GroovyArcade live-CD 2020

[Substring]

Linux is a painless install. Prefer the collaborative version to this version where you'll never get any support

[korvcykel]

Trying to boot GroovyArcade on my Naomi Universal Cabinet with a 31khz screen.
Boots fine, i get the video mode select screen but whatever i select i get what looks like a mode without sync as soon as the splashscreen comes up.
I need to boot to a 64x480@60 mode i guess, but is there even one in the boot menu?

[Substring]

Which iso are you using ? The one on the 1st page or mine ?

[korvcykel]

Oh! Im using the one on the first page, where do i find yours?

[Josh128]

Substring-- is there some kind of install guide for your 6-20 release?  The install guide link at the top of this thread is broken.  I have a like new machine just sitting here waiting.  Use CD or USB?  Is there even a rudimentary installation guide available somewhere? 

What version of MAME does it use?  (.220 etc )  Is it possible to use Xbox wireless controls with it?  I currently have a Win7 Box running GroovyMAME .220 and AttractMode, and being that my control panel is only 4 buttons, Ive found that the ability to use wireless Xbox controls for 6 button games is great, and because you can dual map buttons in MAME, I can use either them or my arcade controls without switching any kind of config.  How hard is it to get them working in Linux?

[Substring]

Substring-- is there some kind of install guide for your 6-20 release?  The install guide link at the top of this thread is broken.  I have a like new machine just sitting here waiting.  Use CD or USB?  Is there even a rudimentary installation guide available somewhere? 

What version of MAME does it use?  (.220 etc )  Is it possible to use Xbox wireless controls with it?  I currently have a Win7 Box running GroovyMAME .220 and AttractMode, and being that my control panel is only 4 buttons, Ive found that the ability to use wireless Xbox controls for 6 button games is great, and because you can dual map buttons in MAME, I can use either them or my arcade controls without switching any kind of config.  How hard is it to get them working in Linux?

Hi!

Thank you for your interest!
For the documentation, you can check https://gitlab.com/groovyarcade/support/-/wikis/2-HowTo/2.2-Installation (absolute work in progress ... too much work for a single man). It's basically burning the iso to a USB key, boot on the USB key, select the right horizontal refresh rate (31kHz needs a trick for now), then let the OS guide you. You can even test GroovyArcade without installing it. Getting joypads to work requires a command (never used any joypad myself until someone faced the problem, most people use keyboard encoders). Now, to tell if your wireless XBox pad will work, that's a different story. It's supposed to work (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gamepad#Xbox_360_controller + I knowkernel support has been much improved over the years). Newer xbox pads may not be supported, scroll down the link pasted before. If you feel adventurous, let's get in touch in discord (I'm in Western Europe time, GMT + 2).

Installing is extremly easy and takes less than 10 minutes with little user input, you don't even need to know linux, menus are self explanatory.

Upgrades are like the normal arch linux upgrades: I maintain a repo with the required packages to work. This means that the kernel, groovymame, attract mode etc ... are always up to date (but this require user commands for now, I haven't rewritten yet the old update menu).

[Josh128]

Awesome , thanks!  Also, do you know if Intel Skylake 6000 series iGPUs work well with GroovyMAME on their own? 

[Substring]

It's not a matter of whether it will work or not (chances are that it will). But to be honest, it's a bad choice and prone to tearing on almost everyframe. Results with Intel GPUs are really mixed.

[Josh128]

Got it installed on my i5 6500, and boots to attractmode.  I dont currently have this box networked.  I was not able to exit to a window manager or shell.  When I exited AM, I was able to open a window to try to get to a desktop manager or shell, but the links wouldnt work.  I have some Unix and Linux experience, but its been 13 years since Ive really worked with either. 

How can I do this to be able to edit the mame.ini and place ROMs where they go, etc?  I dont see anything in the guide to be able to do this.  Just looking for a way to access a text editor and graphical file explorer if possible, if you can help with that I should be able to take it from there.

[Substring]

You can reach the desktop by leaving AM and then select "Start Desktop" in the menu. This menu requires a keyboard, can't be used with a gamepad.

To drop ROMS, the best is to use the network to drop ROMs on a network share. Going heUSB stick way qill require you to remember how the mount command works.

Roms go in /home/arcade/share/roms/mame, mame.ini is in /home/arcade/shared/configs/mame/

That is, if you're using my iso, of course. I'm not doing support for the one on the 1st page.

[Josh128]

You can reach the desktop by leaving AM and then select "Start Desktop" in the menu. This menu requires a keyboard, can't be used with a gamepad.

To drop ROMS, the best is to use the network to drop ROMs on a network share. Going heUSB stick way qill require you to remember how the mount command works.

Roms go in /home/arcade/share/roms/mame, mame.ini is in /home/arcade/shared/configs/mame/

That is, if you're using my iso, of course. I'm not doing support for the one on the 1st page.

Yes, Im using your iso, the 6-2020 release, thanks.  I will have a keyboard attached, at least for this config phase. Sorry for the complete ignorance, but what is the proper way to leave AM and get to the menu?  I dont remember seeing "start Desktop" in the right click menu from yesterday-- I will try again though today, maybe I just missed it.

[Substring]

The iso is meant to test and install, it's a read-only system with no possibility of adding roms, it wouldn't be persistent after reboot.

To leave AM :
- press button 2 on a joypad
- press escape on a keyboard
- jpacs have a special combo ( start P1 + start P2) that emulates ESC

[Josh128]

Its some kind of read only install?  Not following.  I did install it, are you telling me that its not possible to add games and configure it?  I think we are getting crossed up here.  Surely you are just talking about the live "test" mode on the iso, not what you have after you install everything, correct?

So anyhow, I somehow resized the AM window and it no longer fills the screen.   When I boot, it comes up to this black screen with a minimized AM window and I can hear the AM sounds. I dont have a visible mouse pointer and when I right click I get the below menu, however, absolutely anything I select from the menu says it cant be run or doesnt exist.  There is no "Start Desktop" option in any of the menus.

Ctrl+Alt+F2 gets me to a GroovyArcade login, but I have no idea what the username and password is. 

[Substring]

You were saying you didn't get the "Start desktop" in the text menu once you leave AM, so i supposed you were still testing in livecd. Once installed of course you can add roms, it would be pointless otherwise lol

But i really do 't understand what you're trying to achieve on the desktop. Plug a usb key and copy roms ? The only way real way to reach the desktop is to quit AM then start desktop from the text menu, it will start lxde

[Josh128]

No, I did the full install, could fully boot into AM from the HDD, but something must have screwed up.  I re-installed and now get the screen to select desktop.

I need to exit AM because its not possible to configure MAME from within it.  This box is standalone, not networked to anything.  I dont remember all the syntax for the Linux filesystem I want to be able to see it in a GUI and then I can play with editing stuff with vi or whatever editor linux uses these days.

**EDIT - Ahh I see there is a built in menu system for configuring. Good, this should get me going.

[Josh128]

Eh.  About to give up.  Connected the PC to my network and was only able to obtain the IP after looking at connected devices in my router.  Was able to ping it and get a reply, but was not able to see it on my Windows network in order to map any drives.   I guess Linux must make itself visible on the network before I can even see it in Windows?? I have no idea how to do this.  Was not able to ssh  in because I have no idea what the login and password are when I get the prompt.  Was not given an option to set them during install. I guess setting this up is not for anyone intimately familiar with Linux and advanced networking.  I've wasted several hours just trying to do the most basic tasks and have accomplished 0.

Edit: 1 I found the menu to choose the password, but I still cant SSH in because apparently the Windows PC user is not a user on the Linux system??  How do I put in a username?  My head is aching man.  This is why Windows has a death grip on the general computing world, from my experience today, thats not going to change anytime soon. 

Edit2: My GroovyArcade PC's IP address is 192.168.0.57.  How would I map it as a network drive from Windows?  "\\192.168.0.57\home\arcade\share\roms\mame" does not work.  I dont know the proper freaking syntax if thats not it.  So frustrated.

Edit3: So I "accessed" it. Simply typed in \\192.168.0.57 from the "Search Bar" in Win 10, it prompted for a username and password, I put in what I set in GroovyArcade, and it worked.  Why the hell didnt it work from "Map Network Drive"?  Oh well.  Progress I suppose.

[Josh128]

OK, disregard everything above.  Was able to tranfer ROMS and generate new ROM list.  It works-- but serious technical question here-- my Xbox 360 wireless dongle works, I can use the pad to navigate and set things in Attract Mode, but when booting a game and actually in MAME, its like MAME doesnt see the pad at all, I cant map any buttons.  However, if I exit the ROM back to AttractMode, the pad works fine again.

Any idea what might be preventing MAME from seeing the gamepad?

I found https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=101355, but dont know how to add "my user to the input group".   Do you know what this means?

[Substring]

Basic user/password : arcade/arcade
To add the user to the input group : sudo usermod -a -G input arcade

[Josh128]

Got the controller working, didnt do anything, just went in and out of MAME a few times.

I have another issue though-- I get audio skips, even when using no frame delay, on games I should be able to emulate at +1000% such as TMNT and SF2.  Im using an i5 6500 @ 3.2 GHz.  For reference, my old Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz can run SF2 at frame delay of 6 with no audio skips in Windows.  Surely something is not right?  I looked at port_audio settings and delay is set to 2.0 and pa_latency of 0.  I tried raising pa_latency to .003 but it didnt help.

[Substring]

What you did to get the controller working is getting back to gasetup (the text menu) and start again the FE from there (i.e. as root), so controls work. You should really run the command i've set before.

For sound skipping, try setting the sound to SDL instead of portaudio, could help

[Josh128]

Will try, thanks!

[cornerstone]

Using this Linux install method, is there a simple way to tell Attract Mode to boot to a specified rom instead of the game list?

[NFG]

Unfortunately the 'search daemon' cannot be accessed so I couldn't look to see if this had been asked before, but...  I have the latest GA from github.  It installed and booted from a USB stick without any trouble, and appeared to install fine on my SSD, but the BIOS reports 'no bootable device'.  fdisk shows that the SSD has a boot partition, gdisk reports that the partitions overlap (which, I dunno if it's important, but I was trying to see if it was a GPT/MBR issue and gdisk said nothing could be done in any case because of this overlap).

So I can boot from USB, but would prefer the SSD so I can load it up with local ROMs, and yeah.  I dunno what's up with the install, it doesn't boot, and I'd love some clues, tips or greater assistance. 

(edit: Ah, well, thanks Google, for delivering me to what I thought was the official GA thread, but it's one thread in a GA sub-forum, so...  I guess this should be its own thread).

(( edit 2: Ah, I see in the install guide (gosh I wish this was easier to find) that I can't install to HDD in UEFI mode.  So, this problem appears to be solved!  Please ignore this whole post. ))

[markskulls]

Hey Guys
I love Groovy Arcade and Advmenuplus front end.
Im trying to change advancemenu.rc? So it will animate all previews, and boot straight into mame.
Cant seem to find it using the LXDE desktop? Run a search for it nothing comes up.
What program do you use to edit text files?

Sorry I know nothing about linux..

 

[MiteWiseacre]

Is there a good tutorial someplace for mounting USB drives in this setup?
I’ve been trying in the Shell to do this but it keeps rejecting my drives, they are fat32.
Alternatively how about using wifi, I can’t get the Ethernet working on this mobo for some reason but have a dongle, but I read Linux doesn’t do wifi. Help, I’m in uncharted waters.


Edit: found the wiki and this helped. I had the wrong label for my USB.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/File_systems#Create_a_file_system

[Substring]

Linux doesn't support wifi ? I can't believe i'm reading that in 2020 ...

There should be  menu entry to setup wifi

[donluca]

Wifi support in Linux has always been iffy, to say the least.

But it's been there since forever, so it should work.

[gedman]

I was referred here by another thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,164034.0.html

Background: I'm a newbie setting up my first emulator cabinet. I have a Windows7 x64 PC w 4GB RAM, ArcadeVGA 5000 video card (more on that below), a fully wired cabinet (J-PAC, JAMMA harness), a Wells-Gardner K7401 25" CRT, and a set of ROMs for MAME 0.226 for 25 classic arcade games (1980s) which are the only games I intend to play.

Because I already have a fully setup cabinet with a CRT, I am told that GM/GA is the best option for me rather than my original plan of MAME+ArcadeVGA (which is why I already own the ArcadeVGA card.)

I read the GA setup docs, and seems pretty straightforward.  I do have a few quick questions:

• Looks like the latest GA is based on GM 0.221. My ROMs are based on 0.226. Is there a plan to bump the rev in GA to 0.226 anytime soon?
• Do I need to care/worry about what videocard I'm using for GA? (In the GM threads, there is a lot of detail around which videocards can be used due to CRT Emudriver. I realize that Emudriver isn't relevant for GA, but I presume that videocard still matters to GA because whatever videocard I'm using must be capable of generating the right output for a CRT monitor.)
• How will I connect the video card output to my CRT? Can I use a standard VGA cable to connect the video card VGA output to the VGA input of my J-PAC? (The J-PAC already connects to my CRT via a molex connector.) Yeah, I know this isn't a GA question, but I haven't been able to get an answer elsewhere so trying again here. 

Thanks!

[Substring]

Don't expect much from the guy maintaining this version of GroovyArcade. He'll pop in to announce a new ISO, then disappear for a year ... On the other hand, I maintain a fork of GroovyArcade which IS updated (kernel, mame, etc ...) and fully compatible with the real distro behind it (Arch Linux). Distros updates are safe, I regulary update all my PCs and make sure everything still works.

that said, to answer your questions :

• My fork can be updated to GM 0.226 using

Code: [Select]

pacman -Sy groovymame groovymame-config

[/li]

• I guess your ArcadeVGA 5000 should work, can't tell for sure. AVGA 3000 doesn't anyway as it requires a special BIOS that has disappeared. You're safe to use any Radeon cards anyway that have a real VGA connector. Cards after R9 380x don't have analogue output anymore (I don't recommend Nvidia or Intel GPUs since they have a pretty ugly tearing)
• PC -> VGA connector -> JPAC -> JAMMA -> Cab monitor. Make sure to protect your cab from 31kHz or higher video signals (set the right jumpers or the JPAC)

For more details on my fork : http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,160023.0.html

[dpm]

Substring, I've got a small issue with your fork I can't figure out.

Using a Jpac interface joystick 1 + button 1 + button 2 in game gives a direction/alt/ctrl combo that cycles desktops. How can I disable that shortcut?

Otherwise the fork is great, it's nice to have attract mode working so well

[Jimbo]

Substring, I've got a small issue with your fork I can't figure out.

Using a Jpac interface joystick 1 + button 1 + button 2 in game gives a direction/alt/ctrl combo that cycles desktops. How can I disable that shortcut?

Otherwise the fork is great, it's nice to have attract mode working so well

I still have that issue too.. I thought I'd fixed it, but it seems not.

[Substring]

Hopefully there is now a doc : https://gitlab.com/groovyarcade/support/-/wikis/2-HowTo/2.4-Troubeshooting#virtual-desktops-are-switched-on-button-shortcuts

[dpm]

Fantastic, thanks! I'll try that soon.

UPDATE - done and fixed!

Quick note, the machine did freeze whole scrolling the games list yesterday but it had been on for several hours prior transfering ROMs. I'll see if it happens again 

[Substring]

that might happen, indeed. Can't tell if it's AM or GA related :/

[gedman]

• My fork can be updated to GM 0.226 using: pacman -Sy groovymame groovymame-config
• I guess your ArcadeVGA 5000 should work, can't tell for sure.

I found elsewhere on this forum that the ArcadeVGA 5000 is based on the Radeon HD 5450 video card. I'm going to try and run GA with the AVGA card and see how it goes.

Can I run GA as a liveCD without installing on my hard drive? If yes, can I run the pacman command to update to GM 0.226, and will that update the liveCD on my USB thumb drive? My goal here is to check out GA before wiping out my current Windows7 installation on the PC in my arcade cabinet.

Thanks!

[dpm]

that might happen, indeed. Can't tell if it's AM or GA related :/

Doesn't seem to happen often and the whole thing boots up pretty quickly so it doesn't bother me a great deal.

Overall this is the first GA installation I've been happy enough with that I've sorted out my ROMs and front end filters. I think since 2016 or 2017?

[Substring]

Can I run GA as a liveCD without installing on my hard drive? If yes, can I run the pacman command to update to GM 0.226, and will that update the liveCD on my USB thumb drive? My goal here is to check out GA before wiping out my current Windows7 installation on the PC in my arcade cabinet.

Thanks!

You can run it as a livecd, but don't boot in UEFI mode, this is extremly important. Otherwise you can't boot linux in 15kHz. To update groovymame : can't tell. The space to allow I/O is not very big, this may not work. There are a few roms shipped with GA, start with these to see how it works.

[Osirus23]

What's the easiest way to get GA to boot directly to a specific ROM?

[Substring]

The best is to edit .xinitrc and replace startfe.sh by your commandline

[Osirus23]

The best is to edit .xinitrc and replace startfe.sh by your commandline

Alright, I'm a few years removed from Linux desktop work. I assume that's where commands to run on startup are set? What if I still want to have the front end running (meaning users will Esc back to it when they close the default ROM) but still have it go straight to a ROM on startup?