Mame 106 Any Thoughts?


Wow... I've been away for a good while...

And here the Pandora is released and the MAME shots looks wonderful. I must admit, I had doubts about the Pandora getting done. But I'm glad to see things have worked out in the end. I may just order one again sometime. Haven't played MAME or any emulator in ages. Must be fun on the Pandora.

Hmm, I have lots of catching up to do around here... wonder how the controls are? Did DaveC do a good job? ;-)
 
Hey Prophet. :)

Scroll through the last page or two of Pandorapress posts for the digest. Although I'm struggling to keep up with things myself at the moment, there's so much happening on the boards. Also check the "quotes thread for the blog" for a list of video links from new owners. :)
 
Thanks Gruso, I'll do that.

This is really quite amazing stuff. Has a group of enthusiasts ever come this far before with a project like this? I can't think of anything really. I know the tech world will consider Pandora late and old now, but it's still quite a feat that it made it to completion. And nothing, that I'm aware of (not that I'm as savvy now as I once was, I'm not) offers the gaming/emulation-specific controls of the Pandora.

Not sure I'm gonna get one, only cuz I don't really play games very much anymore. But hey, maybe I'll get my groove back... who knows...
 
hey Prophet :)

SteveM -- MAME4ALL is currently 'floating' unadopted for Pandora (I think Franxis is not planning on getting a Pandora?); Historically, Mame4all is aimed at DC and gp2x/wiz (maybe dingoo now?), and based on a much older (much faster :) MAME (0.37 + carry backs from later mames); its a very redone codebase (and nicely done!), but I don't see it 'competing' with a later MAME; ie: I would expect that if Mame4all is building by someone, a later mame still has a place (for the different covered romsets.)

*shrug*

Theres two mainlnes for MAme4all last I checked; chui's original DC builds, which stopped updating a couple years ago; builds like a piece of cake, but relativly dated. Needs some asm tweaking I think, I had lots of compatability issues with one of the asm cpu cores, but I forget now, I was rushing it a month ago and left it :)

Theres also Franxis main Mame4all, which is very redone from the original Mame; it needs lots of work, as its not SDL based and is pretty clever; new video and audio code and such. Probably coudl be adapted to SDL pretty easily, but a /dev/fb build would be slick.

(That said, Pandora SDL needs a champion as well; it works great, but it needs hw surface support and could probably be sped up quite a bit.)

*shrug again :)*

jeff
 
I've just received my Pandora. Sitting here next to me trying to get bluetooth to connect with my Mac.

Anyway, If Franxis is not interested in porting MAME4ALL I'll probably do it for Pandora.

Yes, this is the good old 0.37b5 version that runs on the GP2X/Wiz/Dingoo A320 and even GP32.

It is however very fast - much faster than 0.106 will ever be. The trade off is it's game count is somewhat lower and some games are not emulated as "perfectly" as what 0.106 could do.

However I think it plays loads of great games very well and is a perfect candidate for Pandy-Box.

I haven't looked yet, but I will need to get a toolchain up and running - but I only have Mac OS X - anything available in that area? ( I guess I should have a look-see)
 
skeezix said:
Theres also Franxis main Mame4all, which is very redone from the original Mame; it needs lots of work, as its not SDL based and is pretty clever; new video and audio code and such. Probably coudl be adapted to SDL pretty easily, but a /dev/fb build would be slick.

jeff
Click to expand...

I ported this to A320 and which uses /dev/fb0 (only as this is all that's available).

I just checked Pandy - /dev/fb0, fb1 and fb2. Triple Buffer! Hooray!
Man I think I am a bit over the A320's missing features. :)
 
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skeezix said:
SteveM -- MAME4ALL is currently 'floating' unadopted for Pandora (I think Franxis is not planning on getting a Pandora?); Historically, Mame4all is aimed at DC and gp2x/wiz (maybe dingoo now?), and based on a much older (much faster :) MAME (0.37 + carry backs from later mames); its a very redone codebase (and nicely done!), but I don't see it 'competing' with a later MAME; ie: I would expect that if Mame4all is building by someone, a later mame still has a place (for the different covered romsets.)
Click to expand...
In that case I might just carry on experimenting with SDLMAME and see what happens. I think it goes back to version 0.110 or so, not sure. Might just be old enough to get some decent performance out of it.

(That said, Pandora SDL needs a champion as well; it works great, but it needs hw surface support and could probably be sped up quite a bit.)
Click to expand...
That would be nice: automatic speed increase for a lot of games/emulators in one fell swoop :)
 
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slaanesh said:
I've just received my Pandora. Sitting here next to me trying to get bluetooth to connect with my Mac.

Anyway, If Franxis is not interested in porting MAME4ALL I'll probably do it for Pandora.

Yes, this is the good old 0.37b5 version that runs on the GP2X/Wiz/Dingoo A320 and even GP32.

It is however very fast - much faster than 0.106 will ever be. The trade off is it's game count is somewhat lower and some games are not emulated as "perfectly" as what 0.106 could do.

However I think it plays loads of great games very well and is a perfect candidate for Pandy-Box.

I haven't looked yet, but I will need to get a toolchain up and running - but I only have Mac OS X - anything available in that area? ( I guess I should have a look-see)
Click to expand...

Great News - glad you are on the early list. And you are probably starting at the right point.

It's probably best to take a "game list" approach to this. See what Mame4all can't do/does not support, and then someone can look at a later build for supporting those games etc..etc..
 
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slaanesh said:
I haven't looked yet, but I will need to get a toolchain up and running - but I only have Mac OS X - anything available in that area? ( I guess I should have a look-see)
Click to expand...
Macports has some ARM cross-compiler stuff, not sure if it's suitable for Pandora though.
 
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x68000 said:
One for Trooper :D Works fine at 600Mhz

1zlfbfb.jpg
Click to expand...

Aahhhh!, Cool, Thanks x68000. :D

I have only just got round to reading this thread, Otherwise i would have seen this much sooner.

Trooper
 
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^Thought you must have missed it!

Just want to say that having Slaanesh onboard now is fantastic news for the Pandora scene. Can you believe that this guy almost single handedly keeps the GP32 scene alive!

Btw, Great to see you posting again Prophet! Your cool and well considered posts have been missed!
 
slaanesh said:
I ported this to A320 and which uses /dev/fb0 (only as this is all that's available).

I just checked Pandy - /dev/fb0, fb1 and fb2. Triple Buffer! Hooray!
Man I think I am a bit over the A320's missing features. :)
Click to expand...

Slaanesh is officially in the building :D
 
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Thanks everyone.

As for the toolchain I could try good old buildroot - though it's quirky with Mac OS X.
Building toolchains isn't my favorite thing in the world, I always find that I am a lot happier once I have a good toolchain up and running.

Surely there's Mac OS X devs out there wanting a Panda toolchain?

As for MAME4ALL I think it should be fairly easy to port across. I'll use a combination of the A320 port and Wiz build.

One last random thought: Are we sure that Franxis doesn't want to do MAME4ALL for Pandora?

EDIT: Oh yeah, I got my Pandora early because I think I was very early in the queue.
I especially got up at 2am local time (or whatever it was, damn, it was like 18 months ago!) at the initial pre-order time and ordered my Pandy.
 
^ Franxis basically said that he was not going to support the Pandora some time ago (unless he has since changed his mind). Craig also offered him one, but he declined.

I'm sure Craig can give you some further info.
 
Alerino said:
didn't zodttd start porting mame4all?
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?s=&showtopic=44848&
Click to expand...

See, this is why we have public, easily forked repositories. :p
 
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slaanesh said:
Surely there's Mac OS X devs out there wanting a Panda toolchain?
Click to expand...
Let us know if you get that sorted out. Just now I'm building everything on Linux, but it'd be nice to be able to do so on my MacBook too.
 
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