mr_me Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 In that link they are complaining about the apple ii emulator being slow. Not all the emulators in mame are recommended. Some are a work in progress, some might be stalled projects. What's bloated about mame? I still think it's a relatively small download. Latest mame works well on my 13 year old computer. What are the disadvantages of having all these extra emulator projects you don't use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 In that link they are complaining about the apple ii emulator being slow. Not all the emulators in mame are recommended. Some are a work in progress, some might be stalled projects. What's bloated about mame? I still think it's a relatively small download. Latest mame works well on my 13 year old computer. What are the disadvantages of having all these extra emulator projects you don't use? Wastes disk space, especially if you have multiple versions of mame around. It's usually necessary to have multiple versions because some emulators work well in some versions but are buggy or broken in others. This isn't as big a deal as it used to be though as disk space is cheap. If you are building it yourself, it takes forever to compile it because there is so much source code there. Does mame support conditionally compiling emulators so that you can only build what you need? Whenever my front-end loads Mame/Mess, I think it froze because there's a delay in loading it that other emulators just don't have. (Minor issue.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 Mame is a 50MB download. Even if you want multiple versions it's not much disk space at all. The need for multiple versions is debateable, I use only one and upgrade often; settings can migrate. Occasionally a newer version has issues, stick with the previous version until its resolved. No different than any other program. Roms can be be shared between multiple versions, unless its a very, very, old mame. I have never had a reason to compile mame myself and don't know how long it takes and why that's an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 Mame is a 50MB download. Even if you want multiple versions it's not much disk space at all. The need for multiple versions is debateable, I use only one and upgrade often; settings can migrate. Occasionally a newer version has issues, stick with the previous version until its resolved. No different than any other program. Roms can be be shared between multiple versions, unless its a very, very, old mame. I have never had a reason to compile mame myself and don't know how long it takes and why that's an issue. I run on Linux, so compilation is necessary if I wanted the latest version. I've also used Mame since the first version and there have been many many issues over the years that required me to have multiple versions. Also Mame has a unique issue when upgrading to the latest version. Rom sets change regularly. Update the software and suddenly a quarter of your games no longer run. Roms come from shady sites that come and go and get blocked and it hasn't always been easy to find the correct roms for the latest version. So I have kept old versions around for that reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 It's been a long time since there was a significant change in rom files. I haven't replaced the roms for a very long time and I've upgraded mame dozens of time. A handfull of roms have changed and I've downloaded the updated rom file as needed one at a time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 It's been a long time since there was a significant change in rom files. I haven't replaced the roms for a very long time and I've upgraded mame dozens of time. A handfull of roms have changed and I've downloaded the updated rom file as needed one at a time I don't know about recently, but for a long time, it happened a few times a year, and it was frustrating. I get what what the developers were trying to do, but it isn't handled in a very end-user friendly way. At the very least version the romfiles, tell the user what version they have and what version they need. Right now we have a bunch of zip files that all have the same name no matter which version of mame they belong to, and it was a maintenance nightmare at times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 (edited) It's been a long time since there was a significant change in rom files. I haven't replaced the roms for a very long time and I've upgraded mame dozens of times. A handfull of roms have changed and I've downloaded the updated rom file as needed one at a time. A good source of rom files is not hard to find. If you have some ancient copy of mame you'll need an ancient rom set. Edit:. People post rom sets by mame version. It doesn't mean you need it. Edited January 23, 2018 by mr_me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted January 26, 2018 Share Posted January 26, 2018 If you are building it yourself, it takes forever to compile it because there is so much source code there. Does mame support conditionally compiling emulators so that you can only build what you need? Yes it does. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted January 26, 2018 Share Posted January 26, 2018 The last time they broke a significant number of romsets was back in 0.170 (ish) so about 2 years ago, that was the introduction of 'devices' as part of the modernisation of the code. The time before that it was bios sets, before that parent/clone roms. If you are interested in the classic games of the 80's and 90's they almost never change at all any more. The problem people experience with mame roms is because then contain multiple files, those files get redumped if they were wrong, new files get added to improve the emulation and stuff like that. Rarely they will just rename a file You're quite right, they don't care a jot for user experience, they care about the accuracy of the emulation and the quality of the documentation it creates, if a previous version had a bad rom in it and a better version of the rom is now available they will swap it without a thought, you may not be able to see what was changed or improved but people like arcade board collectors who need to fix broken boards really appreciate the improvements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted January 26, 2018 Share Posted January 26, 2018 If you are building it yourself, it takes forever to compile it because there is so much source code there. Does mame support conditionally compiling emulators so that you can only build what you need? Yes it does. Instead of just: make Specify a driver: make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/a7800.cpp make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/a2600.cpp make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/coleco.cpp make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/c64.cpp The above command lines would compile just the Atari 7800, Atari 2600, ColecoVision, or Commodore 64 driver respectively. For the a7800 driver though, highly recommend the A7800 emulator, as a better and closer-to-hardware accurate emulation alternative than what is offered from baseline MAME. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted January 26, 2018 Share Posted January 26, 2018 If you look in mame/scripts/target you will find some lua scripts that you can run to compile smaller subsets of mame, edit them and have a look, you can make your own list of just the drivers you want. there are a few builtins make SUBTARGET=tiny will make a minimal mame with just the legal roms available, useful for testing the build environment make SUBTARGET=arcade will do a pre mess merge build of just the arcade drivers make SUBTARGET=mess will make a mess only version 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted January 26, 2018 Share Posted January 26, 2018 It's been a long time since there was a significant change in rom files. I haven't replaced the roms for a very long time and I've upgraded mame dozens of times. A handfull of roms have changed and I've downloaded the updated rom file as needed one at a time. A good source of rom files is not hard to find. If you have some ancient copy of mame you'll need an ancient rom set. Good to hear. I resisted upgrading mame for a long time because I had a lot of these issues in the past. Roms might be easy to find right now, but that hasn't always been the case. There have been times when there have been apparent crackdowns on such sites and most disappeared. Instead of just: make Specify a driver: make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/a7800.cpp make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/a2600.cpp make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/coleco.cpp make SOURCES=src/mame/drivers/c64.cpp What if you want all 4? Is it comma separated? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
privateers69 Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 What's the latest complete Rom set version I should look for? Been itching to get back into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 I'm trying to get Apple IIgs emulation running under Mame version 0.182, I think. Naturally I can't find an apple2gs.zip romset that it's happy with. Anyone know? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 (edited) What's the latest complete Rom set version I should look for? Been itching to get back into it.Get the latest you can find. There's a 188 set out there; it should be fine with most mame versions. ------------ There's a 185 set here. https://archive.org/details/MAME_0.185_ROMs_split Edited February 7, 2018 by mr_me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 Get the latest you can find. There's a 188 set out there; it should be fine with most mame versions. Where? I was having trouble finding anything past 0.162 or so? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
privateers69 Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 Get the latest you can find. There's a 188 set out there; it should be fine with most mame versions. ------------ There's a 185 set here. https://archive.org/details/MAME_0.185_ROMs_split Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 If you are running on a Mac or PC, always get the latest version (currently 0.194). If you're using a Raspberry Pi or something, stick with retroarch mame 2003 which is mame 0.78. The current full MAME set is 1.7TB (yes, TB) those CD based consoles take up a lot of room. It's still over 500GB if you leave all that stuff out. You can get mame 078 roms from archive.org as well as a few other versions, the latest being 0.185. For the full current set you can use bittorrent. PM me if you want a torrent site to get the latest mame set from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 Get the latest you can find. There's a 188 set out there; it should be fine with most mame versions. ------------ There's a 185 set here. https://archive.org/details/MAME_0.185_ROMs_split Thanks, found what I needed there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 lol.. maybe this bloat is a good thing. I started dinking around with the handhelds and got into Entex Space Invader like it was old times And lo and behold, there's Kenner - Star Wars Electronic Battle Command! An old personal favorite right there on my pc playable with a friggin mouse. I dunno.. but I dig it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 12, 2018 Author Share Posted February 12, 2018 I remember I had that. I glued a calculator to the side of the "monitor" and now I had two keypads! It was awesome! When I learned enough electronics I drilled some holes and put in those flashing LEDs from RadioShack and even a police siren kit. I felt like a grown-up engineer for real! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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