mamewah - I must be missing something ?

[Bluntman]

Hello folks, name's Bluntman I've been lurking for a few weeks now, great site, great community.
I'm working on a cab, which you'll all be introduced to in due time.

meanwhile, I'm playing with front ends, arcadeOS I got running, no sweat, but it's a little "plain" and I'd like to run windows (easier to network/remote administer) so after much reading, I decided on MAMEWAH - supposedly the easiest to set up (not that I'm frightened of editing ini or cfg files... I grew up on dos ) - and because it can be skinned with such flexibility..

aaanyhoo, I download it fine (version 0.90) I install it without a hitch, I run it, No worries, I start to configure it, all goes well...
UNTILL I tell it to refresh the games list - it all SEEMS to go to plan, but at the end of the procedure all I get is a "no Games Availiable" text at the bottom of the mamewah main screen.

so I re-check all my settings, make sure everything is pointing at the right directories etc, and try again - same result.

I had to reinstall win98 anyway so I pushed the scedule forward, fresh install - same problems. D'OH.

I manually check the mamewah.cfg file, all is in order, everythings pointed in the right direction, all setting are as they should be... but I still can't get MAMEWAH to find my ROMs.

and yes, I'm in the MAIN game list, I'm not accidentally staring at a blank FAVOURITES list (though in a moment of embarassement I thought it might be the case, fortunatly for my ego, it was not)

so, I ask for your help folks, I de-lurked earlier than planned too (was gonna wait till I could spring up with my cab.... oh well)

any ideas?
*waits for the ever helpfull minwah* (or another bright spark)

EDIT:
okay, further info gathered after some careful observations about what happens when I run the "refresh games list now" command... there seems to be a batch file created called "listinfo.bat, which contains the commands "CD C:\MAME
C:\MAME\MAME.EXE -listinfo > C:\MAMEFE~1\MAMEWAH\LISTINFO
EXIT" it runs file, and created a file called listinfo (no extention - both these files dissapeer ater the procedure is finished (I paused the computer while it was running the batch, and looked at the directory contents on another computer on my network) the listinfo file gets filled up with all the output from the mame.exe -listinfo command ... I'm GUESSING mamewah's then suppoded to copy/convert(?)/or order that information and place it into  the "mame-all games.lst" file or something? well that doesn't happen, the "mame-all games.lst" file remains at 0kb after the procedure, and the listinfo.bat and listinfo files are deleted.

hope this extra info helps... (always better to have too much info than not enough..right?

[BuZz880]

Looks like you pretty much have a handle on how it all works.  Try this.

Run MAME with the -listinfo command

This should generate a file called listinfo.dat that does not disappear.

Go back into mamewah and make sure in your game list options you specify the location of listinfo.dat and also the last option on that list is something like "generate list from" make sure you select "dat file vs rom folder".  

[AlanS17]

Make sure you look at your screen very closley. Are you sure you're not looking at your favorites list? Your favorites list will be empty if you're firing it up for the first time since you haven't designated any favorites yet.

So are you looking at your main list or your favorites list?

[Minwah]

Bluntman:  Start over by installing v0.95b and then v0.951b...it is probably a bug in v.90 - I re-wrote the list generation part completely.

The new version is slightly more difficult to config, but the way you figured out how v0.90 was working, it shouldn't be much bother to you!

Odonadon kindly made a FAQ on here which should help if you have any Q's...

[Bluntman]

well, it's report-back time;

Okay, so BuzZ880's advice was helpful - AFTER I took minwah's advice (as the version I was using - v0.90 -doesn't have the option to specify the location of a listinfo.dat file manually)

once I upgraded to v0.951b, I tried to generate a list again - same problem - it churned away for a few moments, and promptly returned me to a blank list. bummer.
BUT once I pointed it to my manually generated listinfo.dat file it was a completely different story, a complete success.

Thanks to AlanS17 for offering help too, but you must have missed the part in my forst post where I mentioned I'd checked that (the fave lsit thing)

so thanx guys, most helpful, problem solved.... now I'm off to start customising skinns/sounds/lists etc   and then set it as my windows shell.
you're a champ Minwah, nice work.

[Minwah]

Great, glad you got it to work...

BTW you can set the 'List Generation Method' to 'ROM Folder vs Listinfo (M.A.M.E.)' so that you don't need to create your own DAT file, but the way you've done it is also fine (I added the above option in v0.951b, it was not in v0.95b).