Hi there classic gaming lovers,

I have Ubuntu 7.10, Suse 10.3 and WindowsXP on my computer. On both Linux distro's sdlmame does not produce acceptable sound. It stutters and crackles so much that the games are not playable (games are slowed down too).

Other games that use sdl for audio (i.e. Supertux) work just fine. And on Windows the roms that I use work just fine w/ Mame 0.123.

Is there a sound issue/bug in sdlMame 0.123? On Ubuntu I tried Pulse audio, compiling sdlmame and libsdl from source etc etc. But it just won't work....

Thanks in advance for any tips or help.

(The antique Xmame produces acceptable sound, but not all sounds that are supposed to be in the game are produced by Xmame. So I need sdlmame 0.123)

What are your computer's specs and what games are you trying to run in MAME?

Also, if you press F11 while the games are running are you getting 100% speed? I would gather not from those symptoms, but...

When I press F11 I see:

Athlon 1800+ (enough for me ), 512 MB ram, Nvidia video card.

I'm trying to play Donkey Kong (dkong.zip) [edit] and dkongjr.

Thank you both for the fast reply

That is fast enough to play Donkey Kong/Jr/Mario Bros even after the discrete additions (starting in MAME 0.116). XMAME/MAcMAME used samples and where much faster. Still, though, with baseline on the same CPU as you (Athlon XP1800) the game runs fast enough to play without any frameskip (140-150% at skip 0).

I'd have to guess a driver related issue.

try to use -video opengl at commandline

Thanks for the tip, but I do not have the closed source Nvidia driver installed, but the opensource Xorg Mesa NV driver. I do not think that the Mesa driver is opengl (3D?) compatible. When I try that command line option F11 shows me 6% ...

Thanks for the help! Considering the fact that the latest Mame runs just fine on the same computer when I boot into Windows, and the fact that XMAME ran good too I do not think my Machine is too slow either.

However, I might try an older version of sdlmame. If I understand you correctly, a version after 0.116 will work with the roms that have the 'discrete sound'.

I'm trying compiling 0.117 now.... Will let you know.

Oh god, I should've watched this thread closer. Please ignore everything Tafoid said - the fact that your machine is fast enough in Windows with MAME 0.123 means it's fast enough for SDLMAME too and there is no need to find old versions or muddle about the discrete/samples switchover.

First up, try -switchres so full-screen doesn't default to having to software stretch to your desktop resolution. That in itself (and/or running in a window - press alt-enter to toggle just like in Windows) should get you back to full speed.

You really should install the closed-source Nvidia drivers though - the video speed improvement in SDLMAME is far beyond dramatic, and you gain access to some nice effects.