Latest Version of Software Running on XP

[gerwin]

On 3/15/2023 at 7:08 PM, cmccaff1 said:

As always, I hope this helps someone!

Six months ago I was curious about some old arcade games. Which, as usual, got me tinkering with software without playing much

I found it preferable to use the HqMAME fork, because it can smoothen the pixelation out nicely, and it does it internally to the sprites or layers for better effect.

This one: HqMAME v2.2 based on MAME v0.147u3, dated 11-12-2012. Modded with HqMAME v2.16 scaler dlls, which seem to work fine. On Windows XP SP3 x86 that is.

[cmccaff1]

1 hour ago, gerwin said:

I found it preferable to use the HqMAME fork, because it can smoothen the pixelation out nicely, and it does it internally to the sprites or layers for better effect.

This one: HqMAME v2.2 based on MAME v0.147u3, dated 11-12-2012. Modded with HqMAME v2.16 scaler dlls, which seem to work fine. On Windows XP SP3 x86 that is.

Nice findings! I recall 0.147 was (and is) quite a good version. Just about all the essential stuff was supported by then, with great accuracy and performance.
I don't want to go too far off-track here, but to quickly sum it up, a few important versions of MAME for anyone who wants to tinker:

-0.37b15 and 0.37b16 (the first releases with DirectDraw bilinear filtering and hardware stretching, last of the 0.37bX line)
-0.57 (the first release with fixed protection for WWF WrestleMania and the first to include Revolution X, good for Midway fans)
-0.61 (the last release tested on consumer-grade hardware of the time [2002] where it was confirmed that every game ran at full speed at maxed-out settings. Starting with 0.62 you now needed a processor far, FAR beyond anything on the market at the time to run all games at full speed)
(I have a personal 'eight years' theory that starting with 0.62, you need a PC roughly 8 years newer than the MAME release itself to be able to run all games at full speed. So if your PC was manufactured in 2010, you're good to go with 0.62; if mfgd in 2014, you can run all games in MAME 0.106 [2006] at full speed.)
-0.67 was the last release where the original coordinator (Nicola Salmoria) was still overseeing the project; starting with 0.68 those responsibilities shifted to a young David "Haze" Haywood. This is very important because under Haze's 'regime' there were various changes made that sent MAME on the course it's on today, including the removal of a lot of hacks that made it possible for most games to run well on modest hardware. This is a great version to use if you're on an older PC, such as a PIII or an early P4.

Other notable versions, summed up a bit more succinctly:
-0.69 (easy to find ROMs for, has some bugs from 0.68 fixed and runs well on 'trash picked' PCs)
-0.72 (last release with DCS Sound System hacks that allowed 90s Midway games to run at full speed on weaker hardware)
-0.78 (easy to find ROMS for, support was added for a few more cool games, some emulation improvements made with others)
-0.84 (easy to find ROMs for, has more games supported and a few more emulation improvements, still runs well on older PCs)
-0.92 (last version before the sound engine was rewritten)
-0.106 (a very famous version that is still often referenced, and the last true 'classic' MAME before the video engine was rewritten)
-0.139 (easy to find ROMs for; this was also one of the last versions before the MAME devs began adding mechanical games)
-0.160 (easy to find ROMs for; by this point Raiden II/DX were now working, and other games had some emulation issues resolved; notably this is also the first version with OpenGL support, which improves performance for certain games)

If I had to recommend one MAME version, JUST one, to stick with and not change, it would be a toss up between 0.106 and 0.160 (yes, swapping two numbers). 0.106 is a reliable old version that will run on pretty much anything you find laying out in the street, but you need a PC made in the last decade or so to be able to play all of the games at full speed. By comparison 0.160 needs far beefier hardware to run well, but all of the simple 68K and Z80 stuff should run fine on it, and by that point a lot of the loose ends had been sorted out for the games that matter. I honestly don't think anything of true significance has been added since 0.160. (However, a lot of emulation improvements have been made for games that 0.160 supports, so that balances things out a bit.)

It's not to diss the hard work of the devs because I am impressed with how far MAME has come. But it's also a long ways removed from the lightweight, intuitive, fast emulator it used to be. It puts me in a quandary because on the one hand I do like to have a certain level of accuracy, but if you go too far in that direction you sacrifice speed. 0.106 & 0.160 are good balances in that sense.

And that concludes my off-topic MAME 'rant'...I'll try to keep it on-topic from here on out.

[gerwin]

Thanks for the list. With software of that kind, combined with an older OS, and particular use cases, versions matter a lot.

As for HqMame. I noticed some other versions gave stuttering audio on a Sandy bridge laptop. And from 2012 to 2016 executable size grew from 60MB to a whopping 120 MB.

[cmccaff1]

17 hours ago, gerwin said:

Thanks for the list. With software of that kind, combined with an older OS, and particular use cases, versions matter a lot.

As for HqMame. I noticed some other versions gave stuttering audio on a Sandy bridge laptop. And from 2012 to 2016 executable size grew from 60MB to a whopping 120 MB.

No problem!
Yeah, it does seem audio latency started to suffer a bit with later versions of MAME. This is another reason why it's good to stick to 0.106 and earlier versions.
Unless your favorite game wasn't properly supported in 0.106, there's little reason to go beyond that release except for emulation improvements (which you can only really take advantage of on sufficiently powerful hardware).

0.160, on a machine powerful enough to run it well, is pretty much the perfect balance: OpenGL was now supported, you still had DirectDraw support (which was deprecated after 0.170, though a few forks forward-ported the old code), and the compatibility list had grown to include some really cool games. Not only that, you can easily find 0.160 ROMs online, and this release still supports Windows 2000. (I believe 0.169 was the last release to support Win2K, though others may have to do some testing on that front.)

Trying to be careful here because I don't want to tick any of the admins off...if you want to talk more about MAME, feel free to PM me, my brother. I've really gotten into that emulator over the years. It's amazing how long it's been around--if you are crafty and clever enough you can find a release that will run well on pretty much anything. (The old 0.36/0.37bX releases are great on speed.)

[gerwin]

12 hours ago, cmccaff1 said:

Trying to be careful here because I don't want to tick any of the admins off...if you want to talk more about MAME, feel free to PM me, my brother. I've really gotten into that emulator over the years. It's amazing how long it's been around--if you are crafty and clever enough you can find a release that will run well on pretty much anything. (The old 0.36/0.37bX releases are great on speed.)

Well, II suppose if the admin or someone is annoyed they can move the MAME posts to a new thread.  If you want to talk about MAME in general this may be a good place.

Vogons: Console & Arcade Emulation https://www.vogons.org/viewforum.php?f=11

As for me, I don't really have more to say about it, I am afraid. I don't have actual arcade nostalgia. Just that some old games were told to have their best version on some arcade platform, whilst the DOS/Sega/Nintendo versions were inferior ports.

Edited March 18, 2023 by gerwin

[cmccaff1]

55 minutes ago, gerwin said:

I don't have actual arcade nostalgia. Just that some old games were told to have their best version on some arcade platform, whilst the DOS/Sega/Nintendo versions were inferior ports.

If it makes you feel better, I was born in '92, so I grew up during the declining years of arcades. Had a chance to play a lot of classics but the players who were born 10+ years before I was were much luckier.
I didn't really get into MAME until the mid-2000s, and at that time I think it was in the 0.9X range. I noticed that it was a fast emulator and seemed to have no issues, at least for the games that weren't 3D or used compressed hard disks (CHD).
Didn't realize it until many years later when I found that some games that used to run fine were now running into speed problems, and had to go back to an older version to get them running at full speed again, that I first experienced MAME when it was still in its 'prime'.

MAME went from a fast, well-performing emulator that focused on preserving the classics, to an absolute beast that sets out to try and emulate every device in existence. And kudos to the devs for that, because I'm happy MAME is still being developed 25+ years later! But if you're someone who just likes to play the games, you will have a much better and much more fun time with old versions.
For example, I fired up good old 0.89 last night and played through the old Taito "Superman" arcade game. Couldn't see any major differences between how Superman is emulated in 0.89 versus how the newest version handles it. It's lighter on CPU usage and is one of the last versions before the sound engine was rewritten, making it a reliable old version for Pentium 4 & Athlon 64-era PCs.

By the way, it may not be the most breaking news, but to try and contribute something else of value to this topic, I can confirm from testing that the latest version of the freeware Revo Uninstaller (2.4.2) (2022-12-06) still works in XP!
I bring it up because this program has been reliable for me over the years in safely removing unwanted software. Just the other day I used it to remove some bloatware from one of my dad's old laptops...he went from wanting to get rid of it to having it work like new. If I live to see the day when XP users get cut off, I'm never letting go of the final version, whatever it turns out to be.

https://www.revouninstaller.com/products/revo-uninstaller-free/

[AstroSkipper]

1 hour ago, cmccaff1 said:

By the way, it may not be the most breaking news, but to try and contribute something else of value to this topic, I can confirm from testing that the latest version of the freeware Revo Uninstaller (2.4.2) (2022-12-06) still works in XP!
I bring it up because this program has been reliable for me over the years in safely removing unwanted software. Just the other day I used it to remove some bloatware from one of my dad's old laptops...he went from wanting to get rid of it to having it work like new. If I live to see the day when XP users get cut off, I'm never letting go of the final version, whatever it turns out to be.

https://www.revouninstaller.com/products/revo-uninstaller-free/

Revo Uninstaller is a great piece of software. I use it for ages. The last XP-compatible version was Revo Uninstaller Pro 3.2.1. You could get it for free in several giveaways in the past. Use Google, and you will still find it easily! I can't link it here due to our forum rules.

Edited March 18, 2023 by AstroSkipper

[cmccaff1]

2 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

Revo Uninstaller is a great piece of software. I use it for ages. The last XP-compatible version was Revo Uninstaller Pro 3.2.1. You could get it for free in several giveaways in the past. Use Google, and you will still find it easily! I can't link it here due to our forum rules.

Much appreciated! I did notice that the "Pro" version now has Vista listed as the minimum supported OS. It's great to know there is a clear 'final' version for XP.
I will have to try it out one day (I saved it to my flash drive), but for now the freeware version suits my needs perfectly fine. Thank you!

[RainyShadow]

Just recently the regstry backups that Revo Uninstaller creates saved my Win10 when it commited suicide overnight (probably some f#$%d silent update). 

It was getting BSODs when entering sleep mode, i would wake up in the morning to see a BSOD. I tried uninstalling the last updates and using System Restore, this made it even worse. In the end it was even unable to boot. 

And, of course, repair reinstalls need to be run from a working OS, pfff. Clean install is not an option for me considering all the little tweaks and programs i have accumulated over the few years since i got this system.

 

Edited March 25, 2023 by RainyShadow

[AstroSkipper]

3 minutes ago, RainyShadow said:

Just recently the regstry backups that Revo Uninstaller creates saved my Win10 when it commited suicide overnight (probably some f#$%d silent update). 

It was getting BSODs when entering sleep mode, i would wake up in the morning to see a BSOD. I tried uninstalling the last updates and using System Restore, this made it even worse. In the end it was even unable to boot. 

And, of course, repair reinstalls need to be run from a working OS, pfff. Clean install is not an option for me considering all the little tweaks and programs i have accumulated over the few years since i got this system.

 

That's why I always make images of my system partitions to get back easily in a previous, correctly working state. 

[Iron_Wind0ws]

  

On 1/10/2023 at 3:48 PM, AstroSkipper said:

@UCyborg! Thanks for this tip! It works absolutely great!  I extracted this file from the latest version which is unfortunately no longer supported by XP and copied it to the appropriate folder in my installation. Now, YouTube works much better than before. Thanks again! 

Excuse me, could you tell me what is the latest version compatible with XP? I understand the latest one is "PotPlayerSetup-210209.exe" downloaded from "videohelp.com" or is there a newer one.

Edited March 26, 2023 by Iron_Wind0ws

[AstroSkipper]

27 minutes ago, Iron_Wind0ws said:

On 1/10/2023 at 3:48 PM, AstroSkipper said:

@UCyborg! Thanks for this tip! It works absolutely great!  I extracted this file from the latest version which is unfortunately no longer supported by XP and copied it to the appropriate folder in my installation. Now, YouTube works much better than before. Thanks again! 

Excuse me, could you tell me what is the latest version compatible with XP? I understand the latest one is "PotPlayerSetup-210209.exe" downloaded from "videohelp.com" or is there a newer one.

Hello @Iron_Wind0ws! The last XP-compatible version of PotPlayer or PotPlayer Portable is 1.7.21419.0 (210209). There is no newer one. Windows XP seems to have been abandoned by Daum.

Greetings, AstroSkipper

[UCyborg]

I was up late with my mind wandering. Got curious if latest VCDS version 23.3.0 would install and launch, so:

Status reads Questionable since the HEX-V2 interface wasn't connected to the car, I'd have to either carry this computer to the garage or get XP running on the laptop to see if it actually talks to the car. One would assume it should since it's the interface that does the talking and the program apparently can talk to the interface.

But the software is no longer supported and tested on Vista/XP/2000, so if something doesn't work, it won't be fixed.

[cmccaff1]

On 3/25/2023 at 6:20 PM, RainyShadow said:

Just recently the regstry backups that Revo Uninstaller creates saved my Win10 when it commited suicide overnight (probably some f#$%d silent update).

Glad to know that everything worked out for you! It just goes to show why Revo is such a trusted program after all of these years. I couldn't commend the developers more highly...with so many sketchy pieces of software out there, and with how much programs tend to change and decline over the years, Revo has stayed reliable with its functionality and performance even on very old PCs. Old school functionality in a new school world. Here's hoping the freeware version will continue to support XP for the foreseeable future!

[Country Cat]

On 1/10/2023 at 11:47 AM, legacyfan said:

does avast still fully function on xp or at least partly? I'm still looking for a good antivirus and am I'm willing to try other options if they work better 

The latest version of Panda Antivirus works on XP (somewhat, it's a bit buggy sometimes). I should mention that when I tested it I got a lot of false positives. I can't really say I'd recommend it.

ClamAV supports anything from W95 and up I believe, although there's no automatic scanning. You would have to scan things manually with it.

Edited April 2, 2023 by Country Cat