Running MAME on Linux - feasible? RAID helpful/hurtful?

Are you running that on Linux? I like the old school games and it would be awesome to play Commodore, NES, and Atari games on my main computer.

I have an old XP laptop I use for games like Civ 2 that run best on that platform.

Are you running that on Linux? I like the old school games and it would be awesome to play Commodore, NES, and Atari games on my main computer.

Yes, Retropi and the aforementioned Botocera run on linux. They will run those platforms on your hardware with ease.

Missed your RAID question, it's a nice to have thing if you don't have a NAS or something to store your collection on, but relying on RAID to act as a backup is never a good idea.

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you should be able to hold an entire MAME library on a flash drive.

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Really? I thought I read somewhere that a full library would take up about 1 TB or so. Maybe that's if you have every ROM for every emulator?

I know way back in the day (20 years ago or so) I had maybe 15-20 MAME ROMs and they seemed pretty small individually. But I thought maybe things had changed.

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would it be worth setting up multiple hard drives and configuring RAID (either mirroring or striping)? I think I read somewhere that a full MAME ROM collection is 1TB+, and I was thinking having some redundancy might not be a bad idea.

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If the redundancy is for backup purposes, then RAID is not a good fit for that. Several RAID levels store data redundantly, but the purpose of the redundancy is increasing uptime or availability.

If you want to use multiple drives, I would just set up a backup system to make a simple copy. RAID brings along its own headaches like rebuild procedures and difficulty in moving to a new machine, and the only real advantage of increased availability is kind of pointless for a personal arcade machine. Plus you still wouldn't have a backup.

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Recs for a USB game controller?

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i have a cabinet so this is not really in my wheelouse; i'm more of an old-school arcade type of person so i only dip my toe into the console emulators every once in awhile like to play Mario 64. i bought a cheap bluetooth controller off amazon with good reviews. i think they're all about the same so i wouldn't sweat that.

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Best source for roms? (I know that may be a tricky question on this board).

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archive.org is your friend.

seriously, how much are you wanting to get into this? you probably want to flash images with roms included to minimize your work. i would rather stick needles in my eyes than try to build up a brand new collection of roms from scratch.

if you understand how torrents work, start here. if nothing else there are good forums but its going to take you a minute to calibrate all of the info on this site.

LINK

This is a little more friendly; what Pi hardware are you running? 4? 5? take a look here. i can help you with questions about the images; these are easier to download and you don't need to set up a torrent client.

LINK

Seriously, keep a stash of USB drives handy and just try out several different ones until you find the one that most fits your asthetic. rather than wiping out a 'candidate' image, just install the next image on a different usb disk. then changing your mind is as simple as swapping USB #1 for USB #2. its dumb to erase an image after you've spent time playing with it. also you may find something works better for a given game on one image than another and rather than figure out why (you'll never figure out why ) just swap the image and go check the settings.

usb drives are cheap. load up on them.

there are images that are arcade heavy, console heavy, 4:3 video optimized, 5:4 video optimized, 16:9 video optimized, vertically mounted video optimized, etc etc etc.

truly a warriors' stash of images.

i personally like 'retro-man' images; his are SWEEEET and they have these random 1980s-themed videos that randomize and play on startup to really get you in the mood.

FYI once you have retropie and retroarch figured out, then you'll still need to download metadata for the full experience; there are automated tools built-into the images to pull that stuff down; screenshots of each game, tiy video clips of gameplay that appear when you scroll to that game, little bits of trivia about the game itself (awesome stuff!), marquee artwork, panel artwork, etc etc etc.

this is an endeavor and a labor of love; think of it as any hobby; you're going to have to get your hands dirty and you'll spend as much time tweaking the UX and indivdiual game controls as you will enjoying the play.

good luck i'm here to answer questions.


oh, and the linux/retropie reddit and forums are full of A*S*S*H*O*L*E*S*. don't expect much but derision and scoffing if you so much as dare ask a question about something covered somewhere in the 500,000,000 posts on that site. God help you if you don't ready all 500 million posts before you ask a simple question about something not working right.

one last thing; let me know if you want me to take a quick video of this.

sometimes a video is worth a thousand words.

i can show you roughly the process from plugging in the usb, to what the UX looks like upon boot-up and then selecting a game.

its drinking from a firehose in the beginning. an image is about 95% of the work but don't sleep on the other 5%.

"The sneakiest thing the IMAGE CREATORS did was convince the world flashing the image file onto a USB disk and plugging it into a raspberry pi was all you had to do"

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Every USA game for every gameboy through advance games, NES, SNES, game gear, master system, genesis, 32x, n64 is like 15 gigs. I have a bunch of other stuff too.

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Yep, it's not until Gamecube that the file size gets substantially bigger. I think my Gamecube ROMs folder is like 500gigs

lol i found some notes i made to myself in a notepad file a long time ago. these may or may not be helpful; some of the issues may be fixed by now but this is a pretty good list of the 'behind the scenes' stuff you'll going to need to tweak:

Keep in mind, i was using a SD 4:3 monitor so some of these settings around monitor resolution are specific to that. during my setup; these were the things that i had the hardest time figuring out because...unix...


1. Audio
- video startup (see below to fix scratchy audio)
- background music while browsing games (on/off)
- thumbnail videos audio
- interface audio (button presses, etc.)

2. Video
- overlay vs backgrounds
- shaders

3. UXs
- select your theme
- edit .xml file to tweak fonts, etc.

4. Network
- make sure you connet to your wifi & get IP address
- open your PC and type \\ (NOT //) \\198.182.50.50 (whatever you get from the pi..might have to login: pi/PlayBox)
- you'll have access to the config, roms, bios & retropie folders to make simple tweaks if needed

5. Controls (do for both mame 2003 & mame 2003 plus)
- retroarch 'quick menu' : options :
--> input interface = "simultaneous"
--> legacy remapping = ON
- video settings - bilinear filter = OFF
- 'overrides/save core overrides' then 'resume game'

- **Setting Core Options per-ROM
You may prefer to apply Core Options to a specific ROM, and not for all ROMs within that core. To do so,
--> change whatever you like
--> select Create game-options file at the top of the OPTIONS menu. This will create a Core Options .opt file specifically for that ROM (this exists within):
--> /configs/all/retroarch/config/[core] (mame 2003, mame 2003 plus, etc)
--> The file will be ROMname.opt. To remove the configuration, delete the file.

-- IMPORTANT!! GO BACK TO EMULATION STATION AND HIT RESTART SYSTEM TO PERMANENTLY SAVE CHANGES

*******

https ://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/22306/update-docs-for-lr-mame2003-plus-artwork-backdrops-bezels

go into RGUI -> Quick Menu -> Options -> Display artwork and set it to enabled. You will have to exit the emulator altogether and launch the game, but it will save the preference for artwork for all games.

This setting and the artwork resolution setting are saved in /configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg as

mame2003_display_artwork = "enabled"
mame2003_art_resolution = "1"

1280x1024 repository of bezels:

https ://github.com/UDb23/RPie-1280-ovl

https ://github.com/UDb23/RPie-1280-ovl/blob/master/arcade/dkong/dkong-AH.cfg

IMPORTANT PATHS:

/roms/arcade/gamelist.xml
/roms/arcade/media


where to put artwork:
/BIOS/mame2003/artwork (or other emulator) (REPLACE ART AND SAMPLES IN ALL EMULATORS!!!)

***delete existing bezels here and replace from location below*** or else you'll end up with 16:9 horizontal game bezels which you dont want.
\configs\all\retroarch\overlay\ArcadeBezels

5:4 Bezels online: https: //mega.nz/file/Ke4RAJgS#oC436ah4sN7ry2eN_wBkUnDqT5uH1wgpTBCGbV_6FNg

1600x1200 bezels are here:
\arcade1up\playing_around\bezels_loading_screens\configs\all\retroarch\overlay\ArcadeBezels


17" and 19" Dell native resolution: 1280x1024 60hz
20" Dell native resolution 1600x1200 60hz

instructions bill: 192.168.50.115

- connect to wifi network
- raspi-config enable ssh
- update virtualman
- update raspi-config
- check on audio output

sudo nano /opt/retropie/supplementary/splashscreen/asplashscreen.sh

scroll way down & look for this line:
omxplayer --no-osd -o both -b --layer 10000 "$line"
change to: omxplayer --no-osd -o local -b --layer 10000 "$line"

How do I change turn off the theme randomizer?
Options -> Visuals and themes -> Hursty's themes -> Disable theme randomizer
- install 4/3 and 5/4 UXs (see marvyn's modified themes)

-- To install skyscraper --
update retropie setup script
exit to ES, hit F4
type: sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh
go to optional packages for skyscraper
hit UPDATE from Binary
if not logged in, edit config file for skyscraper: userCreds="user:password" <-- your user and password you created
sound settings - omx audio device LOCAL ONLY!
- must also set output to headphone 3.5 jack under options

- in retroarch menus
- 'enable mame menu' option (to map joysticks, etc)) then turn off when satisfied
- turn off bezels for full-screen games
- disable "Bilinear filtering" to remove the blurring.
- go to 'quick menu/overrides/save core overrides'.
- exit to ES then restart the whole system to remember the changes.
--? bezel as well as overlay?
-- fix video files

DONT FORGET!!!!
To enable "A" option to switch emulators during launch
- options/system/run command (enable first 3 options)

Start a game with mame2003-plus.
Enter the RetroArch configuration.
-> Quick Menu/Options/Input Interface -> change to "keyboard" (only) or "simultaneous (both)"
-> (Re-)Enable the Mame menu by setting "Options" > "Activate MAME Remapping" to ON.
-> In a game, invoke the Mame menu with TAB on the keyboard and set "UI Select" to the desired controller button in "Input (general)".



-- Logging into PI via SSH to modify display config:
For 19" & 17" : hdmi_mode=35 1280x1024 60 Hz (https ://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Video_mode_options)
For 20" : hdmi_mode=51 1600x1200 60

login: pi
pwd: PlayBox

sudo nano /boot/config.txt


disable_splash=1
display_default_lcd=0
disable_overscan=1
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=51
#hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080
hdmi_drive=1
dtparam=audio=on
gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256
gpu_mem_1024=384
gpu_mem_2048=512
gpu_mem_4096=512
program_usb_boot_mode=1
enable_uart=1
[pi4]
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2
[all]
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d


(modify these for 1280x1024 instead of 1600x1200) ----

\configs\all\retroarch
\configs\all\retroarch\config\mame2003_liberto.cfg

custom_viewport_height = "1200"
custom_viewport_width = "1600"
video_fullscreen = "true"
video_fullscreen_x = "1600"
video_fullscreen_y = "1200"
video_window_x = "1600"
video_window_y = "1200"
video_windowed_fullscreen = "true"
video_windowed_position_height = "1200"
video_windowed_position_width = "1600"
video_windowed_position_x = "0"
video_windowed_position_y = "0"


best to do this while in game so you can see the results immediately.
1. Hit your hotkey to bring up Retroarch.
2. You should be in the Quickmenu. Hit your back button to go to the main menu.
3. From the Retroarch main menu navigate to Setting > Video > Scaling.
4. Custom Scaling should already be on, if not, turn it on. The change the scaling to resize and move the video output.
5. Make sure you save when you're done. Main Menu > Configuration File > Save Current Configuration

Nintendo 64! VERY IMPORTANT for Mario!
\configs\n64\emulators.cfg --> change the 1920x1080 lines to 1600x1200 on every line you see them.

DAPHNE
- go to /roms/daphne/[game]/*.commands (change to 1600 x 1200)

OPENBOR
- change screen resolution or map controls AFTER loading emulator (under OPTIONS)

Handheld games here are my values.:

Atari Lynx: X/299 Y/281 Width/1014 Height/648
Game Gear: X/316 Y/171 Width/1004 Height/747
GameBoy: X/367 Y/147 Width/864 Height/787
GameBoy Advance: X/296 Y/244 Width/1075 Height/718
GameBoy Color: X/334 Y/198 Width/933 Height/806
Neo-Geo Pocket: X/310 Y/89 Width/911 Height/835
Virtual Boy: X/144 Y/234 Width/1244 Height/785


DAPHNE MODS

cd /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh daphne clean
sudo git clone https ://github.com/pjft/daphne-emu/ tmp/build/daphne
cd tmp/build/daphne
sudo git checkout retropie
cd /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh daphne build
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh daphne install
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh daphne configure

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I'm not. I installed ubuntu on an older Dell Optiplex 755 mini tower and then installed retropie.

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i think most of the stuff would probably still work; you might have to look for more generic retropie images for PCs running LINUX; tbh i'm not very familiar with that approach but other than hardware specs; i'm not sure why it would matter.

i am you and you are i. i had MAME set up almost THIRTY YEARS AGO on a Mac and actually was a part of the Mac MAME community; I ran a site that compiled the necessary steps to complete your setup...so long ago now....

anyway, i digress. images are the way. this has simply gotten too big to start out by downloading MAME and trying to put it together.

images have bloat; but its a good bloat and provides a whole experience to you; the games are there for sure, but all of the 'errata' that really makes the experience immserive require a good deal of work if they're not already baked in.