This is in NO MEANS a COMPLETE FAQ about NEOGEO emulation. This doc is done so you shall not need to mail the RAGE TEAM or anybody else your questions. READ THIS FIRST!

If you have any questions concerning this FAQ, pay us a visit at ROMLIST. Or /MSG ORG2 at IRC - EFNET

/ORG of ROMLIST

contributors so far:

ORG (editor)

INITIAL PROBLEMS

Q: I try to run a game and neoRAGE loads the roms but gives me this error message: Unable to initialize requested VESA mode!
Using scanlines (-s) may sometimes help. If this fails your system doesnt support any valid hicolor modes (use scitech diplay doctor). Use -modex or -vga for 256 color modes.

A: get Scitech Displaydoctor at http://www.scitechsoft.com or buy a new GFX card. Or Start the emu using -s or -modex instead.

Q: My machine crashes exactly when the emulator shall start

A: You probably have a graphicscard with a old VESA support. Buy a new one or try   running Displaydoctor.

Q: I'm trying to play NeoRage under Win95. But I'm unable to get the VESA driver (from Scitech) to work. Whenever NeoRage starts up I get a blank screen and my machine locks up totally.

A: There may be problems when using VESA 2.0 linear frame buffer modes under Windows 95 with a Trio64V+ (765) graphics chip. To determine your chip type go to http://www.s3.com and download the utility "s3id". This will tell you your chip type. If you have this chipset use the VESA driver S3 VBE/Core 2.0 Version 3.18 written by Dietmar Meschede. It's free! & available from the S3 site as well. Remember to use the "CLEAR-" option to disable screen clears during VBE mode sets. Here are the switches I use: s3vbe20 /install clear-

GAME LODING / PLAYING PROBLEMS

Q: I try to load a game and it begins to load the ROM's. But it bails out back to the dos after loading the last rom. What's the problem?

A: You don't have any BIOS in the neoRAGE dir. You must have a the BIOS file. Either the orginal BIOS file that can be found at ROMLIST. Or the hacked BIOS file from KIWI / Starlight.

Q: The machine loads all the roms but the screen goes black when it shall start. My HDD-led is blinking.

A: Windows is about to rearrange the swapfile for the memory. It clears all the memory so it can start the emulator. This can take VERY long time, especially of you use some of the tricks to get more memory. Upto 15-20 minutes is not unusual at some machines. Go and buy more memory I recomend at least 128Mb RAM

Q: I load the game XXX and all goes well with the loading. But it all ends up in a black screen. The HDD led is not flashing and the computer doesn't seem to do anything.

A: The game you try to load is not supported by neoRAGE yet. Have patience and DONT ask anyone about when it will be fixed!

Q: I try to load a game but it refuses to, instead i get a error message saying "Out of memory" And i already Have XXMb of memory.

A: Buy more memory, If you want to be pretty sure that all game are loaded at a decent speed, install about 128 to 256MB of RAM in your machine.

Q: The Game XXX is 20Mb Unzip:ed and I have 32Mb of RAM in my machine. When I try to load the game, neoRAGE just tells me "out of memory", what is the problem? I have enough of memory...

A: No you dont, buy more memory! Usually a game takes about twice the size of the DIR in memory. I.e PULSTAR is 42Mb Unziped. This means that it will demand at least 85MB of RAM to run. The mem reqirement will be even higher if sound will be emulated.

Q: Metal Slug and Pulstar crashes at the end of level 2. I heard that it was a problem with the dump. When will a fix come??

A: NEVER! There isn't any problem with the DUMP of those games. It's lack of emulation that makes it crash. This is fixed from V0.00015

Q: I heard that some of the dumps from ROMLIST are faulty. They said that they are going to fix it. Will we have to download the whole games again ???

A: Get the FIX file and run it. The games affected is listed there.

Q: NeoRage is slow!

A: You can buy a more powerful computer or buy more memory if you don't have that much ram or you can try to play with the frameskip (numpad keys + and -).

Q: NeoRage freezes in some games!

A: Some games may freeze because emulation is not 100% perfect yet. Just be patient and most of all do not annoy anyone, especially the emu authors and those who dump roms aka the romlist crew ;)

MISC PROBLEMS

Q: I can't make any screenshots from the emu.

A: You must startup using -modex in that case. Windows has problems taking screenshots using Highcolor or press F8

Q: Is there any ENGLISH BIOS or ENGLISH version of the games available?

A: The games and BIOS is multilingual. But for the moment neoRAGE does ONLY support JAPANESE CONSOLE. Future updates will probably have support to chose language.

Q: Why do I only have 4 credits when i start the game?

A: it's cause neoRAGE emulates the console version of NEOGEO games. Which means that it behaves as the console machines did. 4 Credits/player is the standard amount of credz you have in some games.

GAME GENIE BIOS PROBLEMS

Q: How do I use the GAME GENIE from KIWI / Starlight??

A: Read the docs! And don't mail ANYONE about it.

Q: Where do I find GAME GENIE CODE for my games then?

A: This Site seems to be pretty good. And Also THIS SITE is GOOD If you find any other please tell us.. Or you can always get into #NEOGEO at efnet and just type !codes and you will get a list of codes DCC'd to you.

UNSORTED

Q: The game runs fine,but there is no sound in the game, what's wrong?

A: Nothing, except for that YOU haven't read the docs about it. So far there is no sound support in NEORAGE. (If you didn't read the docs, it's not likely that you read this either).

Q: I'm trying to play NeoRage under Win95. But I'm unable to get the VESA driver (from Scitech) to work. Whenever NeoRage starts up I get a blank screen and my machine locks up totally.

A: There may be problems when using VESA 2.0 linear frame buffer modes under Windows 95 with a Trio64V+ (765) graphics chip. To determine your chip type go to http://www.s3.com and download the utility "s3id". This will tell you your chip type. If you have this chipset use the VESA driver S3 VBE/Core 2.0 Version 3.18 written by Dietmar Meschede. It's free! & available from the S3 site as well. Remember to use the "CLEAR-" option to disable screen clears during VBE mode sets. Here are the switches I use: s3vbe20 /install clear-

Q: I've got 96MB's of memory but under DOS 6.22 the DOS mem command only returns 64MB. What's going on ?

A: Even though you use a DOS extender DOS will only support up to 64MB's of memory. This is because raw DOS BIOS calls only support up to 64MB. You need a memory manager which will extend this limit. QEMM 9.0 (QEMM 97) solves this problem. Install it and "mem" will finally show you all your memory.

Q: OK' I've installed QEMM 9.0. DOS 6.22 now recognizes all my 80MB's of RAM but I cannot get "pulstar" to work! All I get is the same "Out of Memory!" message.

A: There's still one thing left to do. We have to provide NeoRage with a DPMI server which will support more than 64MB. Get "cwsdmpi.exe" from one of the many sites on the net and copy it to the same directory as NeoRage. I use CWSDPMI V0.90+ (r4) do a search for "csdpmi4b.zip".

Then create a batch file "n.bat" with the following lines:
cwsdpmi -s-
neorage %1 %2 %3 %4

The "-s-" switch is to disable disk swapping. After all we've got
all the memory we need :)

Start pulstar with the batch file: "n pulstar"

Q: NeoRage freezes in some games!

A: Some games may freeze because emulation is not 100% perfect yet. Just be patient and most of all do not annoy anyone, especially the emu authors and those who dump roms aka the romlist crew ;)