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Easy Front end for mame


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Sorry but I've used Mamewah in 2 cabs (one using only PC hardware and one using full JAMMA) and it doesn't suck, it's awesome.

 

Define easy to use and do you mean easy to operate or easy to setup? How easy do you want in other words and what do you want to use it with (table/upright, vertical/horizontal, PC monitor/arcade monitor/TV)?

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Oh, DOS. Yeah Mamewah isn't fond of DOS and he won't modify it for vertical either (can therefore understand why you don't like it). Although there is a guy who has created a vertical skin for it for those who use other means to rotate it.

 

I've got ArcadeOS running in vertical on my table at the moment (over windows but we all know it runs fine in DOS). But it ain't nice to setup (although if I figured it out it can't be that hard). Once it's working it's OK though and it'll do the rotation for you. There aren't that many options if you want the frontend to be vertical.

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I have to admit, it was a fooking nightmare setting up my DOS mame with ArcadeOS.

 

For my trail and tribulations, the following is from my website:

 

9 January 2003.

 

Have finally found the time to update my cocktail using Fraggal's boot CD. I will write all the details.

 

 

First off I downloaded the boot CD from Las Vegas's Purple Mame page. The next process was burning the CD, oh the drama, I made many drink coasters until I got online and spoke to Fraggal himself and he pointed me in the right direction. Using Nero, I went straight to 'File' (bypassing the wizard), and selected 'Burn Image'. I then directed Nero to where I had Fraggal's ISO image, and like magic, it was done.

 

Off to install on my cabinet, I insert the CD (I previously made sure in the Mainboard BIOS that it would boot from CD), and all is going well. The boot CD has 3 options of installing. I choose option 1 as this did a Fdisk and format as I wanted a fresh install of everything. Next it installed DOS 7 (excellent), then gave me options which when one gets to them, are quite straight forward and easy to follow and understand. Then came the video modes. This was a little more in-depth and prior knowledge of your monitor will certainly help.

 

Now I know my arcade 15khz monitor is a bitch, she just wouldn't do what I wanted. After many hours and tweaking and fiddling around, I got it nearly there but not right.

 

Then I rebooted and it didn't boot straight into ArcadeOS (even after several tries). It would get to the following point and go no further:

 

go bad command

 

The go.bat is in the ArcadeOS folder and I presume it's there to boot straight into ArcadeOS. I edited my autoexec.bat with the following command at the end of everything else in it:

 

C:

CD ARCADEOS

go.bat

 

Rebooted and went straight into ArcadeOS, (cool, that's what I want).

 

What happens next nearly lost me my hair. For HOURS and DAYS I tried, tweaked, fiddled, interfered, played with, and mucked around with config files in both ArcadeOS, AdvanceMame, and the Video.exe to get this to work on my hormonal monitor. Absolutely nothing I knew would make it work, (my knowledge or lack of, probably didn't help). I tried a heap of video cards, tried messing with the video.exe in advmame blah blah blah, and still it wouldn't work right. Colours were wrong while using Jpac shift keys, (fraggal did say that this may be a grounding issue and advised me to ground the Jpac to the monitor frame), and some games just wouldn't work.

 

What did I do? I canned AdvanceMame and ArcadeOS and went for the standard 'mame062b_dos_i686 version and a version of ArcadeOS that was fresh and not from the boot CD

 

I decided that DOS 7 was staying as this is good, but I just renamed AdvanceMame folder and the ArcadeOS folder to 'old', just in case I want to try again later.

 

After transferring files and roms, I fired it up and got it all working. One issue that had me stumped for 1 hour was some games would work great and some would come up as garbage. I worked out that if I went into the game config in the ArcadeOS menu, and change were it said 'tweak' to no on the games that weren't working, they suddenly would work.

 

In all, the Boot CD is a great tool and I look forward to using it on another monitor other than the one I have at the moment. I feel that my experience is rare and would probably NOT happen to other users of it. My monitor REALLY is fussy. Either that or my knowledge stinks, maybe both :o)

 

Well done Fraggal, Glitch77 and Las Vegas for the work you have done. I appreciate it greatly.

If you use either the Boot CD or ArcadeOS ver 2.5 and you come across the guys online, say thanks to them as I know they would appreciate that.

 

 

 

08 December 2002.

 

With the release of Las Vegas's version of ArcadeOS 2.5, I will be redoing my cabinet with AdvanceMame.62 and the new ArcadeOS 2.5. Will keep this page update as progress continues.

 

 

 

04 April 2002.

 

Got the pics up. It's finally finished for the moment. I'll put some pics of it running shortly.

 

 

 

29 Mar 2002.

 

Finally got the cocktail running a JPAC and Mame going today after many frustrating days/weeks.

 

The problem I had was my video card. I kept on getting a split, blocky screen that would show three Credit 00 on the screen. I tried out 5 different video cards till I found one that worked. (So much for ATI cards being the be all and end all of cards to use with arcade monitors and Mame). Anyone thinking of using an arcade monitor, I advised either AdvanceMame or try heaps of different Video cards.

 

The video cards I tried were as follows:

 

1. ATI Rage IIC 4 Meg

2. ATI Rage IIC 2 Meg

3. ATI Rage XL 8 Meg

4. INTEL i740 8 Meg (this card did work but the refresh rate was poor and it locked up ArcadeOS when exiting)

5. DIAMOND Stealth 540 with Savage 4, 32 Meg(I knew this wouldn't work but I was desperate at this stage)

6. EAGLE TNT2 M64 32 Meg (FINALLY THIS WORKS).

 

Got to say that playing Mame on a cocktail with real arcade controls and arcade monitor is pretty darn good. (Better than I thought it would be both in gameplay and looks) Highly recommended.

 

The configuring of the Ipacutil software was easy. The controls work fine except for a few little adjustments I need to do.

 

07 Mar 2002.

I have finally got a spare PC to go into this project.

 

Intel Celeron PPGA 366 Now running Intel Celeron PPGA 533

Octek Micro AT Mainboard with Intel LX chipset, AGP x2

ATI RAGE IIC 4 meg Video Card Changed to an Eagle TNT2 M64 32 Meg.

128 megabytes of RAM

Fujitsu 2.1 gig HDD

Creative Sound Blaster 16 ISA

 

Today I ordered the plexi glass that sits on top of the cocktail. Also got some mirror retaining clips which hold the plexi on from the local Mitre 10.

 

06 Jan 2002.

I have just purchased a secondhand 20" Kortek monitor which I have fitted inside the cocktail. I have chosen to go with a vertical monitor alignment on the cocktail and I will build an upright cabinet to house all the horizontal games on MAME.

 

22 Dec 2001.

I have just bought a JPAC (secondhand in great condition) for $90 Australian. This will be going straight into the cocktail cabinet as soon as I get the PC I need to finish this project off.

 

 

 

 

 

Picked up a cool 20" JAMMA cocktail cabinet in top condition minus monitor, top glass and board. That's fine with me because it was FREE.

 

I'm going to keep the JAMMA harness in this and use the JPAC as it will double as a MAME beast and a JAMMA platform.

 

To make it run Mame when not using a JAMMA PCB, I just disconnected from the cabinets power supply the following:

 

*

-5

*

+5

*

+12

 

I have left the other wires connected so that the monitor powers up only and it is grounded. (Last thing I need is to die from electric shock). To use a JAMMA PCB I reversed what I have just done

 

 

I'm running DOS MAME with the aging ArcadeOS Front-end as I'm running an arcade monitor for this project and I don't want to destroy the monitor by having windows/Video card sending to high a horizontal scanrate to the arcade monitor. ArcadeOS was built with this in mind. For more information on this go to PC to JAMMA / Home of ArcadeOS.

 

I've been busy cleaning and ripping out all the buttons, joysticks, dead cockroaches etc.

 

This cocktail was made specifically for interchangeable JAMMA game boards so it never was dedicated for any single game.

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AdvanceMenu:

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/menu-readme.html

 

Easy to config. Supports DOS, Windows, Linux, Mac. (Will do real arcade modes in Win/Linux/DOS). Just run it as normal, and press the "0" button on your numeric keypad to rotate the display 90 degrees. Keep doing that until it suits the orientation of your monitor. Easy as pie. :)

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AdvanceMenu:

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/menu-readme.html

Easy to config. Supports DOS, Windows, Linux, Mac. (Will do real arcade modes in Win/Linux/DOS). Just run it as normal, and press the "0" button on your numeric keypad to rotate the display 90 degrees. Keep doing that until it suits the orientation of your monitor. Easy as pie. :)

 

 

 

I've one experience with AdvanceMame.....BLOODY NIGHTMARE... :eek:

 

If I never have to install it again, it will be to soon.

 

That doesn't mean it's hard to use, I just found it impossible on my setup.

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I've one experience with AdvanceMame.....BLOODY NIGHTMARE... :eek:

He said AdvanceMenu, not AdvanceMAME. Same people, different program. I've been thinking about using AdvanceMenu myself when I change PC's in my cocktail.

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He said AdvanceMenu, not AdvanceMAME. Same people, different program. I've been thinking about using AdvanceMenu myself when I change PC's in my cocktail.

 

 

Adjust glasses and shuffles out of the room backwards so no one notices :o

 

He said AdvanceMenu, not AdvanceMAME. Same people, different program. I've been thinking about using AdvanceMenu myself when I change PC's in my cocktail.

 

 

If you do use it microwrx, let me know of your experiences with it. I am contemplating a change in front ends myself, (well updating anyways). :)

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AdvanceMenu setup is a duplicate of AdvanceMame setup .... so, if you struggled with advmame you may want to run away from AdvanceMenu (or transfer your resolutions across to the advmenu.rc)

 

not that hard to get it up and running, tweaking options is the problem imo

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I build most of my cabs with either AdvanceMenu + XMAME or AdvanceMenu + AdvanceMAME. I've never had problems with either setup. The documentation is quite clear on how it all works. It's just a matter of sitting down and reading BEFORE randomly hacking config files. A skill that seems to be slipping in this day and age of point'n'click GUIs.
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I build most of my cabs with either AdvanceMenu + XMAME or AdvanceMenu + AdvanceMAME. I've never had problems with either setup. The documentation is quite clear on how it all works. It's just a matter of sitting down and reading BEFORE randomly hacking config files. A skill that seems to be slipping in this day and age of point'n'click GUIs.

 

right ... BEFORE uh .... definition pls :D

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  • 3 weeks later...

The Advance* software are easy to set up. The problem I find 99.999% of the time is that people just install and run without first reading the documentation.

 

With the word "advance" in the title, it should spell out pretty quickly that people do need to RTFM first, and tinker second.

 

Every single possible configuration you could play with is documented on their website, and they have some great guides to getting up and running quickly. If you're not the sort of person who stops to ask for directions or reads instructions before fiddling, AdvanceMAME/Menu is not for you. It is not plug-and-play stupidity. There are enough frontends out there already that do that. AdvanceMAME/Menu is for those who want total customisability, and who are prepared to read documentation first in order to learn how to operate their software.

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If you are NOT using an arcade monitor and wish to go with DOS, I urge you to consider Game Launcher. It is reasonably easy to set up and supports a rotated (ie vertical) display. Whilst it is a GUI, no config can be done from within the program - it needs to be done from ther DOS prompt using the good old Edit command.

 

I switched from ArcadeOS to Game Launcher about 3 years ago and have stuck with it ever since.

 

If you do have an arcade monitor, use the ArcadeVGA Card and you can run still Game Launcher, which will give you the best of both worlds.....

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If you are NOT using an arcade monitor and wish to go with DOS, I urge you to consider Game Launcher. It is reasonably easy to set up and supports a rotated (ie vertical) display. Whilst it is a GUI, no config can be done from within the program - it needs to be done from ther DOS prompt using the good old Edit command.

 

I switched from ArcadeOS to Game Launcher about 3 years ago and have stuck with it ever since.

 

If you do have an arcade monitor, use the ArcadeVGA Card and you can run still Game Launcher, which will give you the best of both worlds.....

 

So your saying that Game Launcher is good to use with an arcade monitor and DOS? Better than arcadeOS with DOS?

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game launcher is a quick easy frontend to setup and use there are not to many config options layout wise you can have a background image of the game (i just path mine to the snaps folder) and thats about it it is a no frills frontend with 2 versions available dos and windows both are configed the same if you get a bit more involved you can setup menus within it but meh for those starting off it is a simple(fairly) setup i have tryed heaps of frontends the other 2 i would like to fiddle with is arcadeos and (cant think of the name of it at the moment but its a 3d one where you manuver through ann arcade and wakl up to the machine and press start) looked sweet from the few hours i played with it(googling it now)1 min later (i love google) http://3darcade.mameworld.net/

have not tryed with an arcade monitor though

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So your saying that Game Launcher is good to use with an arcade monitor and DOS? Better than arcadeOS with DOS?

 

Hi Pinny,

 

To expand on my initial post, Game Launcher has no direct support for 15kHz monitors, so you need a 15kHz capable video card if you plan to use it with an arcade monitor.

 

It is a good front end to use, plain and simple, so IF you have an arcade monitor AND a suitable video card, give it a go. Try setting it up on a desktop PC first though, as it still comes down to personal taste and you may decide it's not for you.

 

Sorry if I created any confusion there!

 

Cheers,

Chris

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GUIs

 

Graphical User Interface

 

Hey Elvis, you wouldn't be a Unix / Linux zealot would you ;)

 

Guilty, as charged. :D

 

You will all have to excuse my rampaging hippy outbursts. Just fire a "shut up you stinking hippy" style post at me once every few months, and I'll go back into my quiet corner and play with my CLIs (Command Line Interfaces) some more. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey Pinny

 

I have set my cab up with Advmame and Advmenu and all is working well ...I was wondering if you have set up the flyers as previews to each game ? If so could you copy & paste your advmenu.rc ?

 

TIA:unsure

 

Damn it ! Sorry i ment the previous post for Elvis :redface

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Flyers? Do you mean the "dir_snap" option? AFAIK AdvanceMAME can only display one image associated with each game (not several like MAMEWah, etc). All you need is a directory full of PNG snapshots (or flyers, or titles, or whatever you want) with each file being the same name as the ROM. Then refer to that in your config file with the "dir_snap" option, and AdvanceMenu will pick them up automatically.
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Flyers? Do you mean the "dir_snap" option? AFAIK AdvanceMAME can only display one image associated with each game (not several like MAMEWah, etc). All you need is a directory full of PNG snapshots (or flyers, or titles, or whatever you want) with each file being the same name as the ROM. Then refer to that in your config file with the "dir_snap" option, and AdvanceMenu will pick them up automatically.

 

hrrrm, its been a while tho i'm 99% sure i had more than one image per game.

 

... just checked my old configs

 

emulator_marquees "advmame" ..\marquees

emulator_flyers "advmame" "c:\mame\flyers"

emulator_cabinets "advmame" "c:\mame\cabinets"

emulator_titles "advmame" "c:\mame\titles"

emulator_include "advmame"

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Excellent i will give it a go ;) ... Some parts of the advmenu.txt are a bit vague or is just me ? :)

 

everything about my cab setup is a bit vague, been years since it was running :unsure

 

all i'm sure about is the resolutions were almost impossible to get runing without duping the advcfg app into thinking my monitor was something else, damn learning curve from hell .. only have the old configs because i'm never going through that again ;)

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