Help With Emulators

[Kumaki]

OK, I have had a heck of an adventure getting everything working, but now I've made some progress.


I have the following emulators now working...listed here just to show I'm not TOTALLY helpless...these I got working all by myself...


MAME4ALL Beta


SNES9X


PicoDrive


Coleco


Atari 7800


PC Engine (Hugo)


I can't seem to make FBA w/ CAPEX work with the romset I have, it recognizes none of my ROMS


Not sure how to use clrmamepro or what I want to upgrade them to...any help here is appreciated.


I have Stella on the Pandora, but no idea where to put the ROMS, it does not recognize the ROMS anywhere I put them...it wants me to create a directory for Stella. Do I do that first, THEN put the ROMS there?


I tried MSX, but no good, it is not recognizing the ROMS, even though I put them in the right roms folder.


While waiting on this, I'll try to work on this and get a few others up and running.


Any help, much appreciated.

 

[Asmo]

Most (not all, like Mame4all for example) of the emulators don't require the roms to be in a specific location - it's often more convenient to have a folder elsewhere for your roms, so that updating the software (which sometimes requires deleting the appdata folder) is easier, and so roms can be shared between several emulators if you have that setup.


IIRC, stella doesn't care where your roms are, you just navigate to the folder you created to keep them in and pick one.


For example, if I have VCS roms on my SD card (lets say I have named this card "My_SD"), in pandora/roms/atarivcs (the folders 'roms' and 'atarivcs' being ones I would have created) then when I want to load a rom in stella, I would navigate to media/My_SD/pandora/roms/atarivcs


As soon as I enter that folder, all the roms will appear in the selector.


If you have found the folder containing your vcs roms, and they still don't appear then there must be an issue with the roms themselves (maybe they're zipped - or have an unusual extension or something, try one from another source).

 

[Kumaki]

VCS roms?


My ROMS for Stella are all .A26


Is that the problem?

 

[mcobit]

Wat about trying to find it out yourself? Experiment a bit. Thats half the fun of using emulators and stuff imho

 

[Asmo]

VCS roms, yeah - the VCS was renamed the 2600 late in it's life. Doesn't make any difference whether the roms claim to be VCS or 2600, they are the same thing (but 2600 roms might be dumped from late era carts).


I think (don't have my games SD on me right now) all my roms are .bin extension - officially .a26 are supported in the PC version of stella, I can't be certain if that's the case on Pandora.


You could try renaming the extension on one of your roms to .bin, and see if it recognises it then. In all probability if it does, it should work - if not, you'll know to go looking for .bin versions!

 

[Kumaki]

VCS roms, yeah - the VCS was renamed the 2600 late in it's life. Doesn't make any difference whether the roms claim to be VCS or 2600, they are the same thing (but 2600 roms might be dumped from late era carts).


I think (don't have my games SD on me right now) all my roms are .bin extension - officially .a26 are supported in the PC version of stella, I can't be certain if that's the case on Pandora.


You could try renaming the extension on one of your roms to .bin, and see if it recognises it then. In all probability if it does, it should work - if not, you'll know to go looking for .bin versions!

See, now that helps!


No problem trying to find out for myself WHERE they should go...I just need to be sure I have the right extension on them!!


Otherwise, they work nowhere.


Also, with regards FBA... would not think clrmamepro would work...they are NOT MAME roms, they are FBA. And I never knew of there being any more than one version of FBA ROM.


Anyone who has FBA working on their Pandora, if they could please help me with regards to knowing if there is a correct romset?


I also had a problem with MSX...in that case, my ROMS are all .rom files. Is there a different extension to use?


As to


Stella...a few of my ROMS WERE .bin files, not finding them. I'm gonna try working with this a bit.

 

[Kumaki]

OK, now I got Stella working. It takes my .a26 as well as my .bin files, in case anyone else is interested.


My problem before was that I was putting a roms folder inside of the .stella folder, in appdata.


the rom folder is ideally situated in the same folder as the .stella folder. This worked for me.


It took me a bit of experimenting to find out which controls work, but I have it and played a nice game of Asteroids to verify it all works. Now if I can solvve FBA and MSX...we are in good shape for those. Trying some others, if anyone could help me out with MSX....does it need a different file extension than .rom?

 

[mamemaniac]

For FBA use zipped roms from a late MAME romset (0.144 or 0.145 shoud be ok). Dont use the cached ones from your Dingoo with FBA extension because the Pandora has a lot more RAM than the Dingoo so caching is unnecessary.

 

[Kumaki]

Here is my current list:


Have and working:


MAME4ALL Beta


SNES9X


PicoDrive


Coleco


Atari 7800


PC Engine (Hugo)


Stella


Commodore 64


Sega Game Gear


NES GB/GBC - by the way, GnGB is a million tmes better than GnuBoy.


NES - but still can't figure out how to exit the ROM in order to get to the menu to exit the emu.


Want and not working:


FBA


MSX


UAE4ALL - it wants some "kickstart" file??


Intellivision - wants "grom.bin" which I have, but no idea where to put it...it won't let me access it off the SD Card, when I put it on there, it is not creating a nice folder for me in appdata.


NES GBA - it wants some file which is not included in the download, and no instructions included as to what it wants, where you get it, or where you put it once you get it.


Handy (Atari Lynx) - it wants a "lynxboot.img" file which is not included. I downloaded a copy of that file, but when it asks you to pick where it is, it never lets you pick from the SD card, which is the only place you could save it from. Even when you download this from the PNDManager, it is missing the right file.


SNK NeoGeo - works, but reads none of my ROMS. Tried downloading some roms and kept in zip form still did not work. also does not read .mvs files.


Still to try:


Sony Playstation (has anyone gotten Dragon Warrior 7 to work on this??)


That's basically it.


Then I need a music player. Maybe one that also plays a couple of videos.

 

[Kumaki]

For FBA use zipped roms from a late MAME romset (0.144 or 0.145 shoud be ok). Dont use the cached ones from your Dingoo with FBA extension because the Pandora has a lot more RAM than the Dingoo so caching is unnecessary.

Hummm...where I got mine before, they separated out FBA Roms from MAME Roms.


I was getting 37b5 MAME from the same site I was getting FBA Roms.


I guess I'll have to search around or beg for a little help with this, lol


Seems the roms I have that are unzipped, and work on Dingoo...should work on Pandora, but they do not seem to....

 

[mamemaniac]

For FBA use zipped roms from a late MAME romset (0.144 or 0.145 shoud be ok). Dont use the cached ones from your Dingoo with FBA extension because the Pandora has a lot more RAM than the Dingoo so caching is unnecessary.

Hummm...where I got mine before, they separated out FBA Roms from MAME Roms.


I was getting 37b5 MAME from the same site I was getting FBA Roms.


I guess I'll have to search around or beg for a little help with this, lol


Seems the roms I have that are unzipped, and work on Dingoo...should work on Pandora, but they do not seem to....

As i said use zipped roms from late MAME set, 0.37b5 is outdated and wont work with FBA.


For some games you shoud also try PanMame, sometimes it performs better than FBA (ie Chase Hq).

 

[Kumaki]

OK, I have NES working, but I'll be DANGED if I can figure out...or find instructions anywhere...for how you quit a game to get back to the menu to quit the emulator...I have had to resort to either taking out the battery....or using the Pandora button and logging out...and then logging back in there has GOT to be a better way, but I have tried any number of key combos and no good. Please help...these downloads do NOT come with "readme" files. I've tried Google...I've tried sourceforge...I've tried everything I can think of on my own to find instructions and no good.


The emu works, but there HAS to be a more elegant way to exit the emu...

For FBA use zipped roms from a late MAME romset (0.144 or 0.145 shoud be ok). Dont use the cached ones from your Dingoo with FBA extension because the Pandora has a lot more RAM than the Dingoo so caching is unnecessary.

Hummm...where I got mine before, they separated out FBA Roms from MAME Roms.


I was getting 37b5 MAME from the same site I was getting FBA Roms.


I guess I'll have to search around or beg for a little help with this, lol


Seems the roms I have that are unzipped, and work on Dingoo...should work on Pandora, but they do not seem to....

As i said use zipped roms from late MAME set, 0.37b5 is outdated and wont work with FBA.


For some games you shoud also try PanMame, sometimes it performs better than FBA (ie Chase Hq).

but here's my problem....I AM NOT USING 37B5 OR ASNY OTHER MAME FILES...I'M USING FBA FILES. I downloaded the roms as FBA, not as MAME.


They work on Dingoo.


FBA here doesn't even recognize them...not just the .fba files but even the .zip files. Nothing.

 

[mamemaniac]

After you launch FBA use rescan command, your roms should now be detected.

 

[CAZMIESTER]

OK, I have NES working, but I'll be DANGED if I can figure out...or find instructions anywhere...for how you quit a game to get back to the menu to quit the emulator...I have had to resort to either taking out the battery....or using the Pandora button and logging out...and then logging back in there has GOT to be a better way, but I have tried any number of key combos and no good. Please help...these downloads do NOT come with "readme" files. I've tried Google...I've tried sourceforge...I've tried everything I can think of on my own to find instructions and no good.


The emu works, but there HAS to be a more elegant way to exit the emu...

For FBA use zipped roms from a late MAME romset (0.144 or 0.145 shoud be ok). Dont use the cached ones from your Dingoo with FBA extension because the Pandora has a lot more RAM than the Dingoo so caching is unnecessary.

Hummm...where I got mine before, they separated out FBA Roms from MAME Roms.


I was getting 37b5 MAME from the same site I was getting FBA Roms.


I guess I'll have to search around or beg for a little help with this, lol


Seems the roms I have that are unzipped, and work on Dingoo...should work on Pandora, but they do not seem to....

As i said use zipped roms from late MAME set, 0.37b5 is outdated and wont work with FBA.


For some games you shoud also try PanMame, sometimes it performs better than FBA (ie Chase Hq).

but here's my problem....I AM NOT USING 37B5 OR ASNY OTHER MAME FILES...I'M USING FBA FILES. I downloaded the roms as FBA, not as MAME.


They work on Dingoo.


FBA here doesn't even recognize them...not just the .fba files but even the .zip files. Nothing.

I sent you a pm with the info for FBA fba is updated to mame's romset older fba romsets some games will work others wont all mame roms from the site i told you about will. As mamemaniac said ignore the extension and cache files the dingoo uses pandora has 8x the memory of the dingoo.

 

[PowerGod]

Follow this guide for every MAME app, even for FBA cause it uses the SAME roms, the important thing is to use the RIGHT VERSION of the dat file for every app.


1) Get the LAST VERSION of MAME roms


2) Follow the steps in the following guide to prepare the roms for the application you want, but remember the version of the dat file needed for every app !!!


If you want to use all of them, you will need to repeat the process 4 times with a diferent dat every time, so to have 4 different collection of roms, all created from the same pack of roms (the latest mame version).


MAME4ALL v.0.036


MAME v.0.106


PanMAME v.0.106


MAME-EX v.0.110 (for all the MAME versions you can find the dats HERE)


FBA v.0.2.97.24 (dat file HERE)


now that you have all the dats required and the latest set of mame roms, follow this guide, just use the dat you need instead of the "106"


Mame 106 rom guide

 

[yoshi41dragon]

SNK NeoGeo - works, but reads none of my ROMS. Tried downloading some roms and kept in zip form still did not work. also does not read .mvs files.

Try ROMs from a recent MAME version (incl. neogeo.zip BIOS) and forget about .mvs files (they are only for the Dingoo)...

 

[TrashyMG]

All those Mame ROMs I collected in 1998 are useless


Which isn't a huge deal for me.. never did play them much.