Emulation Zone: Emulator Operation Tips

SPEED!
If the game runs too slow, try decreasing the screen size (iNES, Nesticle and PAS26b only) or increase the number of frames to skip. As for Nesticle, go under SETTINGS/TIMING and increase the Virtual Frames Per Sec (FPS) to a higher number. It won't speed-up the emulator for all cases, but its an easy and quick way of speeding things up. If it is STILL to slow, tinker around with your computer hardware by over clocking you CPU by switching the jumpers on your mother board to fool it into thinking you have a faster CPU then you really do, or eliminate as may wait states as possible. ONLY TRY THIS IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING or you may permanitly screw-up your PC. If all else fails, get a new PC. Not 100% brand new, but a new mother board and CPU. This will cost you about $500, depending on what chip you will be using. I'd go for the K6 for price/performance.
It sounds weird.
If the sound is too weird, try changing the instrument the emulator is sending the Fm instructions to. (PAS26b only)
If your using Nesticle, you can change sound timing, etc. under SETTINGS/NES SOUND. Otherwise, bare it.
Just remember, there is no NES emulator out yet that has near perfect sound emulation.
No joystick?
As I said before, if you want perfect gamepad support, get the "Rockfire" controller. It tames even the worst keyboard layouts. Or, you can get the console cable. This device allows you to use you SNES, Genesis, etc. controller on you PC! Fully programable!
If the game does not have joystick support or if the joystick support is lame (2-buttons), these are your only real alternatives.
They say it will run, but I been having no luck. :(
Is the image legitimate?
Try converting it to another format and try it on ther other emulators. If it fails to convert, try passing the ROM though the Head REmove Utility avalible eariler on in the page. If all else fail, get an exact copy of the image that everyone else is using.
I want to try to using it on another emulator, but I can't convert the image. :(
Format conversion tips and utilities. The best one I have seen is NESImage. I have been emailed on how to use it. Here are so tips to answer most of your questions. Just one thing before we continue, in this example, we are converting a ROM called "mario2". And the word "NESImage" does not have to be in borken up upper-case and lower-case.

.NES to Pas Convertion: Just type:
NESImage s mario2
That's it! No extension needed for the Mario2 Rom. Just make sure it has the .nes extension on it though.

Pas to .NES - Just type:
NESImage j mario2
Just make sure all the files related to that rom has the same name. The compiler will look for the other files needed to create the iNES image.
Remember, for all of these to work, don't use an extension, and do NOt switch the order of the switches (the s and the j) with the filename, or you will get an error. And one last note, your pas files may be broken up into the same number of files as your other pas type files or maybe contain a few less files. Don't panic! This is perfectly ok, because not all the games where created the same.