Where art thou, Robotron?

[Knoxximus]

I cannot get Robotron to load!  It'll get past the initial boot screen, get past another screen, then it just hangs on the "Factory Defaults Established (or something like that)" screen, no matter WHAT I press.  I've tryed different MAME's and different Robotrons....same thing.  It won't even load on my X-Box!  What gives?

[ErikRuud]

You need to hit the key for 'Advance'.

The default in MAME is 'F2'.

[TalkingOctopus]

After the first load when you get the initial boot screen exit mame and run the same rom again.  This time, the game should load normally.  Unfortunately, the lock up happens with a lot of Williams games (like Joust), but after the initial problem it never happens again.

I had the same question when I first made my cab!

[SirPeale]

It's not a lock up.  AFAIK the real machine did the same thing on first boot.

After the "Factory Settings Restored' message, hit [F2] and it'll go thru the boot sequence again.  This time it will run normally.

[Edgedamage]

Also after getting the game running hold down F1 (auto-up manual-down) and press F2 (advance) twice to get to adjustments and choose (yes) to restore factory settings and high score table reset. The reason for this is sometimes the game settings are messed up and the high score table almost always has all the scores at 1000. Opps and also choose the twenty letters for the highest score name. Or else you are stuck with three letters. With twenty letters you can put in wacky messages "KILL THE UNLIVING"

[quarterstringer]

Edge,

Thanks for that F1 and F2 information. Now I can finally set the attract mode messages for Robotron and Joust.