Help for emulating consoles in Groovy MAME.

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Super-Becker:
Hello everybody! Can anyone tell me how to get to the screen where there is the "cartridge" option in Groovy MAME? I already have everything installed: Groovy MAME, CRT Emudriver, roms, bios, but I don't know how to get to the screen where there is the "cartridge" option. If anyone can help I would be immensely grateful.

PL1:

--- Quote from: Super-Becker on November 25, 2023, 09:27:40 am ---Hello everybody! Can anyone tell me how to get to the screen where there is the "cartridge" option in Groovy MAME? I already have everything installed: Groovy MAME, CRT Emudriver, roms, bios, but I don't know how to get to the screen where there is the "cartridge" option. If anyone can help I would be immensely grateful.

--- End quote ---
Disclaimer: I haven't done a full set up in MAME for any consoles, but here are some general setup recommendations:
- Use MAME software list-compatible ROMs if you can find a place to download them so you don't have to worry about bad/wrong dumps or renaming them.
- You probably want to put the the software list ROMs for each particular system in a separate subdirectory since there is likely to be some overlap between filenames. For example, Asteroids for Atari 2600 and Asteroids for arcade are both "asteroid" so put the all of the arcade ROMs in "\mame\roms\" and all of the Atari 2600 ROMs in "\mame\roms\a2600\".

The MAME manual has some good info in section 4.1 on pages 25-26.

https://docs.mamedev.org/_files/MAME.pdf

(The bolded sections below from the current MAME 0.261 manual appear to be the most relevant to what you're trying to do.)

--- Quote ---4.1 Using MAME
If you want to dive right in and skip the command line, there's a nice graphical way to use MAME without the need
to download and set up a front end. Simply start MAME with no parameters, by double-clicking the mame.exe file or
running it directly from the command line. If you're looking to harness the full power of MAME, keep reading further.
On macOS and *nix-based platforms, please be sure to set your font up to match your locale before starting, otherwise
you may not be able to read the text due to missing glyphs.
If you are a new MAME user, you could find this emulator a bit complex at first. Let's take a moment to talk about
software lists, as they can simplify matters quite a bit. If the content you are trying to play is a documented entry on
one of the MAME software lists, starting the content is as easy as
mame.exe <system> <software>
For instance:
mame.exe nes metroidu
will load the USA version of Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Alternatively, you could start MAME with
mame.exe nes
and choose the software list from the cartridge slot. From there, you could pick any software list-compatible software
you have in your roms folders. Please note that many older dumps of cartridges and discs may either be bad or require
renaming to match up to the software list in order to work in this way.
If you are loading an arcade board or other non-software list content, things are only a little more complicated:
The basic usage, from command line, is
mame.exe <system> <media> <software> <options>
where
• <system> is the short name of the system you want to emulate (e.g. nes, c64, etc.)
• <media> is the switch for the media you want to load (if it's a cartridge, try -cart or -cart1; if it's a floppy disk,
try -flop or -flop1; if it's a CD-ROM, try -cdrom)
• <software> is the program / game you want to load (and it can be given either as the fullpath to the file to load,
or as the shortname of the file in our software lists)
• <options> is any additional command line option for controllers, video, sound, etc.
Remember that if you type a <system> name which does not correspond to any emulated system, MAME will suggest
some possible choices which are close to what you typed; and if you don't know which <media> switch are available,
you can always launch
mame.exe <system> -listmedia
If you don't know what <options> are available, there are a few things you can do. First of all, you can check the
command line options section of this manual. You can also try one of the many Front-ends available for MAME.
Alternatively, you should keep in mind the following command line options, which might be very useful on occasion:
mame.exe -help
gives a basic summary of command line options for MAME, as explained above.
mame.exe -showusage
gives you the (quite long) list of available command line options for MAME. The main options are described, in the
Universal Command-line Options section of this manual.
mame.exe -showconfig
gives you a (quite long) list of available configuration options for MAME. These options can always be modified
at command line, or by editing them in mame.ini which is the main configuration file for MAME. You can find a
description of some configuration options in the Universal Command-line Options section of the manual (in most
cases, each configuration option has a corresponding command line option to configure and modify it).
mame.exe -createconfig
creates a brand new mame.ini file, with default configuration settings. Notice that mame.ini is basically a plain text
file, so you can open it with any text editor (e.g. Notepad, Emacs or TextEdit) and configure every option you need.
However, no particular tweaks are needed to start, so you can leave most of the options unaltered.
If you execute mame -createconfig when you already have an existing mame.ini from a previous MAME version,
MAME automatically updates the pre-existing mame.ini by copying changed options into it.
Once you are more confident with MAME options, you may want to adjust the configuration of your setup a bit more.
In this case, keep in mind the order in which options are read; see Order of Config Loading for details.

--- End quote ---

Scott

Super-Becker:
It's a shame that I formatted the hard drive to put Groovy Arcade in, which caused me more problems, as I couldn't get it to work. I will install Windows again and follow the tips you posted. Thank you very much, friend.

Super-Becker:
Unfortunately it didn't work for me. I created a file with the name Atari.bat, inside "mame.exe Atariroms" (without quotes). I run and open the command prompt and it closes instantly without being able to read what is written. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. If anyone can make a tutorial video I would be grateful as there are none on YouTube.

PL1:

--- Quote from: Super-Becker on November 27, 2023, 02:41:54 pm ---Unfortunately it didn't work for me. I created a file with the name Atari.bat, inside "mame.exe Atariroms" (without quotes).

--- End quote ---
The command "mame.exe Atariroms" tells MAME to launch the (nonexistent) "Atariroms" system.

"mame.exe a2600" tells MAME to launch the Atari 2600 system.
"mame.exe nes" tells MAME to launch the Nintendo Entertainmant System.

This will allow you to select titles from the software list for the system.

NOTE:
You will need to have the ROMpath for the directory containing the software list ROMs in an .ini file.

mame.ini

--- Quote ---#
# CORE SEARCH PATH OPTIONS
#
homepath .
rompath roms;roms/a2600;roms/nes

--- End quote ---

If you still run into the problem of same-named ROMs like the "asteroid" example mentioned above, put the default rompath in mame.ini and put the system's rompath in the related system's .ini file -- you only need to include lines that are different from mame.ini.

mame.ini

--- Quote ---#
# CORE SEARCH PATH OPTIONS
#
homepath .
rompath roms

--- End quote ---
a2600.ini

--- Quote ---rompath roms/a2600

--- End quote ---

--- Quote from: Super-Becker on November 27, 2023, 02:41:54 pm ---I run and open the command prompt and it closes instantly without being able to read what is written.

--- End quote ---
Don't double-click on the batch file icon to launch it until you get it working properly.

1. Open a command window. (shift + right click on empty part of directory window -- "open command window here")

2. Run the command or batch file from the command window.

3. The command window won't shut when the command or batch file finishes running.

Scott

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