First and foremost.. Maybe I am just blind, but I am not seeing the documentation for MameCE. Specifically, which games it supports, and how well it supports them. Clearly, this info is available somewhere, going by some of the other discussions I've read. Where can I find this info?

Now then. MameCE, I installed that first. It's an auto-detection installation which evidently correctly identified my PocketPC2002 device (Toshiba Genio e550x) as having an ARM processor, because I can run the program. But, I've tried two games.. Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. In both cases, it just brings up a black screen. My Toshiba has 64mb of ram plus a 128mb compactflash card, with about 10megs of other stuff installed. MameCE is quite literally the 2nd thing I ever installed on it. SO.... I have serious doubts it's a ram issue.

Well fine, says I, maybe MameCE just can't play the games. On to installing MegaCE. Should I have uninstalled MameCE beforehand? When it asks to overwrite my gx.dll with its older version, should I be doing so?

Anyway, the first time I ran MegaCE, here's what happened. It put a colorful pinwheel in the dead center of the screen, spinning colors.. and I couldn't do anything at all except reset the unit. Presumably, then, that's what a crash looks like on these devices. It didn't work, did it. Not even as far as MameCE did.

Anyone wanna offer some suggestions? Thanks in advance. (PS: The roms are valid. The zips are copied directly from my PC-based directory from which I play the games regularly.)

Here are the games I have tried so far. They are all old; most predate 1984. I am using a PocketPC2002 with a StrongARM 206Mhz cpu.

Galaxian
Space Invaders
Joust
Ms. Pac-Man
Jr. Pac-Man
Marble Madness

The following games have worked:

Space Invaders: Fails to achieve full framerate at odd moments, such as when starting a game and the score is flashing. Otherwise seems to run fine.

Galaxian: Does not achieve full framerate ever. Turning off throttling fixes the scratchy audio but slows things down by about a third. Considering I got full framerate on a Pentium 120 in the past, I suspect whatever is responsible for the lackluster performance is fixable.

Joust: Although this game works, it defaults to vertical mode, which leaves the sides of the display off-screen. Rotating the screen left has no effect. Rotating the screen right merely inverts it (vertically), which is no better than simply upright.

These games refused to load, in spite of the fact that all the roms are there - I tested each of them individually, without providing access to other archives, with Mame under Windows:

Ms. Pac-Man
Jr. Pac-Man
Marble Madness

What happened was the emulator sat with a black screen for a few moments, then gave up and returned to the menu screen.

I reiterate that I have tons of free ram so that is not the issue.

If anyone has any clue why this is happening (as I have to assume that this is not happening to everyone), I would love to hear some recommendations. Also, if there are other forums I should visit, please, inform me of them.

> Here are the games I have tried so far. They are all old; most predate 1984. I
> am using a PocketPC2002 with a StrongARM 206Mhz cpu.
>
> Galaxian
> Space Invaders
> Joust
> Ms. Pac-Man
> Jr. Pac-Man
> Marble Madness
>
> The following games have worked:
>
> Space Invaders: Fails to achieve full framerate at odd moments, such as when
> starting a game and the score is flashing. Otherwise seems to run fine.
>
> Galaxian: Does not achieve full framerate ever. Turning off throttling fixes
> the scratchy audio but slows things down by about a third. Considering I got
> full framerate on a Pentium 120 in the past, I suspect whatever is responsible
> for the lackluster performance is fixable.
>
> Joust: Although this game works, it defaults to vertical mode, which leaves the
> sides of the display off-screen. Rotating the screen left has no effect.
> Rotating the screen right merely inverts it (vertically), which is no better
> than simply upright.
>
> These games refused to load, in spite of the fact that all the roms are there -
> I tested each of them individually, without providing access to other archives,
> with Mame under Windows:
>
> Ms. Pac-Man
> Jr. Pac-Man
> Marble Madness
>
> What happened was the emulator sat with a black screen for a few moments, then
> gave up and returned to the menu screen.
>
> I reiterate that I have tons of free ram so that is not the issue.
>
> If anyone has any clue why this is happening (as I have to assume that this is
> not happening to everyone), I would love to hear some recommendations. Also, if
> there are other forums I should visit, please, inform me of them.
>

First, Keep in mind that the current build of MameCE3 is based on Older MAME code version .36. So you may need older based ROMs to make games work.
Second, Games that require large amounts of RAM or Multiple CPUs will probably not run. The ARM CPU just can't handle all that work.
Third, Keep in mind that MAME works well on 120Mhz CPU with a Computers that have very advanced Graphic Adaptors. The PocketPCs have NO Advanced CPU or Memory for the Graphics functions. So the overall performance suffers.

Given all that, I am working on a rebuild that I hope will clean up stretching issues, ROM version compatability ,and performance issues.
No ETA yet.

Cheers,
-Techmaster

>
> Given all that, I am working on a rebuild that I hope will clean up stretching
> issues, ROM version compatability ,and performance issues.
> No ETA yet.
>
> Cheers,
> -Techmaster
>

Thanks Techmaster !!!! Your work with this project is greatly appreciated!