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 - ok, so first off, welcome to PiPlay! Next, The free use permissions granted by advmame and mame4all prohibit us from distributing piplay with those emulators already installed, hence the installer.
    Now, unfortunately, just as we got the latest version out, they moved the source code for mame4all to a new location, so the installer doesn't work. But there are instructions here until we can get an update out that fixes this.

    The last thing that you need to be aware of is the fact that there are multiple versions of the same roms (they are called romsets). Mame4all requires version .37b5 and advmame require version .106. There is a free program out there called clrmamepro that can actually convert files to the correct romsets, but you are going to need to google 'clrmamepro tutorial' because it's not the most intuitive design.
  • 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
    if you run the controller config, advmame should automatically get pointed in the right direction. The file is located at
    /home/pi/pimame/.advance/advancemame.rc
    and the line should look like this:
    dir_rom /home/pi/.advance/rom:/home/pi/pimame/roms/advmame
    mame4all is located in:
    /home/pi/pimame/emulators/mame4all-pi/mame.cfg
    there is a line that looks like this:
    rompath=roms
    just change it to the path that you want it to be. (rompath=/home/pi/pimame/roms/mame4all)
  • 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
    sounds to me like something got installed weird.
    try this:
    cd ~/pimame/.advance
    cp advmame.rc advancemame.rc


    then try running advancemame
  • 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
    Hey Guys,

    Sorry I haven't checked in...it's been a busy week. So I followed @englischdude advice on startx and I found the config files. I then followed what @mholgatem said about the config files and made sure the mame4all-pi config file had the correct rompath. Similar to what @englischdude went though, the .advance folder was on the main pi directory. So I moved it to where @mholgatem said it should be and made sure the config file advancemame.rc had the correct line of code.

    I tried to run the Simpsons rom I got from [redacted] on both advmame and mame4all but both gave me this error: This rom is not supported.

    I went online to look into how this clrmamepro works but I've come to a snag. The first steps is to create a profile but it says I need to select the mame exe to create the profile. I don't know what that is. Also, these tutorials keep talking about DAT files...are these the roms? The roms I have are all zip files and none of their contents have a .dat file extension.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    @alintamer - ok, so here's how it works. There are different versions of every game out there (bug fixes, updates, region changes, etc). Mame4all runs the very specific .37b5 version, whereas AdvMame runs the more broad .106 version.

    The next thing to know is that there are rom sets and rom files. Rom sets are your zipped games. A set contains all of the rom files that it needs to run.

    A .Dat file, is just a text (xml) file that contains info about all of the rom files and sets for a particular version. You can find dat files at progettosnaps.net. Load a dat file into clrmamepro, then you can run the rebuilder or scanner against your roms.
  • beta_tester
    @alintamer: if you don't find the DAT files for a specific mame romset version, then you can still download an old version of mame.exe from here http://mamedev.org/oldrel.html
    (e.g. m37b5b.zip for 0.37b5 and mame0106b.exe for 0.106)
    unzip/un7zip the included mame.exe and tell ClrMamePro the location of the mame.exe and it will extract the information, what is normally in the DAT file from the mame.exe file.
    (all mame.exe files include a kind of database of what roms are expected/supported, what additional files are expected and its checksums and so on.
    the DAT file is a standallone version of that information.
    i think the DAT file is just the output you get via mame.exe -listxml
    so, with mame.exe -listxml > myMame.dat you can generate your own dat file for a specific romset version)

    PS.: for mame37b5 you may need a "dosbox" emulator or Windows 95,98,ME to grep the output of mame.exe, because it is a pure dos application

    EDIT: stupid me... you do not need to download the old mame versions, you already have them on your RPi.
    to get your DAT file for 0.106, you simply go to console/terminal console on your RPi and type in:
    advmame --listxml > mame106.dat

    mame4all does not have that option so i don't know if it is possible to generate a dat file. for that, you have to look on the internet.
    maybe it is
    /home/pi/pimame/emulators/mame4all-pi/mame -listinfo > mame37b5.dat
  • 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?
  • beta_tester
    @Freddy: did you copied all roms to your RPi or only selected ones?
    maybe its parent are missing/you forgot to copy as well.
  • 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.
  • beta_tester
    sftm.zip is working at AdvMAME, for sure.
    is your DAT for the correct version?
    is the kind of rom (re)compilation correct?
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    @enlischdude - have you expanded your filesystem and set your memory split (via raspi-config)?
  • alintamer
    @beta_tester: 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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