Help with playing MAME Arcade ROMS ON PiPlay
  • alintamer
    I've seen other forum posts on this, but I wasn't getting anywhere when I followed them. I have absolutely no experience with Linux and this is my first Raspberry Pi exposure, so please explain it as you would to a noob. Here's what I've done so far:

    1. I purchased a new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B and a SanDisk 32 GB microSD card
    2. I downloaded about 50 ROMs of 1990's and 2000's Arcade games (for example: The Simpsons Arcade, X-Men Arcade, Captain Commando, TMNT: Turtles in Time, Armored Warriors, etc). When I searched for them, I would type the name of the game and then attach "mame rom" at the end in the Google search box. The majority of the ROMs I downloaded were from
    3. I put the most recent piplay image (PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 8) on the microSD card and booted it up on the raspberry PI. I saw all of the emulators for SNES, Genesis, etc, but nothing for MAME Arcade games.
    4. I followed instructions on an instructables page and expanded the memory on my SD card.
    5. I typed the IP address of the Raspberry PI on my computer and used ROM uploader to upload the 50 ROMs I have. I first chose advMAME as the emulator to upload the roms too.
    6. When I didn't find the roms on the PI, I noticed the "Install Mame" option on the second menu in PiPlay....I ran that. A new emulator option appeared on the first PiPlay menu called Adv Mame and it had 50 entries. But every ROM I tried to run said "ROM not supported"
    7. I went back to my computer and ran the ROM Uploader but selected Mame4All as the emulator. The Mame4All option appeared on the PiPlay menu and it had 50 entries. Now whenever I try to run a ROM, it says the Mame4All directory could not be found

    Am I in the right place (using mame4all) in trying to get these Arcade ROMs to play on PiPlay? If so, how do I get it to work? I saw the forum post with the same issue someone was having with mame4all, but I tried all of the command lines that were suggested and nothing worked. I wasn't sure if that forum post was for the present version of piplay or an older one. If mame4all isn't the way to play these ROMs, what's the right way?

    I'm sorry about the length of my post, I just wanted to make sure I gave all of my info in hopes someone can help. It's been getting frustrating trying to figure out how to make it work.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
  • alintamer
    @mholgatem, Thank you so much for responding back to my post. I hadn't seen your comment until yesterday because I didn't get an email notification (normally I do), so I was getting worried no one would answer. I looked up this other post made a few days ago about the same issue but it wasn't helping. I had the mame4all_pi.zip file on my Raspberry PI 2, but like that other post said, it wasn't unzipped. But that post had me looking in the /home/pi/pimame/emulators/mame4all-pi directory for the zip file that was downloaded, which was wrong.

    Your response and the post you directed me to fixed all that. So as of yesterday, I've unzipped the mame4all_pi emulator into the /home/pi/pimame/emulators/mame4all-pi directory.

    But now I'm coming across the same problem I had when I tried to run the ROMs with AdvMame, it says the ROM is not supported. I figure that has to do with the romset that you were talking about. I had read about these differing romsets before getting my PI 2, but when I tried asking about it in the PiPlay forums, I didn't get a response. When I was looking for the roms (mainly from coolroms.com), I couldn't find where they were categorized as .37b5 or .106. So I just downloaded what they had on the website. The odd thing is, I tried the ROMs in AdvMame and Mame4All and both gave me the "ROM not supported" message. Are there some ROMs that don't work on either? Did I install the AdvMame correctly by using the installer in PiPlay? How do I find the correct romset for the games I want to play?
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    @alintamer - you need to edit the config files and make sure that they are pointing to the right folder for your roms. Normally the installer would do this for you.
  • alintamer
    How do I do that?
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    i will be following this thread, I am having the same Problem. Got m4all running, now stuck with advmame.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
  • alintamer
    I don't know how to look up files and edit them. I went to Exit in the PiPlay window to open up the Linux prompt and tried to type those lines of code in, but it kept saying it couldn't find the directory.
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    @alitamer. To make it a litte easier just type startx in the command line which will open up a typical desktop gui. In the toolbar on the top right of the screen there is a file manager icon. Just use this to navigate through the directories as you would in win explorer for example.
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    Sorry, top left of the screen next to the menu button
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    I just dont get it, something is totally strange with the file and folder structure using the install script for advance mame.

    1. the .advance folder is installed twice, once under /home/pi and once under /home/pi/pimame/config . Both folder installations have the same contents

    2. in the advancemame.rc file is refers to folders for example the roms, nvram, art etc. which are not present

    3. using the web interface and going to menu tools, the command listed in the table is just advmame. does it not need to be a full directory path?

    4. i see in other posts references to a file called advancemame.rc however I only have an advmame.rc

    5. finally when starting a rom is comes up with the error home/pi/pimame/.advance/advancemame.rc not found

    hope someone can help me out with this.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    there is no exisiting folder /pimame/.advance
    there is a /pi/.advance

    anyway, I just made a folder /pi/pimame/.advance and copied the contents. Now when I start a game it has found the file, says that permission is denied! the permissions for the files and folder were set for none to execute. Have now change the file permissions accordingly. Now when I try to start a game it runs through the startup as thugh it has now found the advancemame.rc file, however, it comes up with a list of 100 or so no fund errors. I am guessing that the completely file structure which is required for mame is completely missing.
  • alintamer
  • mholgatemmholgatem
  • gamerdad09gamerdad09
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/mame4allpi/files/

    In the mame4all_pi.zip there is a clrmame.dat file you can use to verify your files.
  • Cary123
    Hi everyone,

    I have a question regarding resolution on older games and how to get them to play in AdvMame in full screen. In my cabinet I am running a RasPi2 with 16GB MicroSD, PiPlay 8.8. I have a Dell 19" LCD installed in portrait, an HDMI adapter installed to the cable I have great video. So far I have edited the config.txt to get my screen rotated display_rotate=1 and dimensions corrected via the unquoted # manual overscan adjustments all is perfect there. As we know the older games run at 240x320 or something all game dependent however. I have played with the video options in AdvMame without desired outcome for most of the vintage older games that should be running in portrait. Lets use Ms.PacMan as an example how would I get it to use the full screen as it has nearly a 5 inch border around the game is running what looks like an aspect ratio is 4:3. So the question is how do get the older games to use a rotated 16:9 ratio in full screen? Everything works great of course some ROMs don't run for various reasons mostly says files missing. The core of the games obtained via the mame 1.5.1 at archive.org and only using a few of those that I actually wanted to play in my super-retro self built Galaxian cabinet. Thus the importance of full screen as those vintage games are the only ones I really care to run. Let me know if anyone out there has encountered this and how you corrected it or not.

    Best,

    Cary
  • Freddy
    Hi,
    I am a bit confused about this.
    My folder with roms are all correct according to clrmamepro and the .106 dat file.
    Still I get 99% errors when I try to load them in advmame.
    For example
    1x.bin not found
    2x.bin not found
    etc..

    How could this be?
  • Freddy
    I´ll try again but the same batch of roms played fine in RetroPie which is annoying
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    @Freddy i also have not managed to get one single game working in advmame which is a shame, there is a number of games which I want whch are not available in mame4all version. sftm.zip for example. if you find a solution to the problem please post.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    @englischdude - have you verified your roms using the clrmamepro utility?
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    @englischdude - yes sir. run through clrmamepro wthout any errors.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    @enlischdude - have you expanded your filesystem and set your memory split (via raspi-config)?
  • alintamer
    I followed what you suggested on March 21st and downloaded from that website you suggested. I got a Mame 0.160.dat file and a Mame Dats 0.037 executable. When I ran clrmamepro and clicked on Create to create a profile, it only let me pick the executable, not the dat file. So I selected the executable and gave it a name and put it in the PROFILES folder. Now what do I do?

    I clicked on the button that says Add Datfile and added the MAME 0.160.dat file and it created a new directory called NEW DATFILES. Now what do I do with that?

    In both cases, what do I do with the zipped romsets I have?
  • alintamer
    Can anyone help with what I posted on April 5th?

    I followed what you suggested on March 21st and downloaded from that website you suggested. I got a Mame 0.160.dat file and a Mame Dats 0.037 executable. When I ran clrmamepro and clicked on Create to create a profile, it only let me pick the executable, not the dat file. So I selected the executable and gave it a name and put it in the PROFILES folder. Now what do I do?

    I clicked on the button that says Add Datfile and added the MAME 0.160.dat file and it created a new directory called NEW DATFILES. Now what do I do with that?

    In both cases, what do I do with the zipped romsets I have?
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