re: CADs new obsession - buying & modding 1up cabinets to support full MAME library

I have an x arcade dual joystick with trackball if someone is interested. I really dont need it anymore.

I had no issues connecting it to my pc. Did you follow the instructions that come with the stick? its basically a USB and should be plug and play

Theres a program you can download on the Xarcade website that should work with any pc. Maybe it can help detect it.

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how small is your apartment?

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It's a house, but this is the one room dedicated to retro gaming. It's already housing a full-sized Golden Tee cab, multiple PCs, a couple of CRTs, a PVM, and several flat screen monitors. Throw in a love seat and a couple of bookshelves and I'm fresh out of space. Because of this, I want to build this setup into one of the existing bookcases which should double as a pretty nice setup (it's got a fold-down part which is where I will set the joystick when playing games, otherwise it will all be closed up in there when not in use).

My only issue is running MAME on the PC in question...people have been offering advice for everything but that! When I start it up, it just spins and spins until I get the "MAME has stopped working" box...I'm running a freshly installed Windows 7, which could be the issue. Any tips on where to look for issues like this? Google hasn't been a lot of help.

Thanks for all the other feedback though, at least I know I'm in the right place

Delete MAME and go to the website to download and install again. Make sure you download the same version of mame as your rom set. Windows version has nothing to do with it.

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Has anyone tried out the retropie release for the Rpi4 yet? My Rpi4 should be arriving today and I’m eager to try it out! I saw I think it was ETA prime’s video about loading retropie onto the 4 via raspbian I think it was, but that was before the new release came out.

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It's still a test release that you have to load through raspbian, just easier than it was before. There are bugs still and they are still working on parts of it. Unless you are talking about an unofficial image.

Sorry, just getting back to all of this.

Definitely 64 bit. Tried mame 0214, which didn't work. Read somewhere to go with vers. 0174 and that one actually loaded...BUT, I get this error "88780078" for sound. It appears that it will function, but I definitely won't have sound. Working on a few different things for that 88780078 deal currently, appears to be a driver and/or DirectX issue.

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CAD, what exactly does this mean? Are you just running MAME, using emulation station, or something else?

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It's alot to go into but you have to first understand that the system is a little messy under the hood. There's no single 'mame' but rather a couple dozen emulators used for various games organized by emulation station (the UI) which launches the selected ROM to the correct core. In fact when you launch a game you actually have the option to change it (that press A screen that shows up briefly) and since there are at least 3 versions of mame in use if s game isn't running properly you can change which emulator is used at that time. I've done this with games that aren't working correctly using a particular mame build.

Retropie is the actual "OS" for lack of a better term that boots your Pi and connects your controllers, audio, display, etc. and this launches emulation station automatically to make the start up seamless. Emulation station is where all those cool themes are built and you can go into the settings at any time and download and use different ones. There are hundreds.

That's an oversimplification and I probably missed something but the takeaway here is there is lots of stuff going on that you really need to understand going forward.

I told you this was complicated

I'm still unclear about the relationship between ES, retroarch and retropie then. I thought retropie included the OS. So raspian underlies RP?

I need a chart.

and where does attract-mode come into play? is it yet another separate-but-equal front end?

Ok, hell let's try to get all the definitions in one place:

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RetroPie is a software package for the Raspberry Pi that is based on the Raspbian OS, a Linux distribution. It combines a full suite of tools and utilities that will allow you to quickly and easily run retro game ROMs for various vintage gaming emulators.

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Attract-Mode is a graphical frontend for command line emulators such as MAME, MESS and Nestopia. It hides the underlying operating system and is intended to be controlled with a joystick, gamepad or spin dial, making it ideal for use in arcade cabinets. Attract-Mode is open source and runs on Linux, OS X and Windows-based systems.

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EmulationStation is the official graphical frontend of the RetroPie project. EmulationStation is not an emulator, rather it is a polished game launcher that includes: Controller and keyboard support. ... Scraper for box art and game metadata.

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RetroArch enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through its slick graphical interface. Settings are also unified so configuration is done once and for all.

In addition to this, you will soon be able to run original game discs (CDs) from RetroArch.

RetroArch has advanced features like shaders, netplay, rewinding, next-frame response times, runahead, machine translation, blind accessibility features, and more!

RetroArch and libretro provide a way to take an existing emulator and load that emulator as a library or "core".

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Libretro is a simple API that allows for the creation of games and emulators. It is very simple in nature, yet very powerful. The simplicity of it all requires some explanation in order to truly grasp how useful it can be to your own projects.

When you choose to use the libretro API, your program gets turned into a single library file (called a ‘libretro core’). A frontend that supports the libretro API can then load that library file and run the app. The frontend’s responsibility is to provide all the implementation-specific details, such as video/audio/input drivers. The libretro core’s responsibility is solely to provide the main program. You therefore don’t have to worry about writing different video drivers for Direct3D, OpenGL or worrying about catering to all possible input APIs/sound APIs/supporting all known joypads/etc. This is none of your concern at the libretro core implementation level.

Any project that is ported to work with this API can be made to run on ANY libretro frontend – now and forever. You maintain a single codebase that only deals with the main program, and you then target one single API (libretro) in order to port your program over to multiple platforms at once.

Other projects benefit from our ever-expanding libretro core software library by implementing the libretro API inside their own projects. To this end, project such as XBMC have already begun writing a libretro driver based on the RetroArch reference libretro frontend.

RetroArch is the official reference frontend, and it is available on nearly all modern-day platforms. It is meant to be fast, simple, yet powerful.

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Retropie Supported Emulators
3do
Amiga
Amstrad CPC
Apple II
Atari 2600
Atari 5200 and 8 bit series
Atari 7800
Atari Jaguar
Atari Lynx
Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon
CoCo
Colecovision
Commodore 64/VIC 20/PET
Daphne
Dragon 32
Dreamcast
Famicom Disk System
FinalBurn Neo
GameCube
Game & Watch
Game Gear
Game Boy
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Intellivision
Macintosh
MAME
Master System
Mega CD/Sega CD
Mega Drive/Genesis
MESS
MSX
Neo Geo
Neo Geo Pocket
Neo Geo Pocket Color
Nintendo 64
Nintendo DS
Nintendo Entertainment System
Oric-1/Atmos
PC
PC-8800
PC-9800
PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16
PC-FX
PlayStation 1
PlayStation 2
Pokemon Mini
PSP
ResidualVM
SAM Coupé
Saturn
ScummVM
Sega 32X
Sega SG-1000
Sharp X1
Sharp X68000
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
TI-99/4A
TRS-80
Vectrex
Videopac/Odyssey2
Virtual Boy
Wii
WonderSwan
WonderSwan Color
Zmachine
ZX-81
ZX Spectrum

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