Does anybody run Mame on a Raspberry Pi?

[Blanka]

Just received my Pi today. Was wondering if one of the people that did not have to wait till nr. 190000 came of the production line has Mame up and running already? Preferably a low number version with a simple front-end.

[Howard_Casto]

I think you hit the nail on the head right in your post.  Not many people have a Pi yet.  Now it runs on a port of a popular flavor of linux... search for a version of mame that runs on that and you might be in luck. 

As for a front-end....lol..... why do you think everybody runs their cabs in windows?  FEs are virtually non existant on linux and mac. 

Now IF people get a good version of mame running on the Pi then we might see a front-end or two pop up, but as of now, your best bet would be mame's internal menu system. 

[Well Fed Games]

Yeah, I am not very knowledgeable about these things, but I see a little board with lots of inputs and composite out, and the pile of TVs I have for "future projects" and I get pretty excited. Can't wait till someone does the first Pi cab!

[Haze]

The Pi is severely underpowered for MAME, it's not even the latest generation of ARM chip, has a feeble amount of RAM left after you've booted any kind of graphical OS, and you have to use closed source video drivers to get anything like reasonable video performance because the entire graphic hw spec is private and closed, no docs available.

I believe it's said you should divide the ARM frequency by about 2-3 to get the equivalent x86 MAME performance frequency so you're looking at something which runs 'classic' versions of MAME only, or a very limited sub-set of current ones, that's why all the ARM based xx-in-1 bootlegs (some of which are more powerful than the PI) only really run older games, or if they run newer ones tend to struggle (the CPS3 performance on them is hilariously bad)  Something like Final Burn Alpha would be better to port, because it's a bit lighter, although even that for some stuff it only just gets by on an original XBOX and you've probably only got around half the cpu power on a Pi.

The Pi is cheap, yes, but you get very much what you pay for.  Modern tablets and phones blow it away in terms of performance, but are also more expensive and locked down, that said even the modern mobile processors aren't that great because a lot are now focusing on multi-core support with lower overall speeds, which is simply no good for emulation.

Cool project, yes, good base for an emulation box? No.

[Blanka]

I have seen some promising videos of actual games running on the pi, but they all come with 6 hour compilation stories. Don't forget those compilation CD's from Namco etc run MAME too, and they ran smooth on 400mhz P3 computers. Another example is the 60 in 1 multiboards, also a simple mame machine. The Pi is more powerful than those options. Just don't use the current frame-accurate approach versions. Mames like 0.36 are great for low power machines and capable of running most 1978-1988 stuff. Was wondering if someone has a ready-to-go image for the SD card already.

[Howard_Casto]

The Pi is severely underpowered for MAME, it's not even the latest generation of ARM chip, has a feeble amount of RAM left after you've booted any kind of graphical OS, and you have to use closed source video drivers to get anything like reasonable video performance because the entire graphic hw spec is private and closed, no docs available.

I believe it's said you should divide the ARM frequency by about 2-3 to get the equivalent x86 MAME performance frequency so you're looking at something which runs 'classic' versions of MAME only, or a very limited sub-set of current ones, that's why all the ARM based xx-in-1 bootlegs (some of which are more powerful than the PI) only really run older games, or if they run newer ones tend to struggle (the CPS3 performance on them is hilariously bad)  Something like Final Burn Alpha would be better to port, because it's a bit lighter, although even that for some stuff it only just gets by on an original XBOX and you've probably only got around half the cpu power on a Pi.

The Pi is cheap, yes, but you get very much what you pay for.  Modern tablets and phones blow it away in terms of performance, but are also more expensive and locked down, that said even the modern mobile processors aren't that great because a lot are now focusing on multi-core support with lower overall speeds, which is simply no good for emulation.

Cool project, yes, good base for an emulation box? No.

I couldn't agree more.  I was excited about the Pi several years ago when it was announced because back then, it would have been a deal.  Right now though, it's just priced apropriately. 

I'm not sure about tablets being more expensive though.  You can go down to your local big lots and pickup a (crappy) tablet with double the speed of the Pi for around 70-80 dollars.  Yes that's more expensive, but not when you factor in the fact that the Pi doesn't come with any storage, so you are out at least 20 bucks and a tablet comes with a touch screen.  They are farily easy to hack as well.  Now are you going to run your own OS on them?  Probably not.  But can you root them so you can do things like setup an android based front-end as the gui and run some emulators on it.  Sure!

[Haze]

I have seen some promising videos of actual games running on the pi, but they all come with 6 hour compilation stories. Don't forget those compilation CD's from Namco etc run MAME too, and they ran smooth on 400mhz P3 computers. Another example is the 60 in 1 multiboards, also a simple mame machine. The Pi is more powerful than those options. Just don't use the current frame-accurate approach versions. Mames like 0.36 are great for low power machines and capable of running most 1978-1988 stuff. Was wondering if someone has a ready-to-go image for the SD card already.

I doubt Namco's stuff is MAME, probably their own tech or just redone, the 60-in-1 multiboards yes, but I already said you'd be stuck with classic hacked up old versions of MAME anyway.  If you want something as horrible as those, you could probably do it but keep in mind that those aren't trying to run an entire OS at the same time and have already been heavily customized on a per-game basis.  The Blue-elf type multi-games are more comparable, they run linux, and some 'in the middle' build of MAME, but look at opinions / reviews on those http://forums.arcade-museum.com/archive/index.php/t-108107.html

The thing is by sticking with such old versions which do 'work' you're sticking with the bugs, inaccurate emulation and other issues associated with them and you've been able to run at that 'quality' on cheap devices well before the PI, which simply isn't a big enough step up to run much better which kinda just puts it in the 'why bother' category.

The majority of the classics are available cheaply enough in other forms anyway on official compilations and the like, they've been done to death to the point where an emulation box just running them wouldn't really have much appeal anyway.  If you ask me most of the 'interesting' MAME stuff was done later, the things which went under the radar, didn't get ported, can't be re-released etc.  If you're only running an old version you're cutting yourself off from a lot of that.

I know some people have rose-tinted glasses for those early versions, but even if you're talking about stuff like Robotron which is very much a 'classic' then it's only really starting to become accurate in very recent versions with closer approximations of the blitter speeds etc.  In general people were a lot more forgiving back then because emulation was new, and being able to run anything at all was considered to some a miracle.

I guess that's why I'm underwhelmed with the idea of MAME on the PI, you'd be stuck with the classic versions and it isn't really moving anything forward.

[Mysterioii]

I see MAME-on-the-Pi as a novelty, but novelties can be fun...     I like the combination of cost and form factor.  I love MAME and hope it continues to move forward, and I love having thousands of games available, but at the same time I have a fairly short list of games from my youth that I consider personal classics, mostly early 80s stuff.  I'd love it if someone got a Pi port up and running that could play most of those reasonably well.  I am envisioning a compact, portable one-player CP/gamepad in as small a form factor as possible, with just an HDMI out.  It wouldn't remotely replace my full size cab but I do think it could be fun.

I guess I could do the same thing with a hacked tablet but I'm old and have a 2-year-old running around so I have hardly any free time.     The nice thing about things like the Pi is that with an active community embracing it there will be other people figuring things out, developing libraries etc.  One thing that I think has a little promise is that the Pi has on-board digital GPIO lines so it's conceivable that someone could alter the MAME code to support those inputs directly and you wouldn't have to worry with a usb keyboard encoder or anything.  It has a 26 pin GPIO header but a brief investigation shows that they only refer to 8 of them as GPIO pins and the others seem to be reserved for various communication protocols like I2C, serial etc.  I don't know if you have the option to use those for IO if you don't need the communication ports like you can on, say, the Arduino.  I'd hope that you can, but I'm not sure yet.  If you're really limited to 8 pins then I guess you could run with 4 for the joystick, 3 gameplay buttons and one mapped to both 1p coin in and 1p start, which would work.  But I'd like to have the other pins to play with.

Just tossing some ideas around.  I wouldn't expect the thing to come close to running the latest and greatest, but I think some fun could be had with it.

Edit: Apparently you can use the various communication pins for GPIO.  Of the 26 pins on the header, 6 are no connect and 3 are used for 5Vdc, 3.3Vdc and ground.  The other 17 pins can be used for GPIO.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-level_peripherals#General_Purpose_Input.2FOutput_.28GPIO.29

[Howard_Casto]

I see MAME-on-the-Pi as a novelty, but novelties can be fun...     I like the combination of cost and form factor.  I love MAME and hope it continues to move forward, and I love having thousands of games available, but at the same time I have a fairly short list of games from my youth that I consider personal classics, mostly early 80s stuff.  I'd love it if someone got a Pi port up and running that could play most of those reasonably well.  I am envisioning a compact, portable one-player CP/gamepad in as small a form factor as possible, with just an HDMI out.  It wouldn't remotely replace my full size cab but I do think it could be fun.

I think what haze was getting at was even in terms of the classics, you are going to have to run an old version of mame on the Pi.  The old versions of mame run the games sure, but they often run them in inaccurate ways.  And yes, this applies even for the "classics".  I know I've got a POS rig in my gorf cab running dos and due to the low resources I've got an older version of mame running.  The version of gorf in my gorf cab plays nothing like the one in mame today... because they've improved the emulation significantly.  I really need to upgrade that thing.   

I absolutely think there is potential for fun projects in there, even mame-based projects, but then again if the goal is to put fairly accurate arcade games in a cab/cp cheaply you can get one of those namco classics for around 10 bucks and put it in there. 

Actually with the info on the i/o pins I'm a little disappointed in the device now.  I assumed that none of the pins (save maybe power and ground) were reserved and you had the full 26 to play with.  17 pins.... isn't a lot.

[Well Fed Games]

Still seems like Pi + Old TV= super cheap classics cab, if someone had a good build for it. I am a complete stranger to linux, so I would need my hand held quite a bit, unfortunately. Regardless, hopefully the buzz around the Pi will only lead to further iterations that will be more capable.

[Mysterioii]

I think what haze was getting at was even in terms of the classics, you are going to have to run an old version of mame on the Pi.  The old versions of mame run the games sure, but they often run them in inaccurate ways.  And yes, this applies even for the "classics".  I know I've got a POS rig in my gorf cab running dos and due to the low resources I've got an older version of mame running.  The version of gorf in my gorf cab plays nothing like the one in mame today... because they've improved the emulation significantly.  I really need to upgrade that thing.   

I absolutely think there is potential for fun projects in there, even mame-based projects, but then again if the goal is to put fairly accurate arcade games in a cab/cp cheaply you can get one of those namco classics for around 10 bucks and put it in there. 

I think I'm pretty much in agreement with you, to me it's not a game changing, groundbreaking sort of thing, just something that could be fun.  Depends on what you want to do with it.  It's not going to replace a real PC in my full size cab.

Actually with the info on the i/o pins I'm a little disappointed in the device now.  I assumed that none of the pins (save maybe power and ground) were reserved and you had the full 26 to play with.  17 pins.... isn't a lot.

Well, it depends on what you want to do.  It does have build in I2C support and I have used I2C "GPIO expanders" before on other projects...  Mouser part number771-PCA9555N is a 16 bit GPIO expander and it only costs you the two I2C pins, however since it's communicating serially then it will take you a little longer to read the data than from a dedicated on-board pin.  Whether you can live with that depends on your application.  I notice that that part is marked as "end of life" and is about to be discontinued but I'm sure there are others.  It only cost $1.25 when I picked some up. 

The emulation thing has been done a million times over by now.  Do something more creative with these Pis.

How 'bout do whatever interests you, man?  For me it's a learning project.  I have a ton of projects I'd like to do but real life is giving me precious little time to do anything right now.  I haven't touched linux in years so yeah if I can futz around with one of these things for a while I'm fine.  "Creative projects to interest PBJ" come later...

[Mysterioii]

Messing around with Linux was something that really caught my interest in these devices but the reviews have been pretty unified in stating they're too weak to run MAME.  Nothing wrong with a project, but why start with something that you already know isn't going to give satisfactory results?

I can't argue with that, you're absolutely right.  And I agree with Howard_Casto that at best it would be running an old version of MAME...  now, it may not be arcade-perfect, but to an extent that depends on which version you run with and which games you care about.

Basically, I'm not gonna bust my butt trying to get MAME running... there are already people out there doing that, with varying degrees of success.  I'm happy to let the students and people with more free time than me see what they can accomplish.  If I see that someone seems to have gotten things working to a reasonable state in a month or two I may check it out and see how it plays with the games I'm interested in.  I am personally interested in altering the code to get it to recognize inputs on the GPIO pins in the same way as a keyboard/joystick so one could hook up to it directly rather than relying on a USB interface, but if it looks like nobody has gotten mame running reasonably well with the older games then I'll probably never bother with messing with the inputs.  It just seemed like a cool concept to me.

You're both right though... "getting mame running" isn't something I will personally put a lot of time into, but since there are other people already working on it I'll keep an eye on their progress then decide if I want to pursue my own ideas any further.