32/64bit Groovy Arcade Linux LiveCD/Install

[ufoufo512]

Thanks again for updating this project. Currently I am still stuck with no correct game graphics on my AGP Radeon X800Pro. I had gotten the WLAN to work and using ssh and Webmin makes the configuration much easier than using 15KHz arcade monitor which at the moment is rotated to vertical orientation. I had a spare PCI-e motherboard I thought I was able to use for the project, but unfortunately it doesn't work. So I am back to square one hunting AGP Radeon 92xx. It shouldn't be much of a problem, I should be able to get one cheap from the local auction easily.

Meanwhile, I thought giving a shot on making Groovy Arcade Linux from the Git sources. The instructions given in the README seem a bit outdated, but is there something that can't be figured out easily? My goal is to have a 32bit version. If I have understood correctly looking at the source patches is that only combios-Radeons get the hardcoded low pixelclock values, Atom-bios ones (which the X800Pro is) read the value from the BIOS, I guess. I could try to hack hardcoded minumum pixel clock for all Radeons regardless of the bios version. If it doesn't work, no harm done, I will got a Radeon 92xx anyway and maybe I learn something. I got this idea looking at the video posted in that Spanish forum with Radeon 92xx not working with older release of the Groovy Arcade Linux CD. The problems with my setup seem very similar, so maybe it is worth of try.

[dmarcum99]

Thanks! Downloading...

EDIT: Great! It's fixed, virtualized modes work fine now.
EDIT2: They're also reporting the monitor_specs options is working great for TV sets, allowing to center the picture for all modes.

While I wasn't able to verify that twincobr behaved the same as mace and wg3hd, I can confirm that after reinstalling the new iso, twincobr runs @ 100%.  Unfortunately, wg3dh & mace still run well over 100% on my setup.  There was an improvement...the games finally were displayed fullscreen.  I've tried the following since installing the new iso:

-selected every monitor option in the setup menu while getting the same results in game speed.
-created an ini file for wg3dh with the throttle 1 option - same results as before.
-created an ini file for wg3dh with resolution 640x480x32@57.00.  This resulted in a squished picture that played at the excellerated rate.
-created an ini file with the speed set to 0.5 with no improvement

-created an ini file for wg3dh with resolution 511x256x32@56.25.  This resulted in a full screen picture that had a slight change.  Upon normally starting wg3dh the 1st screen runs abound 180%...then the credits screen starts....normally @ 105%....but with the 511x256x32@56.25 this screen ran at 100%.  Then following the credits screen the % jumps anywhere from 208-245%

-removed the ati 4350 and used the on-board ati4200 graphics...same results as the others..(also selected every monitor combination avail)

[bitbytebit]

Yeah those games most likely are hopeless and a mame issue, they run that way in throttle mode and no resolution switching.  That makes sense, the games switches resolutions at startup so it will do that if you force it to one or the other. 

Thanks! Downloading...

EDIT: Great! It's fixed, virtualized modes work fine now.
EDIT2: They're also reporting the monitor_specs options is working great for TV sets, allowing to center the picture for all modes.

While I wasn't able to verify that twincobr behaved the same as mace and wg3hd, I can confirm that after reinstalling the new iso, twincobr runs @ 100%.  Unfortunately, wg3dh & mace still run well over 100% on my setup.  There was an improvement...the games finally were displayed fullscreen.  I've tried the following since installing the new iso:

-selected every monitor option in the setup menu while getting the same results in game speed.
-created an ini file for wg3dh with the throttle 1 option - same results as before.
-created an ini file for wg3dh with resolution 640x480x32@57.00.  This resulted in a squished picture that played at the excellerated rate.
-created an ini file with the speed set to 0.5 with no improvement

-created an ini file for wg3dh with resolution 511x256x32@56.25.  This resulted in a full screen picture that had a slight change.  Upon normally starting wg3dh the 1st screen runs abound 180%...then the credits screen starts....normally @ 105%....but with the 511x256x32@56.25 this screen ran at 100%.  Then following the credits screen the % jumps anywhere from 208-245%

-removed the ati 4350 and used the on-board ati4200 graphics...same results as the others..(also selected every monitor combination avail)

[dmarcum99]

no worries then...GAME ON!!

[emphatic]

Will this work on an onboard Intel GPU?

[bitbytebit]

Thanks again for updating this project. Currently I am still stuck with no correct game graphics on my AGP Radeon X800Pro. I had gotten the WLAN to work and using ssh and Webmin makes the configuration much easier than using 15KHz arcade monitor which at the moment is rotated to vertical orientation. I had a spare PCI-e motherboard I thought I was able to use for the project, but unfortunately it doesn't work. So I am back to square one hunting AGP Radeon 92xx. It shouldn't be much of a problem, I should be able to get one cheap from the local auction easily.

Meanwhile, I thought giving a shot on making Groovy Arcade Linux from the Git sources. The instructions given in the README seem a bit outdated, but is there something that can't be figured out easily? My goal is to have a 32bit version. If I have understood correctly looking at the source patches is that only combios-Radeons get the hardcoded low pixelclock values, Atom-bios ones (which the X800Pro is) read the value from the BIOS, I guess. I could try to hack hardcoded minumum pixel clock for all Radeons regardless of the bios version. If it doesn't work, no harm done, I will got a Radeon 92xx anyway and maybe I learn something. I got this idea looking at the video posted in that Spanish forum with Radeon 92xx not working with older release of the Groovy Arcade Linux CD. The problems with my setup seem very similar, so maybe it is worth of try.

I actually made the change for the x800 or ones with the AtomBios too, so if it isn't working then those have some more issues.  I have one and have never been able to get it to work right.

Let me know how it goes building from source, not sure how much of that completely works because of course I've been moving forward with the same build and so might have left out a thing here and there.  It's definitely a large amount of downloading and compiling to setup the build system for the ISO's, which is why I haven't went through and tested it over and over from scratch.  Plus there's definitely little odd configurations here and there I've done to the source directories for each system, and I try to figure out ways to have the build system account for those but can't always get that done or sometimes forget when doing too much at once.

[bitbytebit]

Will this work on an onboard Intel GPU?

I think it should, I haven't tested it but I think they somewhat actually can do 15khz modes in Linux.  Testing the LiveCD and seeing how it goes, and reporting back the results, definitely will get me a good idea of what the status is and if I need to do anything to fix it.  Logs from xorg and mame also would be interesting and help make this work if it doesn't already.  I am pretty sure the intel GPU's can do vsync, I have a laptop with one in it I have tested things on before but I never attached it to an arcade monitor or tried the 15khz setup on it.  Partly from being a laptop and the main output being the LCD, would probably require a somewhat custom config for me to test it forcing the VGA to work as the primary output.

[dmarcum99]

This may be off topic discussion, but I thought I should ask anyway...maybe someone has an answer or some help.

I used romlister to create a specific .xml file for the controls my cab has and I went through and hand-picked the roms I wanted to be displayed in advmenu.  It took me two days to create this list, but when I delete the mame.xml file in the folder ".advance" and I restart advmenu, I get a blank screen and mame selection is no longer available in the frontend.  As soon as I delete my .xml file (named mame.xml) and restart advmanu, it goes through the xml regeneration and displays all the roms again(I have a full .143u3 set).

Is there something I'm doing wrong?  When I used romlister I selected the xml creation option and thought I had everything covered...??

[ufoufo512]

I actually made the change for the x800 or ones with the AtomBios too, so if it isn't working then those have some more issues.  I have one and have never been able to get it to work right.

Yeah. I was a bit tired when I was looking at the patches code, you are right. I still might try to making the iso from sources. Gentoo is required, I have to install it to Virtual Box.

[dmarcum99]

This may be off topic discussion, but I thought I should ask anyway...maybe someone has an answer or some help.

I used romlister to create a specific .xml file for the controls my cab has and I went through and hand-picked the roms I wanted to be displayed in advmenu.  It took me two days to create this list, but when I delete the mame.xml file in the folder ".advance" and I restart advmenu, I get a blank screen and mame selection is no longer available in the frontend.  As soon as I delete my .xml file (named mame.xml) and restart advmanu, it goes through the xml regeneration and displays all the roms again(I have a full .143u3 set).

Is there something I'm doing wrong?  When I used romlister I selected the xml creation option and thought I had everything covered...??

perhaps I was thinking it wrong...I was thinking that if I gave advmenu my .xml file it would read it and list only my games.

So...I took another approach.  I made a .bat file and copied only the games (roms and chd's)that I had listed in the new.xml file.  I deleted the modified xml file and I let advmenu create the xml file again.  Now...some of the games are not listed in advmenu....how do I make sure advmenu shows everything in my roms folder?

[bitbytebit]

This may be off topic discussion, but I thought I should ask anyway...maybe someone has an answer or some help.

I used romlister to create a specific .xml file for the controls my cab has and I went through and hand-picked the roms I wanted to be displayed in advmenu.  It took me two days to create this list, but when I delete the mame.xml file in the folder ".advance" and I restart advmenu, I get a blank screen and mame selection is no longer available in the frontend.  As soon as I delete my .xml file (named mame.xml) and restart advmanu, it goes through the xml regeneration and displays all the roms again(I have a full .143u3 set).

Is there something I'm doing wrong?  When I used romlister I selected the xml creation option and thought I had everything covered...??

perhaps I was thinking it wrong...I was thinking that if I gave advmenu my .xml file it would read it and list only my games.

So...I took another approach.  I made a .bat file and copied only the games (roms and chd's)that I had listed in the new.xml file.  I deleted the modified xml file and I let advmenu create the xml file again.  Now...some of the games are not listed in advmenu....how do I make sure advmenu shows everything in my roms folder?

From what I can tell, advmenu seems to check the .xml file and recreate it if it's not timestamped/checksummed or both properly.  I can generate the .xml file myself but if advmenu has not done it, it'll do it again and overwrite whatever I put in there. 

[dmarcum99]

This may be off topic discussion, but I thought I should ask anyway...maybe someone has an answer or some help.

I used romlister to create a specific .xml file for the controls my cab has and I went through and hand-picked the roms I wanted to be displayed in advmenu.  It took me two days to create this list, but when I delete the mame.xml file in the folder ".advance" and I restart advmenu, I get a blank screen and mame selection is no longer available in the frontend.  As soon as I delete my .xml file (named mame.xml) and restart advmanu, it goes through the xml regeneration and displays all the roms again(I have a full .143u3 set).

Is there something I'm doing wrong?  When I used romlister I selected the xml creation option and thought I had everything covered...??

perhaps I was thinking it wrong...I was thinking that if I gave advmenu my .xml file it would read it and list only my games.

So...I took another approach.  I made a .bat file and copied only the games (roms and chd's)that I had listed in the new.xml file.  I deleted the modified xml file and I let advmenu create the xml file again.  Now...some of the games are not listed in advmenu....how do I make sure advmenu shows everything in my roms folder?

From what I can tell, advmenu seems to check the .xml file and recreate it if it's not timestamped/checksummed or both properly.  I can generate the .xml file myself but if advmenu has not done it, it'll do it again and overwrite whatever I put in there. 

Well, I went in another direction and it worked out great.  I went back to Wah!Cade and it created a list of only the games I put in the roms folder.  I also tricked out the layout using the mamewah layout editor and someone elses background image.  I'll post a pic when I get home.

I am still so impressed with the groovymame project.  It's awesome!!!

**edit**  here's the pic of my wahcade layout.  I had to include a gratuitus shot of my marquee for pure vanity reasons   

[Calamity]

Hi bitbytebit,

When you have some time please have a look at this post by the folk Paul Sernine:

http://www.retrovicio.org/foro/showthread.php?14969-GroovyArcade-Por-fin-100-Pixel-Perfect-y-mucho-mas&p=148162#post148162

He's having an issue with some usb wifi dongle, maybe you can give us a hint of what could be the possible problem.

[bitbytebit]

Hi bitbytebit,

When you have some time please have a look at this post by the folk Paul Sernine:

http://www.retrovicio.org/foro/showthread.php?14969-GroovyArcade-Por-fin-100-Pixel-Perfect-y-mucho-mas&p=148162#post148162

He's having an issue with some usb wifi dongle, maybe you can give us a hint of what could be the possible problem.

I'm pretty sure when he's setting up the network interface, that the 'Is this Wireless' question isn't used.  Otherwise the wpa_supplicant.conf file would be there, and it would have asked him for details.  If he is going through that part of the
config though, then it's really odd that the wpa_supplicant.conf file isn't created.  

Update: Also may want to check the dmesg output, it might be a USB network device issue too, some don't work without proprietary drivers from the company, at least work *right*. 

[ufoufo512]

At last I got a Radeon 7000 AGP. I can tell it is working great with Groovy Arcade Linux. I still have much tweaking to do. I want to customize AdvanceMenu quite a lot, happily I have old configuration file somewhere. I also mentioned earlier that the image is too wide on my monitor WG K7000. I have now found that there might be a Horizontal Size control for the monitor after all. It is kind of hidden there.

The performance on my Celeron 2,4GHz was positive surprise. I didn't check the actual framerates, but everything seemed quite smooth with NeoGeo era games. I know that I will not be able to run newer games and I have understood that even old ones using discrete sound are quite demanding.

[Calamity]

You can also reduce horizontal amplitude by software using a custom monitor line in GroovyMame, like this:

monitor_specs 15625-16200,50-60,4.000,4.700,9.000,0.064,0.192,1.024,0,0,288,448

Here, the values 4.000 and 9.000 are the horizontal front and back porch sizes, you can play with those, think of them as the right/left border's size (the bigger they are the narrower the picture).

[dmarcum99]

Hi Guys!

A couple of questions.

Can you recommend a cheap PCI wireless card that will work well with the GROOVYMAME live cd?  I want to close the back of my cab and I'm tired of having wires running through my house to be able to remote in if I need to.

Also, I see some current discussion on the monitor forum about rankings, mode selection, etc...does this also affect the linux distro or is the discussion just related to Windows?

Thirdly, mame .142 is out.  I saw there were some issues in the mameui program hogging a bunch of memory and such...is .142 performance wise any different and are there any benefits upgrading to it when it's avail for groovymame? 

[bitbytebit]

Hi Guys!

A couple of questions.

Can you recommend a cheap PCI wireless card that will work well with the GROOVYMAME live cd?  I want to close the back of my cab and I'm tired of having wires running through my house to be able to remote in if I need to.

Also, I see some current discussion on the monitor forum about rankings, mode selection, etc...does this also affect the linux distro or is the discussion just related to Windows?

Thirdly, mame .142 is out.  I saw there were some issues in the mameui program hogging a bunch of memory and such...is .142 performance wise any different and are there any benefits upgrading to it when it's avail for groovymame? 

Wireless cards are tricky in Linux, plenty work great but there's ones that don't work or sort of work with proprietary drivers, so it makes it hard to pick the ones that do work.  Also there's chipsets vs. the actual commercial labels/names given.  So that varies per country too, like certain Linksys ones from Europe use a working chipset, while the ones of the exact same name in the US might not have that working chipset.  That all said, I am using a ath9k (Atheros chipset) based card, here's a link that might help...

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k/products/external

Mine actually since a few months ago has picked up a slightly crappy connection, has pauses every minute or so, which sucks.  I'm not sure what they did in the driver, plus I have to use G networking instead of N on it or large data transfers hang it.  So that shows I've had issues with what I have, that used to mostly work fine, it's a pain.  There's belkin based ones that might work, or might not, mine don't.  Also there's ones based on Broadcom chipsets and they only with with a proprietary driver and are really hard to setup, I have one and only worked in Ubuntu but never in Gentoo.


Nope, the rankings don't matter in Linux, that's just to work around the whole modeline setup and limitations in Windows.

The newest ISO uses Mame 142, I doubt you'll need it though, I haven't found any differences unless there's the new exotic games added to it but classics are all the same from what I can tell. 

[ufoufo512]

Played with my cab little more. I have a rotating monitor and used to use inbuilt Advancemenu's filtering to display only horizontal or vertical games on the list. Now I tried from AdvanceMenu and choose Only Vertical. Available games list was empty, which was incorrect as there were many vertical games in my ROMS folder.

I don't have the access to my cab now to give proper steps to reproduce, but basically it is like this:
1) In AdvanceMenu bring up the menu dialog.
2) Navigate to Filtering (or something like that)
3) Choose "Only Vertical" in "Display Orientation"

Expected results:
Games list should list all vertical orientation games.

Actual results:
Games list is empty.

[bitbytebit]

Played with my cab little more. I have a rotating monitor and used to use inbuilt Advancemenu's filtering to display only horizontal or vertical games on the list. Now I tried from AdvanceMenu and choose Only Vertical. Available games list was empty, which was incorrect as there were many vertical games in my ROMS folder.

I don't have the access to my cab now to give proper steps to reproduce, but basically it is like this:
1) In AdvanceMenu bring up the menu dialog.
2) Navigate to Filtering (or something like that)
3) Choose "Only Vertical" in "Display Orientation"

Expected results:
Games list should list all vertical orientation games.

Actual results:
Games list is empty.

Ah, so it's just not filtering, but works without the filtering?  Sounds like possibly the XML format has changed or something since that version of AdvanceMenu (which is pretty old now), interesting, might be needing some changes to filter properly or something.  I'll have to look at it and see.

[bitbytebit]

New ISO's up, main changes are updated groovymame (not tons of changes there) and new menu options/submenu with a 29" 30-50Khz arcade monitor type and a 15-31Khz trisync monitor type (Makovision and Bililabs I think), the Trisync one uses composite sync.  Both somewhat experimental, definitions for them may still need some changes, will see.

15042011 - Version 1.558-86f6575 Release
         - New monitor types in gasetup Video section, also new MultiSync separate menu too
         - /home/roms/snaps symlink added for /home/roms/ttl directory
         - GroovyMame 0142 v. 012  update, new git based ebuild

[ufoufo512]

Ah, so it's just not filtering, but works without the filtering?  Sounds like possibly the XML format has changed or something since that version of AdvanceMenu (which is pretty old now), interesting, might be needing some changes to filter properly or something.  I'll have to look at it and see.

Yeah. The vertical games do show up and work if I don't change filtering. One question: How do I update only the groovymame on my installed system? This eBuild/Gentoo system is a bit new to me. I am happy with my installation otherwise, but somewhere in the future I would like to update the groovymame binary.

[bitbytebit]

Ah, so it's just not filtering, but works without the filtering?  Sounds like possibly the XML format has changed or something since that version of AdvanceMenu (which is pretty old now), interesting, might be needing some changes to filter properly or something.  I'll have to look at it and see.

Yeah. The vertical games do show up and work if I don't change filtering. One question: How do I update only the groovymame on my installed system? This eBuild/Gentoo system is a bit new to me. I am happy with my installation otherwise, but somewhere in the future I would like to update the groovymame binary.

That's something in this newest ISO I've mostly taken care of.  You basically just have to run 'sudo emerge -av groovymame' to upgrade it, that now pulls from the most recent active git repository, always the newest version and caches the source so only downloads the changes each time run (if there are any changes since the last emerge). 

[emphatic]

Is it possible for you to write a short installation guide and add it to your original post? Like this

What you need:
1. A PC with a computer monitor and keyboard
2. A blank disc
3. A J-Pac or other means of hooking up the PC to your arcade cabinet
4. etc

Installation and setup:
1. Download the ISO and burn it to your blank disc
2. Start your computer and put the disc in
3. Now what?

Why? Well, I've been looking at this thread from start to finish, and I still feel like this:   because I don't know how many steps of the installer to follow before I can hook the PC up to my arcade cabinet.

[bitbytebit]

Is it possible for you to write a short installation guide and add it to your original post? Like this

What you need:
1. A PC with a computer monitor and keyboard
2. A blank disc
3. A J-Pac or other means of hooking up the PC to your arcade cabinet
4. etc

Installation and setup:
1. Download the ISO and burn it to your blank disc
2. Start your computer and put the disc in
3. Now what?

Why? Well, I've been looking at this thread from start to finish, and I still feel like this:   because I don't know how many steps of the installer to follow before I can hook the PC up to my arcade cabinet.

Hopefully what I just added is good, it's actually what is on the page where the ISO's exist but it's good to have on the main post on this thread too.  I'll look at doing more detail than that even, but one main thing is the newest ISO really only requires one extra step besides yours up there (or number 3) is basically 3. Run Installation (number 3 on the cd's main menu).  Then it should go from there asking the person questions and setting up everything, I'm sure that could be streamlined even more though.  Hopefully someone with better HowTo writing skills can eventually take up the task of putting things into more user friendly tutorials though.  I'm really bad at writing things out simply, I'm really best at coding internally on C programs , it's just where my brain is and unfortunately my documentation often looks similar so it's nice to have more than one person at times for different aspects of projects like this doing the different parts. 

[emphatic]

Thanks, but what's confusing to me is when I switch from my computer screen to my cabinet?

[bitbytebit]

Thanks, but what's confusing to me is when I switch from my computer screen to my cabinet?

You mean like installing with a lcd connected and the plugging in the arcade monitor? For that I would recommend attaching the lcd to the output you won't use for the arcade monitor/15khz output.  The bootup menu choice you make, like vga-0 for example, is the only output that'll be 15khz.  The rest will be normal Vesa modes at 31khz or more.  After an install, you can change which output is the magic 15khz one though the video setup menu under the option for output freq.  I think after that and a reboot, you probably will need to run the monitor type setup again, now that I think about that it may be a bit tricky, but also changing the output for 15khz after install should really not be necessary except in rare situations since at install it can be chosen which will be which from the grub bootup choice.

[emphatic]

You mean like installing with a lcd connected and the plugging in the arcade monitor? For that I would recommend attaching the lcd to the output you won't use for the arcade monitor/15khz output.  The bootup menu choice you make, like vga-0 for example, is the only output that'll be 15khz.  The rest will be normal Vesa modes at 31khz or more.

If there's only one VGA output (and it's a single adapter only) on the computer you're installing to, choosing vga-0 is the only option if you want to use a 15kHz monitor, correct?

After an install, you can change which output is the magic 15khz one though the video setup menu under the option for output freq.

This is what I want to hear. Now, can I see that menu on the computer monitor, or will I have to connect the arcade monitor at this time already? I don't like to assume things when using a computer with my precious arcade monitors.

I think after that and a reboot, you probably will need to run the monitor type setup again, now that I think about that it may be a bit tricky, but also changing the output for 15khz after install should really not be necessary except in rare situations since at install it can be chosen which will be which from the grub bootup choice.

So, when the computer boots up to show the grub menu, does it come up in all scenarios, or just when running the Live CD? Thanks for explaining stuff, I won't mind writing up a dummy guide for you if I get everything up and running.

[bitbytebit]

You mean like installing with a lcd connected and the plugging in the arcade monitor? For that I would recommend attaching the lcd to the output you won't use for the arcade monitor/15khz output.  The bootup menu choice you make, like vga-0 for example, is the only output that'll be 15khz.  The rest will be normal Vesa modes at 31khz or more.

If there's only one VGA output (and it's a single adapter only) on the computer you're installing to, choosing vga-0 is the only option if you want to use a 15kHz monitor, correct?

After an install, you can change which output is the magic 15khz one though the video setup menu under the option for output freq.

This is what I want to hear. Now, can I see that menu on the computer monitor, or will I have to connect the arcade monitor at this time already? I don't like to assume things when using a computer with my precious arcade monitors.

I think after that and a reboot, you probably will need to run the monitor type setup again, now that I think about that it may be a bit tricky, but also changing the output for 15khz after install should really not be necessary except in rare situations since at install it can be chosen which will be which from the grub bootup choice.

So, when the computer boots up to show the grub menu, does it come up in all scenarios, or just when running the Live CD? Thanks for explaining stuff, I won't mind writing up a dummy guide for you if I get everything up and running.

Ah for one output (what kind of card is it?) you really then would need to pick the SVGA/VGA monitor type on the grub menu to install, and then do the after installation method of switching output to be 15khz.  When you change the output to 15khz vga-0, it's only 15khz after a reboot, so you'll want to wait till you change it in the menu and then halt the system then change monitors and reboot.  I'd actually leave it connected to the LCD monitor/VGA monitor until full reboot and check the screen and see that it's really 15khz (or doesn't output to the monitor), if you want to be extra careful, then can turn off monitor/connect arcade monitor/turn it on.

The grub menu only comes up with the LiveCD, the installation puts one on that's only got the main entry and from then on the setup menu changes that entry to whatever type of output you choose it to use. 

That would be great, really wonderful to have help with documentation, since I definitely am not the best at that part of things .

[emphatic]

Ah for one output (what kind of card is it?) you really then would need to pick the SVGA/VGA monitor type on the grub menu to install, and then do the after installation method of switching output to be 15khz.  When you change the output to 15khz vga-0, it's only 15khz after a reboot, so you'll want to wait till you change it in the menu and then halt the system then change monitors and reboot.  I'd actually leave it connected to the LCD monitor/VGA monitor until full reboot and check the screen and see that it's really 15khz (or doesn't output to the monitor), if you want to be extra careful, then can turn off monitor/connect arcade monitor/turn it on.

It's an onboard Intel graphics adapter.

Thanks for the info. Whenever I start installing to my PC I'll take notes and make a comprehensive document that can be pasted into the first post (for us noobs). I think you will have lots more people converting to this if it's easy to review before "taking the leap" from an easy setup (XP, Win7) to Linux (easy as well, but the whole hardware aspect can be confusing).

[bitbytebit]

Ah for one output (what kind of card is it?) you really then would need to pick the SVGA/VGA monitor type on the grub menu to install, and then do the after installation method of switching output to be 15khz.  When you change the output to 15khz vga-0, it's only 15khz after a reboot, so you'll want to wait till you change it in the menu and then halt the system then change monitors and reboot.  I'd actually leave it connected to the LCD monitor/VGA monitor until full reboot and check the screen and see that it's really 15khz (or doesn't output to the monitor), if you want to be extra careful, then can turn off monitor/connect arcade monitor/turn it on.

It's an onboard Intel graphics adapter.

Thanks for the info. Whenever I start installing to my PC I'll take notes and make a comprehensive document that can be pasted into the first post (for us noobs). I think you will have lots more people converting to this if it's easy to review before "taking the leap" from an easy setup (XP, Win7) to Linux (easy as well, but the whole hardware aspect can be confusing).

Cool, definitely check with the liveCD first to see if that adaptor really can handle 15khz.  It may be one that needs possibly the dotclock setting to be higher which I do have an option for now in groovymame but it isn't automated in the setup interface yet.  Just a mame.ini option to raise it instead.  I figure the intel adapters should work, although might need some tweaks here and there through the system, not sure.  No one has tested and reported what they do yet, given logs, so I have no clue if they really work or need some special settings.  I just know the code in the Linux kernel looks pretty active, they seem to be doing as much work as the ATI ones are, and looks like they are supposed to support all the same features but just not sure about 15khz modelines (the 15khz console I have is global all DRM drivers so it covers all graphics adaptors that are supported by the Linux frame buffer, but each individual adaptor might need PLL tweaks possibly or special dotclock limits in mame.ini).

[dmarcum99]

It's me again!

More Wah!cade questions:

What do I need to do to get some of the multimedia features in wah!cade to work?  I'm trying to get music to play in the background...and to the best of my knowledge I've pointed the wah!cade setup program to the directory where the .mp3 file is(arcade ambience file) /home/arcade/emulators/mame/music/arcade83.mp3

I'm also trying to get my videos (.avi's) to play as the screensaver and also to play while in the front end.  Again, I believe in the setup I pointed the setup program to where my files are. /home/arcade/emulators/mame/videos

Lastly, intro video...I am trying to get the mame lightning video (.avi) to be used as the intro video when wha!cade starts up.  I believe I've pointed the setup program to my file, but like the other items, it won't play on startup.    /home/arcade/intro/intro.avi

[bitbytebit]

 Wahcade needs gstreamer to do the music and video functionality.  I had this running before, I'm not sure but it might require a rebuild too of wahcade and some python modules too.  With emerge you can search for the gstreamer parts, I will look at what is exactly required to get it going too.

It's me again!

More Wah!cade questions:

What do I need to do to get some of the multimedia features in wah!cade to work?  I'm trying to get music to play in the background...and to the best of my knowledge I've pointed the wah!cade setup program to the directory where the .mp3 file is(arcade ambience file) /home/arcade/emulators/mame/music/arcade83.mp3

I'm also trying to get my videos (.avi's) to play as the screensaver and also to play while in the front end.  Again, I believe in the setup I pointed the setup program to where my files are. /home/arcade/emulators/mame/videos

Lastly, intro video...I am trying to get the mame lightning video (.avi) to be used as the intro video when wha!cade starts up.  I believe I've pointed the setup program to my file, but like the other items, it won't play on startup.    /home/arcade/intro/intro.avi

[dmarcum99]

With zero prior knowledge with linux I hope I did the right thing...  I typed #sudo emerge gstreamer
It appeared to go to the gstreamer website and downloaded files, but afterward, still no luck.  Did I do the emerge thing right?  Reboot...

I also tried the emerge thing for groovymame... #sudo emerge groovymame.  It took a long time before I was able to use the cab again, but groovymame appears to work normally.  Do I need to go through the setup program again?

[bitbytebit]

With zero prior knowledge with linux I hope I did the right thing...  I typed #sudo emerge gstreamer
It appeared to go to the gstreamer website and downloaded files, but afterward, still no luck.  Did I do the emerge thing right?  Reboot...

I also tried the emerge thing for groovymame... #sudo emerge groovymame.  It took a long time before I was able to use the cab again, but groovymame appears to work normally.  Do I need to go through the setup program again?

Ah cool, the groovymame part should be fine, should be the newest groovymame now, no need to go through the setup part.

Yeah the gstreamer libraries are there I guess now, but there might be other missing parts, and besides that wahcade itself will need to be re-compiled and installed which unfortunately the way I've got it isn't possible on your end.  Since I have a customized wahcade config setup so that the config files are modified for paths to groovymame, and a couple bugs fixed they have.  I need to do something about that, when I have some time I'll see what it'll take to enable the media functions of wahcade.  Also I really need to make it into a ebuild like groovymame to allow an update like you did through emerge.  Unfortunately it's probably quite a bit of work to do that since there's no wahcade ebuild in gentoo and it'll be a whole new ebuild, I haven't explored creating them from scratch like that yet.  It'll probably be easiest for me to try and get wahcade to be enabled for the gstreamer/media setup already, hopefully it doesn't take up too much space to do that, I'll have to see.

[Quinny]

There is a bug with the current release when using Ubuntu 10 that causes a error and crashes Wahcade when the video tries to play. The latest patch of wahcade will work though. Maybe try that version (1.0pre1) to see if it works any better.

https://code.launchpad.net/wahcade
I used lp:wahcade, not the experimental one.

[dmarcum99]

There is a bug with the current release when using Ubuntu 10 that causes a error and crashes Wahcade when the video tries to play. The latest patch of wahcade will work though. Maybe try that version (1.0pre1) to see if it works any better.

https://code.launchpad.net/wahcade
I used lp:wahcade, not the experimental one.

The splash screen indicates I'm running 1.0pre1 already...and my lack of linux knowledge has left me scratching my head.  Having the multimedia things not work right now isn't a deal breaker...I'd like them to work but in the end they're fluff to enhance thw WOW factor. 

I tried to mess with advancemenu before deciding to use wahcade, but there is so little info anymore since advancemenu seems a bit dated.  I've seen videos of some great work done in advancemenu, but nobody is willing to share their work, help with questions, or even reply.  It's not like I have no skills...before going to groovymame and linux, I was using a fully loaded Hyperspin setup with a custom made theme for my cab that I made myself.  But bitbytebit made it difficult not to use his linux setup if you have the right equipment....and he and Calamity are great at responding to questions.

[bitbytebit]

There is a bug with the current release when using Ubuntu 10 that causes a error and crashes Wahcade when the video tries to play. The latest patch of wahcade will work though. Maybe try that version (1.0pre1) to see if it works any better.

https://code.launchpad.net/wahcade
I used lp:wahcade, not the experimental one.

The splash screen indicates I'm running 1.0pre1 already...and my lack of linux knowledge has left me scratching my head.  Having the multimedia things not work right now isn't a deal breaker...I'd like them to work but in the end they're fluff to enhance thw WOW factor.  

I tried to mess with advancemenu before deciding to use wahcade, but there is so little info anymore since advancemenu seems a bit dated.  I've seen videos of some great work done in advancemenu, but nobody is willing to share their work, help with questions, or even reply.  It's not like I have no skills...before going to groovymame and linux, I was using a fully loaded Hyperspin setup with a custom made theme for my cab that I made myself.  But bitbytebit made it difficult not to use his linux setup if you have the right equipment....and he and Calamity are great at responding to questions.

Yeah AdvanceMenu is really weird actually codewise, looking at it is very confusing (and only half as confusing as AdvanceMame).  The way it was written, they separated it up into arbitrary directories that use single letters, I have no clue what arrangement it's following.  All I know is when I look at the code for any of the Advance stuff, I get really confused and never know where anything is really or what any of the code really does, it's like they just used gibberish for function names, file names, variable names, so it's very sad since it'd be nice to modernize it (since the XML parsing is obviously out of date in it).

I'll look at WahCade some this weekend, I am using 1.0pre1 actually in groovy linux right now, will check out that patch and see if I can get it more 'multimedia' ized since that'll make it more appealing towards people used to hyperspin and such.  

Also there was an interesting frontend in C for Linux named camino I think that I played with once, had to hack at it to get it to work with thousands of games since internally the programming didn't allow that and did eat a lot of resources.  But it did the whole wheel of games thing similar to hyperspin and was pretty cool, at least looked like it had potential.  Possibly I can include it too as another option, really it seems like it could be the future for Linux frontends being in C and already having that sort of hyperspin type interface, plus actively being developed.  I like wahcade but being in python has disadvantages of it using quite a bit of memory and cpu for what it does, although it's good when your system can handle it, but there is generally some better system response/behavior to a C program opposed to a scripting language.



Update:  Also could you run wahcade with the -d option, and get the output when you try to use multimedia with it?  That might be interesting to see, and help see what I need to do to enable it.  I think that's how I got it working when I did have it working, doing that and finding the stuff it was complaining about.  That would help me hunt down what is missing, which the newest ISO's I've been not including the multimedia stuff so they definitely won't work :/, but the one you have installed did have the media stuff I think, so it should have the basic needed parts just missing something probably that wahcade wants.

[bitbytebit]

Here's something to try, and it'll give you the ability to fully setup wahcade from scratch too.  It also will help me in seeing what works, to get it into the main ISO .

Checkout both the stable and development wahcade:

# first get bzr
sudo emerge -av bzr
# get devel
bzr branch lp:~waynemou/wahcade/devel
# get stable
bzr branch lp:wahcade

Then you can apply the patch attached here to these for the changes in config options groovymame uses...

cd wahcade && cat ../wahcade.diff |patch -p0

Then run the normal install script in the wahcade directory.  I'm guessing the devel version isn't the one to use, but the main one might be with the fix mentioned earlier in this thread, possibly will help.  If not, at least with this patch you can recompile wahcade, and possibly try the other main one that's available (99preX), but with that there's still a fix that needs to be done for it...
http://www.anti-particle.com/forum_phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=590

So that should be a third branch/option, but the bzr checkout ones are much better there were a lot of bugs ironed out it seems, I found they actually setup automatically and efficiently compared to the 99pre versions, hopefully that doesn't mean the media stuff is broken in the 1.0pre ones.

[dmarcum99]

I ran into a couple of snags...

I was able to do the wahcade -d thing...at first I got 3 issues and I was able to resolve 2 of those.
1)PIL module not found error.....something about rotated images not supported
2)control.ini missing in /emulators/mame/ ....easy fix
3)directory not found /home/roms/avi...easy fix
So I copied the controls.ini file and moved all my .avi's to the appropriate directory.  Nothing to talk about though...no improvement.

Checkout both the stable and development wahcade:

# first get bzr
sudo emerge -av bzr
# get devel
bzr branch lp:~waynemou/wahcade/devel
# get stable
bzr branch lp:wahcade

Then you can apply the patch attached here to these for the changes in config options groovymame uses...

cd wahcade && cat ../wahcade.diff |patch -p0

Then run the normal install script in the wahcade directory.  I'm guessing the devel version isn't the one to use, but the main one might be with the fix mentioned earlier in this thread, possibly will help.  If not, at least with this patch you can recompile wahcade, and possibly try the other main one that's available (99preX), but with that there's still a fix that needs to be done for it...

I was able to download the three branches, but I'm at a roadblock now.  I downloaded the wahcade.diff file but wasn't sure what directory to copy it to.  Also, I typed the your command verbatim and I got a directory or file not found error. (cd wahcade && cat ../wahcade.diff |patch -p0)  Since I didn't get any further, I didn't attempt the install script.....