MAME on a CD

[IG-88]

Is there a way to put MAME on a CD so I can install it onto my other machines without having to go to the problem of running a network cable from this one to them?

[tmasman]

If you keep the default settings & directory structure, you can simply copy the entire mame directory to a CD and it will work straight from the CD. You can just take it where ever you want, plop the CD in a computer, start mame32 (or mame, or whatever), and start playing!

I did this for a friend with mame32 & it worked great! If you want it "installed" on that computer, just copy the directory to the local hard drive & create a shortcut to the exe file.

[jakejake28]

have you tried AdvanceCD? thats supposed to be a plug'n'play sorta thing.

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

[IG-88]

O.K. that sounds cool. I'm still not too computer literate tho, could you explain what you mean by default settings and directory structure? Do you think I can just grab the MAME32 folder which lies in my program files folder on my c drive and copy it to a CD with NERO or something?

[emdkay]

I'm just curious, but does anybody run their mame cabinet off an Xbox?  There is an emulator called Mame-X that runs directly off the Xbox.  You can put all the roms onto the xbox hard drive.  It runs most games at full speed.

It would be much cheaper for somebody to run an arcade cabinet off an xbox compared to a computer.  Also, you can use a television which is less expensive than a computer monitor of the same size.  If you choose to use the x-arcade, an xbox adapter is available.

Just a thought.

[AlanS17]

I'm just curious, but does anybody run their mame cabinet off an Xbox?  There is an emulator called Mame-X that runs directly off the Xbox.  You can put all the roms onto the xbox hard drive.  It runs most games at full speed.

It would be much cheaper for somebody to run an arcade cabinet off an xbox compared to a computer.  Also, you can use a television which is less expensive than a computer monitor of the same size.  If you choose to use the x-arcade, an xbox adapter is available.

Just a thought.

I've heard it doesn't have the speed of a PC. Plus you can't use all the controls you want for mouse/spinner/special controller games.

[SirPeale]

I'm just curious, but does anybody run their mame cabinet off an Xbox?  There is an emulator called Mame-X that runs directly off the Xbox.  You can put all the roms onto the xbox hard drive.  It runs most games at full speed.

Se wha?  It runs games at crap speed.  The only games it runs well are the really older classics.  Unless there's been a re-write for it recently (in the last couple days).

[emdkay]

Just the other day I played mame-x running off an xbox.  The games do not run at crap speed.  Any game from the 80s runs at full speed.  A lot of games in the 90s run completely fine.  I played Captain America, Golden Axe, WWF Wrestlefest, Simpsons, and Hit the Ice to name a few - all ran at 100%.  I wouldn't consider those the older classics at all.  Metal Slug even ran fairly well.

It would be a good idea for somebody on a budget who isn't going to be using a spinner or trackball.  For less than $150 you can get an xbox and have a complete mame system.  

EDIT:  Oh yea, it also plays xbox games  

[paigeoliver]

Just the other day I played mame-x running off an xbox.  The games do not run at crap speed.  Any game from the 80s runs at full speed.  A lot of games in the 90s run completely fine.  I played Captain America, Golden Axe, WWF Wrestlefest, Simpsons, and Hit the Ice to name a few - all ran at 100%.  I wouldn't consider those the older classics at all.  Metal Slug even ran fairly well.

It would be a good idea for somebody on a budget who isn't going to be using a spinner or trackball.  For less than $150 you can get an xbox and have a complete mame system.  

EDIT:  Oh yea, it also plays xbox games  

Um, don't you have to have a chipped X-Box to use that software?

And anyway, for less than $150 you can buy a used computer that can run 95 percent of the titles in Mame.

[emdkay]

I don't know if it was chipped, but for people who want to get an xbox as well as a mame arcade it's not a bad idea.

[meta87]

yes you do have to mod your xbox

[AlanS17]

Don't forget the x-arcade probably costs as much as the xbox. So it's not $150. It's like $300... My first cabinet was only $400 by comparison.

[1UP]

You can certainly run Mame32 from a CD, but it won't save high scores, control settings, any changes to Mame settings, etc unless you install the Mame executable to a hard drive somewhere.

I have Mame32 on a CD for playing at work.  Our sysadmin is REALLY strict about having anything installed that we don't own, so I only install mame32.exe and the folders for hiscores, cfg, nvram etc to a network drive so it can write that data, store control settings etc.  In Mame32, all the directories for roms, snap, marquees etc are set to the CDROM drive.  Then I just pop in the CD any time I want to play, click the shortcut to Mame32 on my workstation, and it reads the copyrighted stuff (roms, snaps etc.) right off the CD!

BTW, I could never get the AdvanceCD to write to a CD properly.  It needs a bit of set up to get going, so it's not exactly plug'n'play.  Definitely not for noobs.  Plus, since it's basically a Linux boot CD, you have to reboot just for a quick game...

[u_rebelscum]

You can certainly run Mame32 from a CD, but it won't save high scores, control settings, any changes to Mame settings, etc unless you install the Mame executable to a hard drive somewhere.

If you don't want to even install mame.exe to the computer, you could edit the mame.ini before you put it on the CD so it references folders in the c: drive for the cfg, nvram, hi, & ini folders.  Also, if the exe is not mame.exe, but something else (such as "mamepp.exe"), all you need in mame.ini is

Code: [Select]

inipath                 c:\mame\ini
cfg_directory           c:\mame\cfg
nvram_directory         c:\mame\nvram
hiscore_directory       c:\mame\hiand have an editable mamepp.ini with all the options in the c:\mame\ini folder.

Then just have a mame folder (or whatever you called it) in the C: drive of the computer at work.


I think for mame32, you can do almost the same thing, except you need to set it up from inside mame32 before you burn, and you can't do the above "small mame.ini" cheat.

[Inaba]

It's actually cheaper to buy a crappy stripped down PC and pipe it out to a TV via the TV out on the video card than it is to buy an XBox.

I looked into doing the X-Box thing before I started my projects, and after all was said and done, the X-Box was more expensive than a computer to do the same things, and the computer offered a lot more flexibility.  There's absolutely no reason to use an X-Box as a dedicated MAME machine, unless you want to also play X-Box games, then it would definitely be really cool.

[tmasman]

O.K. that sounds cool. I'm still not too computer literate tho, could you explain what you mean by default settings and directory structure? Do you think I can just grab the MAME32 folder which lies in my program files folder on my c drive and copy it to a CD with NERO or something?

If you don't know what I'm talking about default directories, etc... I'm willing to bet you didn't change any of them. Just open Nero (or any other CD burning software) and grab the Mame32 folder from your program files. That's it. Make sure all your rom files are in the roms directory.

This way, there is nothing to install when you want to play the games. Just thow in the CD & start mame32.exe

[IG-88]

I got to thinking about that last nite, (probably dumb question) but how are all those roms going to fit on a single CD? I got all of them. (roms that is)

[tmasman]

Haha!!!
Um... Not gonna happen...
If you REALLY want to not have to install Mame on the PC, then you could create multiple CDs with a different set of ROMs on each CD (but you would have Mame32 on each CD). However, if you really have all of them, you'll end up with 12-15 CDs... (or 2-3 DVD-Rs)...

If all you are trying to do is transfer them to another machine... Just network them together... (Network cards & a crossover cable, or any other direct PC-PC networking method, since you don't have a home network already...)

Unfortunately, ALL of the mame roms take up about 9GB of space... The easiest way to transfer this much data is to either have it all on CDs, or if you don't mind tinkering with computer innards, put your main Hard drive in as a slave in the other machine & copy the files over directly. (then move the jumper back to master & replace it into your main PC)

Good luck!
There's just no easy way to transfer that much data when the PCs aren't networked.

[Lilwolf]

A while ago I was going to write a program that would copy all of your roms into directories that would just fill in a CD.. .but with all clones with their parents... And all the screenshots / icons / cabinets all in together.

So you could say 'fighters" and it would move all the fighters it could into the directory in groups.

But I never got that far.  In my frontend it has all the information... but I didn't want to move them (and take a chance at deleting them by moving them to the wrong location or on top of each other...

What I should do is try to find the project file type for one of the burning applicaitons... And generate those.