Emulator Operation Tips Updated
Nov1/98
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    Duuk-Tsarith
    SNES Maintainer
    Emulator Operation Tips
    1. SPEED!
      If the game runs too slow, try increasing the frame redraw skip rate.
      For SNES9X, use:
      SNES9X aladdin.smc -f 6
      For ESNES, use:
      ESNES -frame 6
      Remember: the higher the number, the faster it will run, but the more choppy the animation will be. You'll have to screw around with different numbers before you find the right setting for your PC.
      Note: With SNES9X, you can adjust the frame rate without having to leave the game by pressing the "-" and "+" keys to decrease or increase the frame redraw skip rate. You can also try pressing the "9" key to enable the cached tile-based redraw method. This, for some ROMs will speed-up the performance noticable. But, since programing for this is bit buggy, some ROMs will display a garbled output on the screen.
      Or, add this to your command line:
      -h 60
      This tells the emu the percentage of instruction to execute per scan line. This will speed-up most games. Just be sure to use a number between 60 and 80, otherwise the sound output will not be in sync with the graphics. (Unless you have sound disabled)

      If it is STILL to slow, tinker around with your computer hardware by overclocking your 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 permanetly 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.

    2. I'm using ZSNES on a laptop and I can't see a #$&*ing thing! HELP!
      I noticed on some laptops that ZSNES will properly output the display on the laptops LCD screen, but the contrast is VERY low: so low, that it appears that its just displaying a blank screen. Solution: either adjust the constrast on your screen or change the video mode specified in the zsnes.cfg to a video mode of 320x240. (Mode 1 if I recall correctly)

    3. The Magic of Vesa 2.0
      If possible, load the Vesa 2.0 driver for you video board. They can either be found with the software that came with your video board or PC or they can be found at the video board manufacturer's website, FTP site, or BBS. If one is not avalible (typical for older video boards) then download the universal VESA extender from Sci Techsoft at
      www.scitech.com. You'll have to register the program.
      The point of going though all this is that a VESA driver can usually speed-up the performace of the video board, making games run faster!

    4. No joystick?
      As I said before, if you want perfect gamepad support, get the "Rockfire" controller or any other programable game pad. They'll tame even the worst keyboard layouts. Most gamepads nowadays have REAL 6 or 8 buttons, not a 8 buttom gamepad where 6 buttons do the same exact thing.
      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.

    5. Format unknown??
      Remeber, .SMC and .SFC are in the same file format (binary), except they use a different extenion name. So, just rename them with a different extension. Thats all! Just rename the file with the extension that the emulator requires. (VSMC is the only one that requires all files to have a .SMC extension), .FIG are rare but they do exist. SF------.078 are pure raw .SFC format ROM dumps. Consider yourself lucky, because (for most cases) this ROM copy has not been altered at all! Either do a binary copy like so:
      
      copy /b sftech3a.078 + sftech3b.078 + ...  tech.sfc
                      |                |           | 
                      |                |           |     
                      |                |           - Output file name
                      |                |
                      |                -2nd file (etc)
                      - First file
      
      Or run UCON141 to combine them. You may run across a similar problem with .FIG format files.

    6. They say it will run, but I been having no luck. :(
      Is the image legitimate? Test it out with Ucon141. If it is legitimate, then are you typing the command line in lower case, not UPPER CASE? Some emulators fails to load games if the command line is in UPPER CASE.

      Another thing to try if your using SNES9X is to try out the SPC-700 skip wait option. Just add the following to the command line:
      -ss #
      where # is a whole number from 0 to 3. (Don't use 0 if you have sound enabled). Try using "1" for Animaniacs and Metriod 3 and "3" for NBA Live 96. Some ROMs wait until a signal is passed to them from the SPC-700 soound chip. Since the sound emulation is still in it's early stages, the signal is never passed to the ROM. This option is the solition. It's possbile that some ROMs will not work with sound enabled. (Like TMNT 4)

      If none of these steps work, then it is probably a weird bug in the emulator that allows the game to run in certain conditions and not in others. Or, the game may have the Super FX or DSP chip in the cartridge. These games will not run yet, because these chips need to be emulated first. The solution: wait for the next version of the emulator or get the exact same copy of the rom that everyone has.

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