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Author Topic: Yet Another MAME LAN Troubleshooting Request  (Read 787 times)

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TheCiscoKid

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Yet Another MAME LAN Troubleshooting Request
« on: April 16, 2023, 06:22:00 pm »
Hey all, recently upgraded to a 2-PC setup but I'm having trouble establishing a network for MAME games :(
Got Model 2, Supermodel and Flycast all networking smoothly, and I can get MAME games to connect over a single PC - but when I try over 2 PCs, I just get a black screen followed by the .exes not responding

I've made an exception for MAME in the windows defender firewall on both PCs, and just disabled the firewalls altogether.
Made sure to include the m1comm file
Got 1 game set as master and the other slave in service menus

My understanding is that for networking on the same PC, the ports go in a ring, but the IP address stays the same. For multiple PC's, the IPs form the ring and the ports stay the same. I have tried making a ring with the ports as well though, just as I've seen other people do that here, and it didn't seem to change anything.

Here's my working .bat for single PC:
Quote
mame f1lap -window -cfg_directory cfg1 -nvram_directory nvram1 -comm_localport 15111 -comm_remoteport 15112 -comm_localhost 0.0.0.0 -comm_remotehost 127.0.0.1
mame f1lap -window -cfg_directory cfg2 -nvram_directory nvram2 -comm_localport 15112 -comm_remoteport 15111 -comm_localhost 0.0.0.0 -comm_remotehost 127.0.0.1

And the non-working multi PC .bat files I settled on were:
Master:
Quote
mame f1lap -window -comm_remotehost *slave's IP*
Slave:
Quote
mame f1lap -window -comm_remotehost *master's IP*

haven't touched the networking stuff in mame.ini, defaults are the defaults

Would really appreciate any help :)

buttersoft

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Re: Yet Another MAME LAN Troubleshooting Request
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2023, 02:18:02 am »
Mame.ini (or f1lap.ini) from first cab:
#
# CORE COMM OPTIONS
#
comm_localhost            0.0.0.0
comm_localport            15112
comm_remotehost           192.168.1.100
comm_remoteport           15112

Mame.ini (or f1lap.ini) from second cab is identical, save IP change:
comm_remotehost           192.168.1.101

Which looks the same as your commandlines, but maybe you need to pass everything. I prefer doing this in the ini files. The cabs can ping each other fine, and have static IP addresses?

Remember that if you have any pre-existing game ini files you want to check those, as well as the main mame.ini though i think commandline arguments are meant to override them. Are you running the bat files via shortcuts with admin mode on? You could try that.

If you simply copied a preexisting NVRAM master/slave setup onto a separate PC, you may need to delete and regenerate the NVRAM files as well. So, run each instance as standalone, and set master on one cab and slave on the other like before.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2023, 02:19:52 am by buttersoft »

TheCiscoKid

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Re: Yet Another MAME LAN Troubleshooting Request
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2023, 01:56:26 pm »
Thanks for the reply! Some good troubleshooting advice here, I hadn't considered doing it through .inis that's pretty clean
So it seems like there was something awry with the firewall, even though I had it disabled and made an exception for mame, when I checked it again on one of the PCs it had 2 mame.exes listed with different permissions.

Sure enough, clearing this entry fixed the issue. Smooth networking across all games now :D

Had a feeling it was something related to the firewall with the way the .exes just crashed before even getting to any mame error logs, but didn't think that it would still be interfering even while disabled >.>

Can lock or delete this I suppose  :angel: