Mame on ARM based boards

[rhys]

I'm looking at using an ARM SOC based board as the brains of a mini-bartop.  I have a handfull of devices in mind, based primarily on the fact that they all have direct LVDS interfaces, allowing for the use of bare LCD's without needing an interface board.  I have access to piles of bare LCD's from dead laptops for free that can be easily incorporated into bartop builds, and using a board with LVDS interface removes the need for a $35 HDMI to VDSL controller.

So far, the three boards I'm looking at are the A20 based CubieTruck and Olinuxino-A20, or the i.MX6 based Udoo Dual Lite or MARS boards.

I know Mame can be compiled for ARM, but I'm finding VERY little information on the process that isn't specific to the Rasberry Pi.  The A20 and i.MX6 boards are FAR more powerfull than the RasbPi, and the Udoo even has a built in Arduino Due that can be programmed to act as the control interface instead of having to write a driver for Linux to use the GPIO ports for control interfacing.

I also haven't found any sort of benchmarking, or even opinions, regarding the speed of these boards for Mame.  Also, most of them only offer 1GB of RAM, but the higher end Udoo comes with 2GB, and I don't know if that would make it worth the extra expense or not.

So, has anyone on here messed with Mame on an ARM processor besides the Pi?

If so, would you be willing to post your opinions, tips, tricks, hints, etc???

Thanks!

[Howard_Casto]

I can tell you why it has seldom been done.  Even with a more powerful arm processor, it's still puny compared to the cheapest pc.  That means running an older, and thus feature lacking and less accurate version of mame.  Also all of those nice support apps are almost exclusively on the pc.... front-ends and the like. 

Long story short it's typically cheaper and easier to just use an old pc... you are in a unique situation. 

Sorry that I wasn't of any help.

[ark_ader]

I played Mame on my XDA and that was a 200mhz ARM and most of the games worked 100%.

MameDroid is good and runs on the recent tablets.  Good enough to make one of those crap tablets (Apad) into a project. There are so many older tablets coming on sale so you should find a dual core, or even plop a MK808 and a HDMI/DVI display into the mix.

Get yourself a Kade for the controls as it works on 2.3+ like a charm. 

[Howard_Casto]

  That means running an older, and thus feature lacking and less accurate version of mame. 

Mamedroid runs .37b5  which is astoundingly old. 

Even if you don't care about accuracy (you should btw) there have been a boatload of games added since .37b5. 

[ark_ader]

  That means running an older, and thus feature lacking and less accurate version of mame. 

Mamedroid runs .37b5  which is astoundingly old. 

Even if you don't care about accuracy (you should btw) there have been a boatload of games added since .37b5.

There is also Mame4Droid that supports  .139 and runs very well on My Xperia Z 10.

[BadMouth]

I was going to mention EEMAME which ran on my old Symbian phone that had an ARM processor.
That was like a decade ago and was also based on a build somewhere around v.34-38 

The source code is still available, although I don't know how relevant it would be to what you're doing.

[rhys]

Ok, I apparently failed to mention I'm planning on using Linux, not Android or some other ARM based OS alternative.

The boards I'm looking at all have LVDS interfaces to attach to bare LCD's, and 50+ GPIO ports for inputs/outputs.  The entire point of this is to use a single board to do EVERYTHING inside the box.  No need for HDMI/DVI interfaces, no need for a control interface, the ARM SBC handles the entire job by itself.  These boards all have a SATA port as well, so including a smallish 2.5" HDD to store roms is doable as well while using the flash memory as boot media for speed.

I was mostly interested in whether having 2GB instead of 1GB of ram would significantly effect performance.  The 1GB boards start at $75, the 2GB boards are $150.  The rest of the additional features of the 2GB boards are unnecessary for this project.  So it comes down to is there enough of a performance difference to warrant doubling the price of the board.

[Haze]

for the stuff most of these ARM based boards are likely to run 1GB vs 2GB isn't going to mean much.

a good CPU is the most important thing for emulation.

the Pi was weak but had a lot of hype surrounding it so people did end up porting MAME to it.

Android etc. are more popular ARM based platforms so naturally get more ports because those ports can be used in more places.

The market fragmentation (both software and hardware) with these cheap ARM boards that run Linux means that a lot of people simply aren't going to be putting in the effort to port something to a platform that will likely be forgotten in a year or two when they know the actual end result will be nothing to write home about, I think that's what you're seeing.  The problem is the only people with interest invested their time into shoddy Pi ports of old versions because the Pi was the most popular platform even if it was the weakest of the bunch.

They're hobbyist boards, so I guess the idea is that you take one of the existing ARM ports for Android and rework it, or possibly integrate some of their hacks into an SDL build, or if you're happy with 15 year old emulation then port MAME4All once again (yuck) or possibly one of the x-box things where people have back-ported fixes (still eww, probably with lots of code that only works on x86 platforms, and lots of people claiming sources are being withheld etc.)

I think a lot of these boards are getting stuck in a bad place, they're being bought up by people who expect something *cheap* to do everything, but the actual developers who are likely to make them do anything aren't actually buying them so you're left with scraps.

Either way, they're no substitute for a proper PC when it comes to emulation, at least not if you care about quality rather than the novelty value of it all.

[ark_ader]

for the stuff most of these ARM based boards are likely to run 1GB vs 2GB isn't going to mean much.

a good CPU is the most important thing for emulation.

the Pi was weak but had a lot of hype surrounding it so people did end up porting MAME to it.

Android etc. are more popular ARM based platforms so naturally get more ports because those ports can be used in more places.

The market fragmentation (both software and hardware) with these cheap ARM boards that run Linux means that a lot of people simply aren't going to be putting in the effort to port something to a platform that will likely be forgotten in a year or two when they know the actual end result will be nothing to write home about, I think that's what you're seeing.  The problem is the only people with interest invested their time into shoddy Pi ports of old versions because the Pi was the most popular platform even if it was the weakest of the bunch.

They're hobbyist boards, so I guess the idea is that you take one of the existing ARM ports for Android and rework it, or possibly integrate some of their hacks into an SDL build, or if you're happy with 15 year old emulation then port MAME4All once again (yuck) or possibly one of the x-box things where people have back-ported fixes (still eww, probably with lots of code that only works on x86 platforms, and lots of people claiming sources are being withheld etc.)

I think a lot of these boards are getting stuck in a bad place, they're being bought up by people who expect something *cheap* to do everything, but the actual developers who are likely to make them do anything aren't actually buying them so you're left with scraps.

Either way, they're no substitute for a proper PC when it comes to emulation, at least not if you care about quality rather than the novelty value of it all.

So you are a lurker at Mameworld after all.   

[BadMouth]

So you are a lurker at Mameworld after all.   

...and you, a stalker.

[rhys]

Ok, only looking to run 80's classic games.  I was planning on using it to put together a small bartop with at most four buttons per player, probably only two.  I'm not trying to build a full size cabinet to run newer games with one of these boards, that just wouldn't make sense....  However, for an inexpensive small bartop for classic 80's games, I think one of these single board computers would fit the bill nicely.  Using one of the $75 AllWinner A20 based boards (Dual Cortex A7 @ 1.2GHz w/ dual core Mali400 GPU), I can't imagine it wouldn't be able to handle the games I want it to.  The total project cost would be under $150, taking into account I have a stockpile of scrap plywood I can use to make the actual cabinet, plus a pile of bare LCD's, power bricks, and wiring I can use.  That leaves me with the only items to purchase being the SBC and the controls.

As far as Mame goes, I have no issue with compiling my own copy for whichever board I choose.  The main thing I'm still researching is getting support for OpenGL ES 2.0, to take some of the graphics load off of the main CPU and put it on the relatively decent Mali400 GPU cores.  If I have to piece it together from multiple projects to get a decent Mame executable, that doesn't bother me, I'm capable of doing that.  I've just started looking in to that though, so I don't have much information yet.

[ark_ader]

You might want to check out the MK808b.  I just got one for the TV and it boots linux up or Android.  Kade works with it and if you have a spare DVI monitor the max it will cost you is $100.  Plays Mame, The Bluth Games and loads of normal emus, including DOsBox.  I'm sure you can get them cheaper but the one I got with Bluetooth was $48 with free shipping.  Dual Core and Mali-400.

[ark_ader]

So you are a lurker at Mameworld after all.   

...and you, a stalker.

I just have to rub the lamp and he appears.  Just like Dave Foley.
Really no trouble at all. 

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah that doesn't sound gay at all. 

I'm still against this project btw.  Yeah by an android on a stick ect.... for 100 bucks... or just get on fleabay or visit your local pawn shop to get a Pentium 4 era pc for the same price that'll run circles around the arm processor and have a far easier setup.

[Haze]

Yeah that doesn't sound gay at all. 

I'm still against this project btw.  Yeah by an android on a stick ect.... for 100 bucks... or just get on fleabay or visit your local pawn shop to get a Pentium 4 era pc for the same price that'll run circles around the arm processor and have a far easier setup.

Well as long as it's sufficiently high-end and well-built (unlike the cheapo Pi) then you stand a chance of building something more reliable than a dusty old PC at least.  Heaven knows simply keeping some of my older boxes running just to have something to occasionally use for testing in that environment is a pain, hardware flaking out all over the place.

But yeah, I don't think the tech is quite there yet, if you want GL etc. you're probably going to want to run something SDL based with proper drivers on the system rather than trying to dig up all the old versions (probably easier to port the newer ones too as these things will be shipping with newer toolchains more inline with what we use today) however those newer versions have higher CPU requirements in general and even the best of these ARMs are pretty lousy performers for emulation compared to a good modern intel CPU.

Good emulation requires a good PC, that's basically unavoidable.

The impression I've got from all these devices I've seen is that they're built for tinkering, not for a solid gaming experience

[Howard_Casto]

Haze you haven't been paying attention to the conversation.  He's wanting to play "the classics".  Even with the most recent version of mame, those will run on a rather puny pc.  Unfortunately a rather puny pc equates to a rather high-end arm-based board, or at the very least very pricey.  From what I took from the conversation, he has a bunch of spare parts lying around and he wants to do this fairly cheaply.  Well with arm boards that probably isn't possible, at least with a modern version of mame, while digging up a cheap pc, yeah that's more doable.

[rhys]

The main purpose of attempting this is to make use of the plethora of laptop LCD panels I have laying around without spending $30+ per LCD on a driver board, and then needing multiple power supplies.

Plus, it's difficult to cram an old pc mainboard, power supply, her, etc into a single player sized LCD bartop and keep it small.

For the VERY limited purpose of this possible build, and they specific hardware requirements I have (the entire system on a single board, including control interface and LCD driver), the only alternative to an ARM based board would be a gutted laptop, and that doesn't really meet my requirements either.

i guess I'll just order one of the boards when I have the funds and give it a shot and see how it goes.... I can always find another use for it if it doesn't work out for this purpose.

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