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Author Topic: New Hdd Problem With Mame. Can You Help?  (Read 119 times)

mrmessy (retro)

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New Hdd Problem With Mame. Can You Help?
« on: October 01, 2008, 06:54:00 AM »
I have just successfully replaced the HDD of my second Xecuter2 modded Xbox with a 160gig Seagate.

I did the same a while ago with another Xbox using a 160gig Maxtor.

Both Xboxs have pretty much the same emulators on them, including MAMEOX and MAMEdOX.  They are set up the same.

The problem is with the Seagate one:  When I select a game to load in either version of MAME, the "Loading, please wait" screen stays displayed for about 20 seconds before the loading "bar" screen appears.  During this 20 seconds, the HDD makes a strange sound - almost as though it is scanning the drive.  The game will start, but it takes much longer than the Maxtor Xbox.  Also, when I exit MAME on the Seagate Xbox, the "Saving Settings" screen stayes on for about 15 seconds, with the HDD making the same ssteady whirring sound.

By comparison, when I select a game on the Maxtor Xbox, the "Loading, please wait" screen is only displayed for about 1 - 2 seconds.  The games load much quicker.  Also the "Saving Settings" exit screen only displays for about 1 second before MAME closes.

Does anyone know what is going on with the Seagate HDD?  Have I used some sort of unusual HDD or is it faulty perhaps?

All the other emulators seem to run exactly the same on both Xboxs.  Only MAME seems to have a problem.

Thanks for any help,
mrmessy
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xyteam

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New Hdd Problem With Mame. Can You Help?
« Reply #1 on: October 01, 2008, 08:44:00 AM »
maybe some hdds work at different speeds.
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Bomb Bloke

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New Hdd Problem With Mame. Can You Help?
« Reply #2 on: October 01, 2008, 10:11:00 AM »
'Tis true they run at different speeds. I used to have a Seagate in my PC specifically for video capture. I eventually replaced it with a larger Maxtor. Performance went right out the window; the Maxtor was too slow.

But the difference wasn't anything like what you're going through.

Re game loading, I'm thinking maybe that's got something to do with compressed files? I confess I've never used MAME on the X-Box, but I've used Surreal and that unzips ROMs to one of the cache drives before running 'em. If they're still there when it next goes to load them it can skip the decompression step that time around.

But that doesn't really explain your exit times...
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