[cacophony555]

Yeah, F1 doesn’t do anything for me either. But I was able to fix it by modifying the retroarch.cfg file. You can either do this globablly for all retroarch cores or make a cfg specific to the core you want to change and then use the –appendconfig to include it (for examples of this see the es_systems.cfg file).

The value I changed was the following:

# A floating point value for video aspect ratio (width / height).
# If this is not set, aspect ratio is assumed to be automatic.
# Behavior then is defined by video_aspect_ratio_auto.
# video_aspect_ratio =

You can uncomment it and pick a value like 1.175, which looks pretty good to me. This value was taken from here: http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=8063

[cacophony555]

@bairdo, yes, that’s what I’m asking for. It’s hard to diagnose without seeing *exactly* what you’re doing. If you don’t have a way to copy/paste the output then maybe take photos of the screen that show the directory contents and exactly what you’re typing.

Also, where did you get the roms? If they’re all coming from the same source it’s quite possible that none of them are compatible b/c they’re mislabled, corrupted, etc.

[cacophony555]

@bairdo, if you want provide full console output showing all your commands and the results it may provide more insight. Especially if you do an “ls -l” on relevant directories to show the contents.

I’m also wondering if your roms are the problem. Mame is very picky with rom files, many roms aren’t supported, etc. So you could be doing everything correctly but need different roms.

[cacophony555]

Tough to diagnose much more without seeing your exact steps.

Maybe try going with the RetroPie default Mame emulator setup, which I believe allows roms to be copied into the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame directory? You probably don’t need the performance boost of more optimized mame4all if you’re only playing older games like Galaga.

Or maybe the rom files you’re trying aren’t supported? You definitely don’t want to unzip the contents of the rom .zip files so that also might be creating problems.

[cacophony555]

@bairrdo, ah ok. The one included with RetroPie must be setup differently.
Can you try just making a directory called “roms” and putting your roms in it? You can either do that from X or the command line.

From the command line you would :

cd /home/pi/RetroPie/emulators/mame4all-pi/
mkdir roms

(and then move your roms to the new directory)

If that doesn’t work, read on…

I’ve been setting things up manually myself so I’ll give you the instructions that I know work. Let me know if you have any questions.

Download the official optimized zip here:
https://code.google.com/p/mame4all-pi/

You’ll want this one, not the one for PiMenu:
http://mame4all-pi.googlecode.com/git/mame4all_pi.zip

You can unzip it on your computer and transfer the unzipped contents over to your pi. There should be a roms folder in that directory and everything should just work (though you may need to do the chmod command below)

Alternatively you can transfer the zip file to your pi and then do the following on the command line:

mkdir mame4all
mv mame4all_pi.zip mame4all
cd mame4all
unzip mame4all_pi.zip
chmod oug+x mame

Now you should be able to launch from the command line using:
./mame
or
./mame galaga (assuming that’s what the file is called. just don’t include the .zip extension in this command)

[cacophony555]

The “roms” folder for mame4all-pi should be in the folder that has the executable you clicked on. If you copy your roms to that folder (probably /home/pi/RetroPie/mame4all-pi/roms) you should be able to see and launch them from the mame UI. That’s the first step… Give it a try.

[cacophony555]

bairdo, how are you trying to load the roms? From the command line or through emulation station?

It would help if you would provide the exact command or emulation station’s relevant es_systems.cfg lines, such as:

DESCNAME=MAME
NAME=mame
PATH=/home/pi/RetroPie/emulators/mame4all_pi/roms
EXTENSION=.zip .ZIP
COMMAND=/home/pi/RetroPie/emulators/mame4all_pi/mame %BASENAME%

If you’re using mame4all, the MAME roms need to be placed in the roms directory within mame4all. They won’t work in the RetroPie/roms/mame directory. You’ll also need to make sure to use %BASENAME% instead of %ROM% like above.

[cacophony555]

Awesome thanks kitchuk! That’s extremely helpful.

Dumb newbie question: If I have the complete 037b5 rom set, how do I know which games to play under PIMAME4ALL vs PiFBA vs PiBANG ? Or are all of those roms just for PIMAME4ALL and other roms are needed for PiFBA and PiBANG

[cacophony555]

I was wondering the same thing. MAME4ALL is 2-3x as fast for many games (Outrun, Paperboy, etc).

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