Arcade Emulators

[tnpir4002]

Hi gang,

Just found out the Pandora will run arcade emulators!  Yay...right?  Wrong...at least for me.  I can't get any of them to work properly, despite having ROMs in the right directories and everything.  I've tried a bunch of them but I'm just going to focus on three:

1)  MAME

2)  MAME4ALL

3)  MAMEX

Now, as far as I know, I have all of the latest versions of these things, and the ROMs that I have are all in the appropriate subfolders.  Yet, this is what happens when I run each one:

1)  Open MAME, and I get a mame1.06 Explorer-like menu, with "Select a ROM" at the top.  So I navigate to the directory where all of my ROMs are stored.  I choose one (ms_pac-galaga_v1.08.u13), and hit OK.  It prompts me to select display options, I choose "Normal" and hit OK.  Then I get a dialogue box that simply says "Oops..." at the top with no text.  I hit OK, it goes back to the OS.  I hit Cancel, it goes back to the OS.  What am I missing here?

2)  MAME4ALL.  As soon as I open it, I get this message:  "ERROR:  NO AVAILABLE GAMES FOUND."  This, despite the fact that the MAME4ALL/ROMS directory is full of them.

3)  MAMEX.  The program opens, appears to compile a list of games (once again, its ROMS directory is full of them), but it goes to a what looks like a terminal window with a mostly back screen and some text at the bottom--without a game list.

Now, either I've got a whole mess of useless ROMs here, or I'm missing something about how to use these emulators.  Help, anyone?

 

[ekianjo]

Try FBA first. it runs most games better than MAME.

 

[tnpir4002]

I liked FBA better for all of five seconds.  It opened fine, but it's reporting that none of the ROMs are present--and you guessed it, appdata/fba-dave18/roms has them all...

There has to be something I'm missing here.

 

[CAZMIESTER]

Sent you a message check your box also your image shows uncompressed roms roms should be zipped and all files for each game in one file

 

[tnpir4002]

^ And just like that the emulators start picking up the games.  But that doesn't solve all of my problems...

MAME4ALL won't run anything (I select a game and the screen goes black); MAME EX still pulls up that terminal-like window and won't actually do anything.  PanMAME just flickers and then it goes right back to the desktop, no menu, no nothing.

FBA gives the best result, which unfortunately is still far from perfect.

Ms. Pac-Man causes the emulator to freeze at "Now loading...loading sound (82s126.1m)...", and trying to run Galaga gives a screen full of jumbled computer code, then it goes to what I recognize as the old Galaga info screen (RAM OK, ROM OK, UPRIGHT, 1 COIN 1 CREDIT, 3 FIGHTERS, etc.)...except that it's upside down.

 

[CAZMIESTER]

^ And just like that the emulators start picking up the games.  But that doesn't solve all of my problems...

MAME4ALL won't run anything; MAME EX still pulls up that terminal-like window and won't actually do anything.  PanMAME just flickers and then it goes right back to the desktop.

FBA gives the best result, which is still far from perfect.

Ms. Pac-Man causes the emulator to freeze at "Now loading...loading sound (82s126.1m)...", and trying to run Galaga gives a screen full of jumbled computer code, then it goes to what I recognize as the old Galaga info screen (RAM OK, ROM OK, UPRIGHT, 1 COIN 1 CREDIT, 3 FIGHTERS, etc.)...except that it's upside down.

Unfortunatelly some games have said problem as far as mame4all is concerned im stumped have sent you a link

 

[tnpir4002]

^ I'm surprised FBA wouldn't work, the forums seem to agree with you that it's the best alternative there is.

 

[NoeleyC]

For mame4all are you sure you're using the right version of the game roms? It's quite an old version of them it uses(same version as for the GP2X). Apologies but I can't recall the exact version number at this time of the morning. ...

 

[tnpir4002]

Got it resolved now, on my fourth round of classic Galaga and already remembering the good old days as a kid!  Thanks cazmiester for pointing me in the right direction.

@stouffa:  that does appear to be the case, the versions I had didn't match what the emulators required.  I think I've got that sorted out now though.  (Knock on wood.)

 

[Asmo]

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15541-mame-exmame4all-incomplete-rom-list/#entry310292


Mame4all uses the 037b5 set, MameEX uses the much later 110 set. PanMame uses the 106 set.


Because C4aMame (the online scoreboard one) uses the same set as PanMame (the 106 set), you might want to set that up instead and get roms working in it specifically, so you'll be sure your roms will also work if you want to try C4aMame.


NB - you mention using one just called 'Mame' - there was a very early port of Mame 106, if it's that you might struggle. PanMame is the most forgiving with Romsets! MameEx is the most demanding that it's set is correct. With Mame4all in particular, more of the older games will need their audio samples file placed in the samples folder too.