press play!  Insert coin with key 3, start 1 player game with key 1.  If installing over the top of an  exisiting Mame32 install, press F5 in game to refresh the gui list.

8. With version 0.33, you can now have a background image for your details view.  This can be any color depth up to 32bpp.  You can also have icons for each individual game on the list, they must be the same name as the game driver, i.e. dkong.ico.  If a game doesn't have an icon it will default to using one of the four 'base' icons, roms.ico, noroms.ico, unknown.ico and warning.ico.  As you might imagine this makes your personal view of Mame32 quite customizable.

Suggested sound settings: Windows NT - do not use the DirectSound settings, use Midas for sound, 22050 sample rate, 8b
Windows 98/95 - Seal/DirectSound at 22050,8b is the best reproduction for all games.  DirectSound as a setting has gotten a lot better, it is still louder than  Seal/DirectSound but is a viable option.

Graphic suggestions: Through testing on a variety of platforms it appears that the fastest mode would be fullscreen/bestfit with none of the doubling options selected with draw only  changes chosen.  If you do want to use the 'double' feature, try using the 'blit' setting,  this will preclude using scanlines but it may be faster than having blit unselected.  GDI is usually faster in the windowed modes at most color depths, things bog down above 16bpp  desktops for some of the newer games.

Troubleshooting, also see: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Foothills/5043/ The Mame QA/Test & Art Dept. for up to date info -

MAME32 34b1 can't "see" ROMs 
1. F5/Refresh in the GUI. (do this anytime you alter your roms, renaming etc.) 
2. Ensure you have merged/renamed roms & proms. (people still don't get this, re-d/l, or get bigproms.zip) 
3. Ensure you have show all games toggled. (this is new, and is missed on the menu sometimes) 
4. Delete reg. key as documented in quickstart.txt 
5. See if it works with zipped roms in the \roms directory instead of freestanding files.

• Known Issue: the Amidars and Make Trax are having trouble with their dirty rec. implementation, to get around this, simply alter the settings for those games to not have 'draw only changes' checked.   If you see screen repainting problems, try this.

• Mame32 .33b+ has added a lot of new items and as a result its registry key has grown and expanded.  In some instances this can cause problems going over the existing reg. key  The first thing you should do when you  see errant behaviour is to delete the .cfg or the .hi files associated with the driver.   If that doesn't cure it, then go to your windows registry with regedit.exe and delete this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Freeware\Mame32 This will allow Mame32 to re-build it on the next run.

• Mame32 now caches your rom information when it starts, one of the by-products of this is that if you do any work with your roms, merging, renaming etc. you should refresh to get the most accurate results.  Hit F5 while in the GUI. This is a small price to pay for the speed increase when starting the app.   Instead of waiting xx mins. for Mame32 to  check your directories it now caches it.

• Some folks have been seeing quits during video initilisation, I had this happen with a Matrox Mill. 1 it was cured w/ the install of the DirectX6 core (this was a Win98 machine).  So give DX6 a try.

• 98.08.26 I am seeing a lot of posts complaining about Mame32 not recognizing existing roms sets.  You need to get the latest zips of the files that Mame32 is complaining about, you must have missed adding in the color proms, or do not have the merges set up properly.  Once this is finished and you have a good rom collection the only thing the Mame32 should error on are: The NeoGeo games crc's that are at 000000 currently. This is a core driver problem, not Mame32. Mame32 is not broken, get all these together then hit F5 in the GUI to refresh.  Re-download questionables from Dave's.

• Prior to reporting bugs, please ensure that it is not a core driver problem.  [read] ensure that it doesn't also happen in the DOS version.

John IV, Seattle, WA 
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Foothills/5043/ 
mame32qa@hotmail.com 
98.09.06
 
