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Basic Lubuntu with Wah!Cade Tutorial
killsurfcity:
Great tutorial! thanks. One thing I'd add is that at least on Lubuntu 12.04 you have to add the repositories from the sdlmame home page in order to use apt-get to install mame.
So this process has been a bit of a nightmare for me, it being my first time really dealing with Linux. So after literally days of failure, I finally got wahcade working with mame. Well, almost. It is excruciatingly slow. And not just video, keystrokes have a multi-second delay. It's awful.
Is this fixable? Common?
It may be an issue that I'm running Lubuntu on a PPC Powebook G4. Any ideas? Thanks!
ark_ader:
What is wrong with Puppy Arcade 10?
Arturius:
Thanks for this, going to give it a go tonight :)
Has much changed since this was written?
[edit] Wow, didnt realise how much of an EPIC NECRO POST this was, please feel free to taunt me in replies... [/edit]
Pixel Fun:
I realize I'm necrobumping a topic, but this seems to be the appropriate place to ask since this is the first comprehensible guide on installing an emulator on a Linux distro. I hope anyone with a Linux inclination can provide some insight (topic poster maybe ;D).
This tutorial focuses on one particular Linux distribution that comes with a desktop, being Lubuntu. It's probably easier to do a MAME setup using an IDE, but I'm actually interested in the possibilities of using Linux as an embedded system.
There are two problems with using a distro with an IDE on an embedded system: it adds unnecessary weight to the distribution (don't need the desktop, don't need all the applications) AND it potentially lengthens startup time. The kind of embedded system I'm interested in should get close to having a kind of console device, which boots up the OS in well under 10 seconds after power-on. As far as I've looked around this doesn't seem feasible with desktop editions.
I'll admit here that I'm a total newbie when it comes to the Linux platform, but it is a very interesting platform for embedded systems. I am in the understanding that you'd need to start out with a bare-bones Linux kernel and add required modules (drivers) to get the hardware supported, not to mention custom-compile your emulator for the processor in the device (this is a drag for spoiled Windows users like me), so I'm looking at quite a few hurdles before I can even start realizing a particular idea I have - I'm very interested in any pointers anyone might give.
welash:
SDL (the graphics/sound/... library used by mame) does have the ability to work with a framebuffer device, so assuming your embedded system has framebuffer support in the kernel, you can run mame without X on linux (I think that is what you meant). As an experiment on my Ubuntu laptop, I went to one of the virtual terminals (ctrl-alt-f2) and ran mame, and after a few issues was able to get it running.
The issues have to do with openGL support and permissions of some of the devices. I just copied the dkong.zip file to the laptop and was able to run mame on the console using the following command line:
sudo /usr/games/mame -video soft -rp . dkong
the "-rp ." was to tell it that the rom was in the current directory. the "-video soft" told it not to use openGL. the sudo command tells it to run with root privileges, this overcomes some permission issues with various devices (the framebuffer, the mouse, and probably some others). In an embedded environment, you could set up permissions appropriately.
I didn't try wahcade, but I believe it also uses SDL, so it might work as well.
My cabinet used to run advancemame and advancemenu running SVGAlib, which is a similar concept, and it worked pretty well. I'm getting the cabinet running again, and I plan to use wahcade and mame under X, just because it is easier to get going and maintain.
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