Useful ancillary software

[mixlplex]

Fairly new here, and am building my first cab (currently have it in the cardboard prototype stage) and have discovered that there's a couple of pieces of software that have come in handy and thought I'd share what I found and ask if there's other software out there that would be beneficial that I probably haven't discovered so far. I'm running a Windows rig so my software is for that platform.

What I've found:
EarTrumpet - so that you can increase/decrease the volume in-game without pulling up another interface. Just map a button for volume up, one for volume down then viola. It manipulates the system volume control so it should work regardless of what emulator you're running (I'm using RetroFe as the front end and MAME for all the emulation and it works great). If you want a non-network based installer (by default it wants to use the Microsoft Store), get the chocolately version at https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/eartrumpet (there's a download link on the left side of the screen under Package Specific). If you don't want to install Chocolatey no worries, just open the downloaded .nupkg file in a Zip program (like 7zip) and extract the release.zip (found within the Tools directory of the archive) and then extract its contents. Put a link to the EarTrumpet.exe in your Startup Folder and you should be good to go (you may need to tweak the name of the shortcut so it loads before your front end if you boot directly into it). Run the exe then adjust your sound via the notifications pop-up (the little carrot point up near the date/time) and you can change the settings as to what the volume up/down keys are).

Keyboard Test Utility - I tried a number of these before I found this one: http://drjackool.blogspot.com/2016/12/keyboard-test-utility.html. Its a stand alone utility that shows what keys have been pressed so it's easy to make sure that all of your buttons and joysticks are sending the right signals (and no loose wires) as you're connecting everything up. It also keeps track of which keys have been pressed (until you close the program) so you can see if you inadvertently have any duplicates).

Any other tools/utilities that I should be on the look out for or that you found to be very helpful?

[Zebidee]

Fairly new here, and am building my first cab (currently have it in the cardboard prototype stage)

Welcome to the hobby and congratulations on your cab prototype

Any other tools/utilities that I should be on the look out for or that you found to be very helpful?

Just off the top of my head:

autohotkey - very powerful keyboard mapping, script launching... many applications
JoytoKey - joystick inputs mapped to keyboard
PPJoy - joystick inputs mapped keyboard
Daemon Tools Lite - creates virtual drives for CD/DVD images
Nircmd - this command line tool is useful in dozens of situations
Closemul - for quitting emulators that don't quit by ESC
mplayer - super lightweight command-line media player with no GUI
VLC - awesome media player, more powerful than mplayer
mp3tag - sort out your media file tags
Display Changer 2 (DC2) - command-line resolution changing
Romlister - sort out your game lists & ROMS
Attract-Mode, Hyperspin, Launchbox etc. - Frontends
Ghostkey - keyboard tester
Winkeykill, logoless - prevents Windows key from working
Sumatra PDF - lightweight PDF reader; no need for Adobe bloatware
Notepad++ - Like Notepad but better, especially for large files like mame.xml
Filezilla - Transferring files over networks!
CPU-ID, GPU-ID - properly identifying your hardware

All of the above are free, though you may feel like donating for some. There are a bunch more that I might use only once or occasionally.

I've barely scratched the surface of what autohotkey can do, many things, so worth a mention. One thing I know is it can manage volume control for you via buttons or even a mouse wheel. Which might mean you don't need to use Eartrumpet or chocolatey.

Nircmd is another one that has countless uses. I mostly use it to help launching and/or prioritising other applications and killing processes, but really it can do lots more. Read the help files and lists of commands.

You can also avoid software/buttons/wheels completely with a volume control pot. Check it out, I recently wrote-up how I made a simple decent volume control for about $10 in parts and (almost) no soldering.

[Mike A]

Any other tools/utilities that I should be on the look out for or that you found to be very helpful?

Beer. Lots of it.