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Advantage of cabinet with internet access?

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icecube45:

--- Quote from: jelwell on August 26, 2013, 02:15:21 pm ---Here's what I did when I had friends with arcade cabinets.

We all share the same hi scores. I store the hi and nvram directories on an ftp server. (We have not yet upgraded to save state versions). Then I use Webdrive on all the machines to mount the ftp server as if it were a physical drive. Everyone uses identical MAME revisions and ROMs and we all point our hi and nvram directories to the mounted server. It's quite speedy, unless you want to play Simpon's Bowling which has an NVRAM file which is around 8MB (which can take a noticeable number of seconds to load).

If you are going to have your box online then I highly suggest you use an icebox or something similar to "Freeze" your hard drive.
http://dx.com/p/windows-icebox-usb-system-restore-data-recovery-dongle-for-pc-and-laptops-17774

The icebox allows your system to ignore any writes to the hard drive when you reboot. This is great if a system update accidentally is applied or some hacker remotely exploits your OS and installs something that is causing problems - or more likely slowing your machine down. You can configure certain folders to ignore but the rest of the disk is "protected". It works by writing any changes to empty space on your drive and never committing them to the real file system. You can also temporarily disable it if you need to make some changes to your system.

Before I installed something like this I had problems being online.  Mostly from Windows updates but other problems too, like if somone accidentally found my keyboard and broke some key mapping in Mame or Mamewah. It's nice to be able to reboot and have all those changes simply ignored.

As someone else posted, there are also versions of MAME that support network play. So you could play with your friends. I have not tried any recently (as my friends all got rid of their cabinets) but it worked really well when I played it before.
Joseph Elwell.

--- End quote ---


This:
I could store the high scores on an ftp server, which then displays them on a website!
Online scoreboard, woop

DeLuSioNal29:

--- Quote from: jelwell on August 26, 2013, 02:15:21 pm ---If you are going to have your box online then I highly suggest you use an icebox or something similar to "Freeze" your hard drive.
http://dx.com/p/windows-icebox-usb-system-restore-data-recovery-dongle-for-pc-and-laptops-17774
The icebox allows your system to ignore any writes to the hard drive when you reboot.

--- End quote ---
I assume then that any hi scores are ignored as well?

jelwell:

--- Quote from: DeLuSioNal29 on August 27, 2013, 01:02:46 pm ---
--- Quote from: jelwell on August 26, 2013, 02:15:21 pm ---If you are going to have your box online then I highly suggest you use an icebox or something similar to "Freeze" your hard drive.
http://dx.com/p/windows-icebox-usb-system-restore-data-recovery-dongle-for-pc-and-laptops-17774
The icebox allows your system to ignore any writes to the hard drive when you reboot.

--- End quote ---
I assume then that any hi scores are ignored as well?

--- End quote ---

High scores are not ignored.
1. If you're using the internet "shared high score list" feature that I describe above, the icebox doesn't work with it. It's not a physical disk, so depending on the way you "map" the remote folder in mame the icebox won't freeze it.
2. I add exceptions in the software configuration tool to the following directories:
mame/hi
mame/nvram

There are few other locations you'll probably want to exclude:
Mame's save state folder (I think that's mame/state)
Your front end's game play count list. I use Mamewah and there is a folder that keeps track of the number of times I've played a game. I exclude that folder. The reason to count is that Mamewah offers a view that shows all (thousands) of games sorted by how many times you've played them. VERY helpful when you just want to play the same ole same ole.

My current cabinet has one of these (instead of an icebox):
http://dx.com/p/recoverystar-crash-recovery-pci-card-for-pc-2896
They also have a USB version of this one:
http://dx.com/p/usb-data-recovery-system-restore-dongle-for-desktop-pc-and-laptops-14855

It works really well and has the added feature that at boot time you can decide to save any changes made during the last run. It defaults to booting up without saving anything. You have to quickly press some key combo when the Recovery screen flashes right after your bios. I think CTRL-A or the like. I can't recall if this version has folder exclusions. I setup icebox on my brother in law's cabinet. I'm planning on upgrading my cabinet's PC and switching to icebox though. With icebox, if you want to save any changes (other than to excluded folders) you have to launch the helper app in windows, then turn the unfreeze the computer, then REBOOT, then when it comes back up you can make any changes and then use the app to freeze the computer again - which will trigger another reboot. Kind of tedious, but not needed often. The documentation seemed to imply you can simply remove or plug in the USB stick to enable/disable freeze. But I either wasn't able to get it to work, or gave up too soon (because it was a feature I didn't really need).
Joseph Elwell.

jelwell:
By the way, this is the program I used nearly a decade ago:
http://www.southrivertechnologies.com/products/webdrive/

Today I imagine I would just register a new dropbox account, specific to my arcade cabinet's and my friends. Then use their software to keep my mame score folders in sync. But I've kind of given up on that feature since my friends all sold their cabinets. And I didn't bother to make my brother in laws networked.
Joseph Elwell.

icecube45:

--- Quote from: jelwell on August 27, 2013, 01:49:37 pm ---By the way, this is the program I used nearly a decade ago:
http://www.southrivertechnologies.com/products/webdrive/

Today I imagine I would just register a new dropbox account, specific to my arcade cabinet's and my friends. Then use their software to keep my mame score folders in sync. But I've kind of given up on that feature since my friends all sold their cabinets. And I didn't bother to make my brother in laws networked.
Joseph Elwell.

--- End quote ---

I could symlink the highcores to a folder in dropbox, and then symlink that on the website hosting computer.
Now go an network your brother in laws, beat him in some 1941

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