UGGGH! MAME Maintenance

[Howard_Casto]

So I got a new monitor for my mame cab, which is awesome, but I didn't think it would lead to months of maintenance to get things back in sync.

I used to keep my rom collection in sync regularly... I had to because I used to release front-ends.  (You need the roms to check for issues, believe it or not.)

I haven't updated the roms in my mame cab for about a year or two.  "No big deal" I thought.  Maybe a couple dozen or so roms and I'm good to go.  Well apparently not, because clrmamepro says I'm missing roughly 10,000 roms!  Damn!  I confirmed that it wasn't a glitch too as any missing rom it listed wouldn't work. 

So I'm downloading a fresh set on my main pc..  and then I'll have to transfer it to my mame cab... then I'll check the chds, which will surely take a week to get up to snuff.  After that it's time to update the snaps, titles, flyers, marquees, videos, ect... as well as any artwork or samples that mame needs. 

Then there are the physical updates.  My monitor will obviously need a new bezel.... They don't make a 16:10 arcade bezel, so I'll have to make one.  I've already made a cheap one out of posterboard, but that just won't do.  I'll have to make a real one as soon as it gets warm.  Of course the monitor sets back further, so I'll have to fix the finsih on the inside of the monitor area. 

And these are the EASY things to do. 

I don't even wanna talk about trying to getting visual pinbal and future pinball back up to speed. 


Now before anybody says anything, I know that I don't HAVE to have a complete set, but guess what?  It is actually easier for me to get a complete set than to pick and choose the ones I need!  See I needed to upgrade mame to 144 for a feature or two I wanted and it instantly made almost all of my roms out of date.  It's a real pain in the butt. 


There's really no point to this thread other than to share my frustrations.... I thought you guys might like a space to complain as well. 

[ark_ader]

My needs are quite small Howard.  I'm not too bothered with 100% emulation of Donkey Kong, only I need to be able to play it when the feeling calls for it.

I used to use Mame on the PC/cab, but after repeated attempts to get the games working after every revision I just gave up.  I, like you, have only minor requirements like some CHDs to work, and I have both the releases of Mame that works for the games I want.  The rest is stored on my Xbox1, and after the recent CoinOPS 50gb capture, I used a file compare utility (Duplicate Files Finder) to get rid of every type of Mame rom on my system and network. Well except for my Mame4All versions. 

That way when things improve, I just check to see if the change is justified.

I can understand the update for your cab, the Pinball, and emulators etc, but please make a snapshot of your drive and store it somewhere safe.  All that work to get it going is expensive if you have to replace it.

If I want a game I just have to fire up the old xbox, phone, tablet or PSP. 

I'm through with PC Mame releases. 

Congrats on your cabinet revival Howard, and I hope you get chance to wear that monitor out for the rest of 2012 and beyond.   

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks!  I don't care what people say about lcds in a mame cab, I am now officially a convert.  Throw some hlsl/screen filters on there and the mame games look nearly identical to how they do on a real arcade monitor.  But more importantly the select few pc games I will play on it as well as future pinball ect... still look great because those are displayed in high resolution. 

At this point I don't think I could justify putting a crt monitor in a cab unless it's a 19 inch and I happen to have one lying around.

I usually have triple redundancy going on.  Once I get my main pc up to date I copy that to my main mame cab... and then later my pacman cab, which has a suprisngly fast processor in it.  So all three would have to die before I lost anything.

[nitz]

I haven't updated the roms in my mame cab for about a year or two.  "No big deal" I thought.  Maybe a couple dozen or so roms and I'm good to go.  Well apparently not, because clrmamepro says I'm missing roughly 10,000 roms!  Damn!  I confirmed that it wasn't a glitch too as any missing rom it listed wouldn't work. 

Yeah, I've been working on updating off and on too, and it is kind of a pain in the butt. The crazy thing is, most of those 10,000 roms are gambling and mechanical games that most of us are never going to play anyway, but as you said, it's actually easier to just get a complete set. I've been using 0.122 for quite awhile, but I NEED the new HLSL effects. I'm waiting for 0.145 as 0.144 has missing sound in Qbert and I think a few other issues affecting games I play as well. Once I update to the next solid mame version, I'm probably never going to update again! CRT simulation was really the last piece of the puzzle for me, I'd been hoping and waiting for it a long time, and now that we have it, there won't be a reason for me to upgrade again. Every game I care about has been working in mame for years aside from Model 3 stuff, but now we have Supermodel for that.

Thanks!  I don't care what people say about lcds in a mame cab, I am now officially a convert.  Throw some hlsl/screen filters on there and the mame games look nearly identical to how they do on a real arcade monitor. 

+1

Unless you're a diehard purist, there's just no reason to bother with a CRT in a cab anymore. Or otherwise for that matter. I just recently replaced my tube TV with an LCD after holding out for a long time. And I'm lovin the new LCD. It's awesome for movies, I can hook my PC up to it, and even old console games look pretty decent on it (I'm less concerned about getting the CRT effect on old console games for some reason). I'm still slightly annoyed by the fact that we can't get big 4:3 LCDs for our cabs, but other than that, I'm fine with going LCD all the way baby!

[Howard_Casto]

Well I got a 16:10 instead of a 16:9, so that helps a lot.  It equates to the 4:3 size being about 1-2 inches smaller diagonally as opposed to 16:9, where it's more like 3-4.  I can live with the slightly smaller screen.

[SavannahLion]

Well I got a 16:10 instead of a 16:9, so that helps a lot.  It equates to the 4:3 size being about 1-2 inches smaller diagonally as opposed to 16:9, where it's more like 3-4.  I can live with the slightly smaller screen.

Quite honestly, I never thought of it like that, that means the bars are going to smaller too.

I wrote an ImageMagick script a few years ago to figure out cross resolutions, I wonder if I apply it in this context whether one can get an idea of useful 4:3 real estate before purchasing a monitor.

[Howard_Casto]

A 27 inch 16:10 equates to a 24.5 inch 4:3

I took a cab that should have a 25 inch tv in it and crammed in the 27 inch lcd... so the screen size is virtually identical.

A 27 inch 16:9 is much worse, I'm thinking almost 19-20 inches. 

16:10 monitors are hard to find, you can only find them in 24-27 inch sizes and if you don't wait for a deal, you'll pay for the extra space.  I go mine for 220 but it was normally 350.  Had to wait for newegg's xmas sale.

[shmokes]

I may have to look at that eventually. I have a 27" decased TV in mine and it is so freaking heavy. I just moved into a 4th floor apartment with no elevator and I had to take my cab apart to move it upstairs (thank god I designed the whole thing to break down). It was a giant PITA, but even with a rented appliance dolly I couldn't get the thing up the stairs. It was just too heavy. Granted, I made some design mistakes along the way that contribute to the weight issue. I used 3/4" melamine when I should have used 5/8" plywood and laminated it myself. That would probably shave 50 lbs. at least off my cab. But still, that TV probably weighs 70 lbs. Just lifting the tube into place to mount the thing is almost too much for two people thanks to the awkwardness of getting it in place.

Hopefully whenever the day comes that I'm rebuilding or replacing my monitor 16:10 will still be an option. Even a 27" 16:10 will cut 2" off my screen real estate. I'd have a hard time losing even more than that.

[Howard_Casto]

The weight was the biggest factor for mine as well.  The 27 inch tv inside wasn't completely gone, but it had started expanding the image well beyond the screen limits and simple adjustment wasn't fixing it.  I probably could have fixed it by replacing some parts, but once I started pulling the stupid thing out of the cab I swore that I'd never put it back in.  It's just too damn heavy and too akward to work on. 

Rest assured that the material choice is trivial... the monitor is what adds the weight.  When I built my pacman cab I could move the whole completed thing around just with my bare hands.  I could literally just pick the thing up and I used 3/4 inch plywood!  One puny 19 inch monitor later and it's scoot the thing or risk a hernia. 

I don't think they add that much weight, they just add it in the absolutely wrong place when it comes to distribution. 

On a somewhat related note.. I've now got to use a different lightgun system.  My cab was so old it used the svid act-labs guns.  Hmm... I've got extra wiimotes now. 


Oh btw, I FINALLY got my roms back in order (except chds of course).  And yes, I've been working on this since my first post.  Clrmamepro wouldn't fork over an accurate list of broken sets and romcenter kept freezing due to the massive bulk increase from the EM games.  To top it all off, my favorite romz site was having server issues.  So yeah, it basically took a week.  And I'm still not done.  I've got most of my artwork in sync with 144, but I need to update the flyers, which I'm sure will be massive.  Then I'll go on to vp and fp.  And then it's these oddball emulators that I can't seem to get rid of like daphne, model 2 and supermodel. 

[shmokes]

I could literally just pick the thing up and I used 3/4 inch plywood! 

I dunno if you've worked with melamine, but it's a lot heavier than plywood. I'd say at least 50% heavier. Trust me, even if I went LCD, my cab is WAY heavier than it ought to be. The wood I used is adding substantial unnecessary weight.

[Xiaou2]

I like the new HLSL stuff.. but Id never say it looks accurate  Its not been proven to be accurate in any comparisons, and it has no good defaults or pre-sets either.   The effects really help a PC / LCD monitor however.

 But actually, it has sparked my interest even more in a real arcade CRT.   I got a cab with a working low-res 19" arcade monitor recently... and Im really excited to get the thing running mame with arcade accurate output.

 The worst part about mame maintenance, is the 2gb of completely worthless fruit machines added recently.

[Howard_Casto]

I like the new HLSL stuff.. but Id never say it looks accurate  Its not been proven to be accurate in any comparisons, and it has no good defaults or pre-sets either.   The effects really help a PC / LCD monitor however.

Up to your old tricks eh? 

No man there have been plenty of comparisons.  It doesn't look 100% accurate compared to a real monitor, but it is in the ballpark.  It's certainly better than the stupid "scanlines" option we've had for years. 

It doesn't show up on film though.  Crt's have glare so when you take a snap all of the "pattern" from the dotpitch and ect kind of blurs away.  Lcd's don't have this problem so you see this very distinct pattern.  About the only way to compare and contrast is to have to games running on the two different monitors beside each other and see them in person.  I haven't went that far yet but I have fired stuff up on the gorf which has an arcade monitor on it and then went over to my pc with some hlsl effects turned on and the simulation is remarkably good.

[Xiaou2]

Old Tricks?  Im just stating an opinion.

 Is there or isnt there various default settings for HLSL ?   Last time I used it, there was None.. and any settings that were popped onto websites, were those from people making their interpretation of foggy memories, and not really comparing real results.

 Yes, its true that its difficult to get good pictures of monitors.  However, if you get close up shots, things tend to be much more clear.   If closeups of an arcade monitor and an LCD using HLSL match, then the full result should be equivalent.

 As I said, I love the effects 1000x better than the crappy fake scanline effect.   All Im saying, is that Id like to see some researched and proven results, to hone in the effects to a very high degree of accuracy.

 Such as for example... an older monitor with lower dot pitch, will look different than the newer 'finer' shadowmasks.   A default setting created that would be applied to those games which used those types of monitors.

 Until then, theres no real preservation of how these games are supposed to really look.