I'm Stuck! What Now?

[Kevin Stock]

Hi There! I just received my Caanoo and I am having trouble installing any emulators. I inserted a 16gig SD cart and plugged the device into my mac. On the screen a new drive appeared called "No Name". I tried to drag and drop files and folders into the new drive, but it won't accept them. I cannot even make a now folder called games inside the new drive. When I pressed "get info" on the drive, it said it was not writable. I tried to reformat the drive to work with a mac, but my mac won't let me do that either!!!! Please help!! I wanna play Robotron!

 

[Orion4874]

Not familiar with Macs but just make sure the little locking switch on the card is not in the locked position.

 

[Kevin Stock]

Thanks Orion! Yup. My SD card was locked! Now I can drag folders and files into the new drive. I still cant get any roms working though. Since I use a mac, the software that came with the Caanoo is useless to me. I downloaded Mame4All and dragged the folder to the new drive that has the SD card in it. I then tried to downlaad a sample rom: robotron. The Robotron folder that appeared on my desktop had a bunch of little filed in it. I didn't know what to do next, so I simply tried to drag the whole folder into the roms category of Mame4all. This didn't work. Any thoughts about what I could try next to get any old MAME game working? Thanks again!

 

[Orion4874]

The thing with Mame is you have to have a compatible rom set. This version of Mame supports version 37b. Do a search for that, particularly torrents.

 

[Kevin Stock]

Wow Orion! I'd be completely lost without your help! I'm still not playing any roms, but I'm a bit further ahead... Anyhoo, I did what you said and downloaded a 37b rom set called "MAME GP2X_Wiz 2.2 Full romset". I also have downloaded the Mame4All emulator. I simply dragged the mame4all emulator folder into the Caanoo device (I'm not sure this was the correct thing to do). Then I tried to drag the zipped roms into the mame4all subfile called roms. It doesn't accept the roms. "Roms" appears to not be a folder at all, but a terminal program. Any advice on my next step? Thanks again for your help! I'm really lost on this!

 

[Orion4874]

Ok, I tried the exact same thing on my PC and it worked fine without having to change anything. It must be some weird mac thing and like I said I have no experience with them. You could try creating your own roms folder, putting the roms you want in it and then copying that over, maybe that will make a difference. You could try just copying over the entire roms folder from the set you downloaded, if you have a big enough card. Or take the sd card out of the Caanoo and use a card reader to move the roms over then reinsert it in the unit. I'm just guessing at these things so if none of that works start a new thread and name it "Need Help With Mac and Mame" or something like that, but just be as descriptive as possible so others with mac experience will see it.

 

[Jengo]

make sure that the file structure looks like this, create folders with these names if necessary.

at the root of your sd card create a folder called game, now copy the mame4all.ini (configuration file) into the game folder. Now drag the Mame4all foler into the game folder as well. I have uploaded some pics to aid you. (i know its not a mac but it should be the same except for maybe the drive letter).

First the game folder

Now inside the mame4all folder it should look like this. Pay attention to the file structure at the top (circled in red)

and thats it!! As long as it looks like this it should run. The operating system (MacOS X) shouldnt make any difference at all. As long as it can read and write to the drive (caanoo) that is all that is necessary.

 

[jboss25]

question though Jengo. Where did you put all the roms? I can't find in your second pic where they are. Oh and someone told me you can convert older mame roms to be played as 37b roms is that true or what?

 

[CKeichel]

question though Jengo. Where did you put all the roms? I can't find in your second pic where they are. Oh and someone told me you can convert older mame roms to be played as 37b roms is that true or what?

Roms go into the folder roms in the mame4all directory. In theory, you can convert older mame roms (or newer ones) to be played as 0.37b roms, but this only works, if you have the components of the roms, that are changed. Some changes are simply renamings, which can be done by a rom manager like clrmamepro, but often, the roms were redumped and then, you must have the newer files.
So it is hardly practical to try to make an 0.37b set out of other mame rom versions, better look for a 0.37b set on the net.

 

[Kevin Stock]

Jengo!!!!!! Thank you very much for fixing my problem! Sorry for the delay in getting back, but I've been too busy playing Robotron! Btw, how can I play pacman or robotron etc. against my girlfriend? I can only seem to make 1 player games. Thanks again!

 

[monstercameron]

i have an earlier problem, my 8gb sdcards stuck in readonly mode, pretty weird!