MESS and Mamewah

[reko19]

For all poor unfortunate souls, myself including, trying to get MESS 0.123 running:

1.   Download and unpack to c:\mess
2.   Download BIOS files and place them in c:\mess\roms
3.   BIOS file for Atari 5200 should be a5200.zip with 5200.rom in it.
4.   Go to c:\mess and run messui.exe, go to options / directories / select show directories for ROMS, browse and point to c:\mess\roms.  Next, go to options / default system options / select miscellaneous tab, make sure “use new UI” is unchecked.

5.   Toggle folder list (leftmost icon under MESSUI), select available folder from the list of folders. Make sure systems you are trying to emulate (i.e. Ataru5200) are listed as available.  Select Atari 5200 from the systems list, right click, select properties, click on software tab, and point to the folder that stores your game ROMS.

6.   Your software list should be populated with your games at this point. Double click on one of the ROMS in the software list. This should start your game.

7.   Exit MESSUI, you should have ini folder with mess.ini in it.  Make sure the following variables are set:
newui   0
rompath   C:\mess\roms

8.   Try running command line MESS, your command line should look like this:
C:\Mess\Mess.exe a5200 -inipath c:\mess\ini -cart "C:\mess\roms_5200\Asteroids (1983) (Atari) (Prototype) [!].zip"

You should be able to run it from any folder, not only from within c:\mess.

9.   Your Mamewah emulator_commandline command line should be:

C:\Mess\Mess.exe a5200 -inipath c:\mess\ini -cart "[rompath]\[name].[romext]"{nodosbox}{nosafelaunch}

Hope this helps, this is two days worth of dicking around. Sorry if this was covered before, I wasn't able to find it.

[juggle50]

Thank you for your hard work Reko19.  I really like MESS a lot and I'm not sure why people don't use it as their main emulator for most retro console and computer games.  I use it for a2600, Nintendo 8 bit, Apple IIe, colecovision,  TI99a, vextrex, C64, intellivision and even gameboy.  I love that it behaves just like mame and therefore is great for a cabinet.

I would love a front end that would be able to emulate it just like MESS's native GUI where you have a list of all the systems on the far left column and the games available for the highlighted system on the column to the right as opposed to having to set up each emulator individually.

I'm sure that is wrought with problems that I don't understand but I just wanted to give MESS some props.