Losing all dip switch/key mappings. WinXP, Groovymame 0151

[dmworking247]

Hi everyone.

Im not new to Mame or arcade hardware but Ive been sticking with MAME 106 for nearly 5 years and this is the firat time Ive tried to interface a mame setup with the original CRT, so please forgive my confusion.

I have done plenty of google and thread seaches but cannot seem to pinpoint my problem.

The issue is that the games I am setting up are constantly losing their custom settings from the respective .cfg file, replaced my the switchres settings and nothing more. Custom settings are essential for this 4-wheel cabinet with particulary slow optical sensors. I got so frustrated trying to pinpoint this problem that I completely reloaded the OS, and reinstalled everything from scratch, same thing.

Strangely, I setup the same thing on my laptop (minus vmmaker/custom vid card drivers of course). and the problem does NOT occur. I copied the working setup to the freshly rebuilt cabinet PC, ran vmmaker, problem came back!

Steps to setup the arcade PC:
Format and install xp
Install Calamity CRT drivers
Install mame0151b
replace mame.exe with groovymame executable
run (groovy)mame -cc
Run vmmaker
Start tinkering with settings in games like HOTRODJ (particularly important game for my setup).
Exit, restart game, find my settings lost (game back to Japanese, etc).
Repeat frustration with other titles like csprint, ironman, etc

I have tried editing the CFG files directly and the updates still get lost. Also tried changing 'writeconfig' to 1 in mame.ini, but no luck.

Surely I am missing something simple but so far this setup is driving me nuts.

Any help greatfully received.

[Calamity]

Yep, sorry for the mess.

Just download GM v.0151 *again*. This was a bug affecting the first binary I uploaded. It's fixed now. The binary you're using on your laptop was downloaded later, true? Just copy that one to your cabinet.

[dmworking247]

Same one unfortunately? Dated 29th November?

Ill try it again tomorrow in case the new binary didnt update the build date?

Thanks for helping!

[adder]

perhaps an idea for a 'cheap fix' is, if you set up your config files to how you want, and then in windows set the config files to 'read only', from then on i wouldnt have thought mame would be able to make to changes to them anymore.

[Calamity]

Hi dmworking,

I'd say this issue got fixed on the 29th. However, test a game, change some settings, exit, and post its .cfg file here, for me to check. The problem happened when saving the current modeline into the .cfg file using double "" in the format. After that, MAME wouldn'nt be able to read from the .cfg anything past the modeline. I thought it was fixed.

[cools]

It's working 100% for me since the fix, the only time I lose settings is if I forget to plug the controller in.

[dmworking247]

Well, downloading it again fixed the problem!

How is this for a comedy of errors:
I downloaded it on the 28th (I realise this now) when the bug was present.

When I started having trouble I searched around and saw a yhread that said it was fixed and a new version was uploaded on the 29th.

I checked the date of my file, it said 29th Nov so I assumed I had the fixed version.

The confusion was caused because Im in Australia,  and the date of download was 28th in the US but showed 29th in my OS running in local timezone. The actual fix wasnt uploaded till the 30th in Australian time.

Now that I have downloaded it again, sure enough the file date says the 30th and it appears to have fixed the save sertings issue.

Phew! Thanks again.