Michael's MAME Machine
Home arcade machine revamp
Update 01/10/2012
New screen - huge CRT VGA monitor with some screenburn and limited resolution
Update 08/10/2012
Performance woes with SDLMAME in fullscreen.
- tried a fresh PC with oodles of CPU/RAM - same result!
- registered on SDLMAME forum but registration needs approval - still waiting
- posted findings on MAME subreddit - general advice is "you need a much faster PC/GFX card to run SDLMAME these days"
- need to obtain and drop back to ancient xmame version
- find or make a slimmer case for new PC
Update 12/10/2012
- xmame (0.106-3.2 from http://packages.debian.org/source/squeeze/xmame I think) installed from the Debian package
- scaling problems again and now ALSA sound issues which might be down to the slow video rate
- a lot of messing around found a good video setup:
- xmame -video-mode 1 -fullscreen -fm 640x480x16 defender
- still need to work on the video modes and the general settings for performance
- wahcade setup required
- keyboard setup for all games
- http://www.anti-particle.com/forum_phpbb3/viewforum.php?f=2
- http://wahki.mameau.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
The development pages from some years back: http://www.tecspy.com/arcade
- recover games (and most importantly, the high scores) from the dead laptop
- HDD totally dead :( Need to obtain ROM sets again
- mamed front end http://phulshof.home.xs4all.nl/mame.html - compile and tweak
- better linux distro base - have kubuntu 7.10 - want Knoppix 6
- rewire controls matrix - should take a couple of hours
- Noisy fan on PC - heatpipe? ideas please
- Priority! Gauntlet rev 14 http://www.rom-world.com/file.php?id=23575
- recover games (and most importantly, the high scores) from the dead laptop
Update: 22/07/2011
I have now replaced the replacement PC! Seems to work mostly but some full system freezes have happened :(
MAMED has now been built and it works! After all these years the SDL libs are still compatible.
The keyboard controller seems to work!
- more button wiring to do
- more tweaking of mamed config
- more USB PlayStation2 contollers on the way
TODO: Michael Erskine 09:06, 7 December 2011 (EST)
- replace LAN cable run from members room
- minimal Xorg server installation with BlackBox window manager or equivalent
- replace GDM with straight startx as low-permissions user
- replace XFCE with plain X init straight into mamed front end
- screen bezel fitting
- mark screen geometry when bezel fitted and screen in position
- router work on sizing and chamfer
- blackout tape and foam padding
Update: 05/04/2012
The machine is now in the studio (again!) and we have a working PC with a recent Xubuntu, functional mame install and all three DVDs of ROMs installed. The next stage is to get the mamed front-end starting automatically as an unprivileged user.
- Where I would previously have just used inittab, Ubuntu now uses upstart: -
- so we could have xdm (or equivalent) auto-login as the mame user and have their xinit launch mamed as the only X client
- create user and give access to all the files required