MAME input delay / lag....

Hypersport

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HI, I've been searching the web for a solution to this, but no luck so far. I've tinkered with MAME on and off for a few years now, but have never been satisfied with it due to input lag. It seems that when I press buttons, the resulting sounds and actions in the game come what seems an excessive amount of time (to me... probably only milliseconds in reality) after they should. I am using a PS-2 Keyboard for input.

I've read plenty of posts about people who have no problems what so ever --"I don't know what your problem is, mine works fine..." If that is all you have to contribute, please refrain from posting.

I am running on an HP XW9300 workstation, 2.00 GHz AMD Opteron, 2GB RAM, and should be plenty fast to run the old 8 and 16 bit games I am playing.

My main lag complaint comes in Hyper Sports - skeet shooting to be extrememly specific, but I have lag in other games as well, and in other events in Hyper Sports. I have also tried MAME on an older toshiba laptop - games play the same whether on my workstation, or this laptop, which tells me that either of my systems are plenty fast enough for MAME. Both systems have the same annoying keyboard input lag.

Are the MAME drivers to blame? the ROMs? my system? some configuration? I am running with the default settings in MAME, and nothing has been changed. I am running DOS based MAME, and just downloaded the latest MAMEUI32 to try that, but again, I find that I have the same old problems I've had before, across multiple systems.

I have considered an X-Arcade control panel, but if the lag is present in that as well, then what's the point of spending the money?

So, if anyone else has been down this road, and has some solution, explanation, or set of settings that will elimanate this, I'd love to hear your advice.
 
im sorry but my advise is the same advise most folks here would give...

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you would get amot more feedback posting mame questions over at byoac forums i bet.
 
you would get amot more feedback posting mame questions over at byoac forums i bet.

I have come to trust the technical advice that I have received here on KLOV. I thought that I'd give it a shot here.

I'm not a MAME advocate, but will admit that I do use it from time to time.
 
In the computer cmos setup bios screen there are sometime bio setting for the keyboard. You may want to adjust the setting. to get a quicker response.
 
It's really hard NOT to be a MAME advocate. Face it, most of us will never have the time, money, or space to really acquire every single game out there we want, and by the time some of us get even halfway there, CRTs in their totality could possibly be extincted off the face of the planet, along with electrolytic capacitors. :p

That said, I haven't experienced this particular issue with my X-Arcade. It's one of the very early ones, goes direct to the PS2 port with a passthrough for the keyboard. The KEYBOARD, HOWEVER, does have lag when it's plugged in that way! Also sometimes the joystick will "stick" keys on the keyboaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.
 
I know about keyboard setting becuase of Doom network play. Trust me anything after getting your behind shot off enough you find ways to tweek the bios for faster play. Laughs..
 
I got rid of my keyboard encoder years ago in favor of a gamepad based controller. It felt faster when I switched. In hypersports, I think the biggest difference is that originally used leaf switches. It is really hard to play without them on games that require fast button presses. With a gamepad encoder (you can get them from the same vendors that sell the keyboard controllers), and leafswitches, I think hypersports would work well for you. There are a couple of people who say they can always feel the lag, but I just haven't experienced it since going to the gamepad encoders.

As a general rule, anyone hear that will try to help you with a MAME question here will also be there to help you on BYOAC.
 
I never had an issue with keyboard. But did when I had a ps2 jpac plugging in a USB adaptor to use on a PC that had no ps2 ports. That really slowed things up. I had to use a USB jpac on the PC and the original jpac on a different PC (using a ps2 port)
 
My response time in my PP MAME cockpit are good, however I'm not using the keyboard to play- I'm using controls that are wired into a mouse PCB. The response times are fine as far as I can tell.

Is there a way to wire your controls to a mouse PCB rather than to a keyboard? How many buttons-inputs are there on the game?
 
I've never had a problem with PS/2 inputs and keyboard lag. My MAME cabinet is still sporting a Pentium II with 128 megs of RAM, and I'm using a hacked IBM keyboard as a control interface. (The sad thing is that I built this cabinet when a Pentium II was a fairly expensive used computer...)

Have you tried another keyboard? Some cheap keyboards aren't the greatest.

Have you tried other versions of MAME? Also, it could have something to do with other software on your computer - modern versions of Windoze are so bloated with crud it's not even funny. Try one of the bootable CD versions of MAME and see if you still have problems.

-Ian
 
I had some lag problems with a hacked KB. I junked it and got a J-Paq interface. No issues since.
 
It's really hard NOT to be a MAME advocate. Face it, most of us will never have the time, money, or space to really acquire every single game out there we want, and by the time some of us get even halfway there, CRTs in their totality could possibly be extincted off the face of the planet, along with electrolytic capacitors. :p

That said, I haven't experienced this particular issue with my X-Arcade. It's one of the very early ones, goes direct to the PS2 port with a passthrough for the keyboard. The KEYBOARD, HOWEVER, does have lag when it's plugged in that way! Also sometimes the joystick will "stick" keys on the keyboaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.





this is a prime example of why not to use a usb encoder or usb keyboard on mame usb has to use a driver and the driver needs to be axcessed

using ps2 input controllers will remove most if not all the lag involved with button presses

if you are using a usb device and are getting lag try using ps2 it shold remove all the problems you are having
 
I hacked a gameport SideWinder and connected it to controls for a friend and it helped the lag issue he had been experiencing when he was using his keyboard.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
my understanding is that a keyboard is constantly cycling through every single key waiting for a keystroke, but an encoder only has to cycle through the few that you use for MAME and that cuts the time down.
 
Lots of info here... I'm hearing "don't use USB, use PS/2". I am using a PS/2 keyboard, so USB is not the source of my current problems. The "Lono Arcade to USB board" looks cool, but a little expensive. But then again, it is a USB device, so that sounds bad from what I've heard here. Does anyone have one, and did it solve any problems for anyone?

I'll look at the BIOS, but I'm thinking it's not there -- I haven't seen that option in any of my system's BIOSes for over a decade now (but then again, I haven't gone looking for it..)

You know, back in the day, I used to play lots of PC based games. I never had any kind of button lag from the keyboard on those games. Classic games like that always used keyboard scan codes to process button presses. This was back in the early 90's on games like Doom -- spot on, instant feedback after pressing a button. I find it almost rediculous that I am having input lag in 2011 in MAME. It just doesn't seem like it should be an issue at all.

I'll see if I can't borrow a few different keyboards for testing, but it looks like I'm going to have to spend some money to solve this problem.

FRAX indicated that he also had PS/2 keyboard lag, but didn't see any lag when connecting his X-Arcade into the same port, so maybe there is hope after all. I'm not going to spend the money on the X-Arcade and hope -- I'll need to see the lag disappear first before purchasing one. I wish I had more local friends -- I'd be able to borrow one.

The mouse hack thing might be doable -- I've got a few mice that I can tear up -- Does anyone have instructions on how to make one of those?

Thanks for the suggestions!
 
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