Installing OS

[dee2eR]

That is certainly odd behaviour.

When you say holding down the P1 button do you mean the start button? (Long hold on start button is exit game but shouldn't also cause the menu to exit or the system to shut down). Assuming so, and not knowing why it is happening, it is probably worth plugging in a USB keyboard prior to powering up the system and checking what commands are being used in the menu.

At the game selection screen 'tab' on keyboard or 'test' on the cab should open the Attract-Mode menus. From there you should be able to change the exit (or maybe even shutdown) command if that is the problem.

At least you have games now... baby steps I guess. Please let me know if this advice doesn't help - as always when there's customised or unknown versions of the software involved I've got to guess a few details so I could be off the mark. If you haven't already make a backup image of the full SD card just to be safe - may as well copy the roms off it too if you can see them this time.

It's also possible that the system is not shutting down rather it is swapping resolution to something your monitor doesn't like so the monitor is shutting down but not the system. Hard to say for sure. With the current ARpiCADE 3.82 changing the hdmi_mode to 1 will be all that is needed to change the resolution to high res, on an older build there could be another step.

[bkeez]

Yeah, the start button. Sorry, I have a cocktail table. When I look at the control configuration, Exit to Desktop doesn't have a mapping. Is that an issue?

Yeah!!! Having roms is so much better, haha. Baby steps. I backed up the SD card before doing anything too.

I think this is an older build because when I exit to the main screen i get No Support. What else would need to be corrected?

[bkeez]

PLEASE HELP!!

I tried to fix the issue above myself and went into servmenu. The resolution changes seemed a little tricky so I decided to wait until I hear back from you.

But I edited the servmenu to try to turn on rom scan since I'm removing some games. I actually wasn't able to get that to work, but broke the actual configuration used when trying to play the games.

So I deleted servmenu and copied it over from my backup SD. Still doesn't work. So I can't actually play any games now. Mapping with advmame look fine and I can't figure out the issue!

I also wanted to ask you how to reset all the high scores, but that's definitely not as important now that I broke it.

[bkeez]

Alright after 3 hours of tinkering and reading through the forums and the FAQ, I somehow managed to fix the resolution and gameplay configuration which I wasn't expecting.

I had a few more questions I wanted to run by you if that's okay.

1- Many of the games won't let me play them. When I hit start the screen flips to loading and then flips back to the menu. I believe it's all the mame106 games, which is 90% of my roms. How can I fix this?

2- Can I reset the high score boards?

3- Can I make each game have a scoreboard?

4- When I power on, I see that it is building the romlist, but it doesn't actually get rid of the games that I've deleted on the SD card. What do I need to do here?

5- The top of the screen seems pretty cut off, but it's really bad in 2 player mode. Any ideas here?

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR AMAZING SUPPORT!!

[dee2eR]

Alright after 3 hours of tinkering and reading through the forums and the FAQ, I somehow managed to fix the resolution and gameplay configuration which I wasn't expecting.

I had a few more questions I wanted to run by you if that's okay.

1- Many of the games won't let me play them. When I hit start the screen flips to loading and then flips back to the menu. I believe it's all the mame106 games, which is 90% of my roms. How can I fix this?

2- Can I reset the high score boards?

3- Can I make each game have a scoreboard?

4- When I power on, I see that it is building the romlist, but it doesn't actually get rid of the games that I've deleted on the SD card. What do I need to do here?

5- The top of the screen seems pretty cut off, but it's really bad in 2 player mode. Any ideas here?

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR AMAZING SUPPORT!!

Sorry I got busy for a couple of days, haven't been around here much... Glad you're basically up and running again.

Sounds like you have it almost working right, still not sure entirely what is going on with this build...

1. not sure why but it sounds like something is broken with the emulator (or setup) if no game will run (if it was just some games I would think you were missing a bios or something). You may be able to get a clue what is going wrong from the command line (plug in a keyboard prior to booting and exit the menu when it loads, then exit the service menu when it loads). At the prompt type:
advmame pacman
(pacman is an example, if pacman isn't in advmame/mame106 pick a title that is) If it runs the problem is probably in the launcher script or frontend config, if it doesn't run it should give a reason that it isn't working (maybe a broken config file or missing something etc.).

2. yes, each emulator will have it's own set of hi score files/ directory eg.
/home/pi/.advance/hi/
or
/home/pi/mame172/hi/
etc. Delete the .hi files from these directories to reset the scores. If you don't have access to that partition on you desktop PC you can use the Midnight Commander file browser form the service menu to do it on the Pi. I hadn't thought of it before but I will add a service menu option into future releases to automate this - not a bad feature to have.

3. ? not sure what you mean.

4. something is definately not working as intended with the rom scanner on your build if it is not deleting the removed roms from the list. Or the roms are not actually removed... what process are you going through to remove the games?

5. you can adjust overscan in /boot/config.txt to pull the picture in. If you have a rotated screen the top will be either left or right as far as the overscan settings are concerned (depends on which way the monitor is rotated).

Particularly with points 1 and 4 it may be easier to make a new SD card with the current version of ARpiCADE and copy your roms onto it than figure out what the difference is. Alternately, the 2 issues may be related...

[bkeez]

Sorry I got busy for a couple of days, haven't been around here much... Glad you're basically up and running again.

Sounds like you have it almost working right, still not sure entirely what is going on with this build...

Yeah it's getting close!!

1. not sure why but it sounds like something is broken with the emulator (or setup) if no game will run (if it was just some games I would think you were missing a bios or something). You may be able to get a clue what is going wrong from the command line (plug in a keyboard prior to booting and exit the menu when it loads, then exit the service menu when it loads). At the prompt type:
advmame pacman
(pacman is an example, if pacman isn't in advmame/mame106 pick a title that is) If it runs the problem is probably in the launcher script or frontend config, if it doesn't run it should give a reason that it isn't working (maybe a broken config file or missing something etc.).

UPDATE: With the new OS, this is no longer an issue.

2. yes, each emulator will have it's own set of hi score files/ directory eg.
/home/pi/.advance/hi/
or
/home/pi/mame172/hi/
etc. Delete the .hi files from these directories to reset the scores. If you don't have access to that partition on you desktop PC you can use the Midnight Commander file browser form the service menu to do it on the Pi. I hadn't thought of it before but I will add a service menu option into future releases to automate this - not a bad feature to have.

I was not able to find the Midnight Commander in the old OS, but I see it now using your most recent. Sorry for being dense, but I wasn't able to find the hi files. Not sure I'm navigating correctly. Do you have any tips?

3. ? not sure what you mean.

Sorry that was a confusing question. If a game doesn't have a high score board, could it be added?

4. something is definately not working as intended with the rom scanner on your build if it is not deleting the removed roms from the list. Or the roms are not actually removed... what process are you going through to remove the games?

This is also no longer an issue with the new OS.

5. you can adjust overscan in /boot/config.txt to pull the picture in. If you have a rotated screen the top will be either left or right as far as the overscan settings are concerned (depends on which way the monitor is rotated).

With the new OS, I'm able to shift!

A very sincere thank you for all of your time. It is so very much appreciated!! I honestly would have probably had to give up without you. I don't really know anyone handy in the arcade realm. So thank you again for all of the help!!!

[dee2eR]

I was not able to find the Midnight Commander in the old OS, but I see it now using your most recent. Sorry for being dense, but I wasn't able to find the hi files. Not sure I'm navigating correctly. Do you have any tips?

In Midnight Commander you will start somewhere in the /boot directory, selecting /.. (possibly a couple of times) will put you in the / (root) directory where you should be able to navigate to /home then /pi then the emulator folders etc.

One catch with Midnight Commander is the command list at the bottom of the screen is a bit hard to read, 'F8' is the delete command, be careful you have the right file selected too... Once you're finished 'F10' exits Midnight Commander.

Hope that helps.

[dee2eR]

Sorry that was a confusing question. If a game doesn't have a high score board, could it be added?

Not really, unless the lack of high score board is due to some emulation issue. If a game didn't have a high score board originally it won't have one in MAME either. If the original version had a high score board it should have one in MAME too (if that feature is currently not emulated in the long term it would probably be added to newer versions of MAME).

Short of re-writing the original games, adding features they didn't already have isn't really possible.

[bkeez]

Awesome thanks!!!

Okay two more things and then I should be squared away and can stop bugging you all the time.

First thing is I'm having a hard time allowing Player 2 to join on some games. And then in a few games Player 2 can join, but the view doesn't flip for the second player (which is kind of key with a cocktail table setup). Do you have any advice here? I've checked the mapping of the Player 2 buttons to make sure the P2 start button is mapped. I also see the cocktail setup under dipswitches and video mode, but still continue to face this issue on quite a few games.

And then second, there are two 5 year olds that love to play, but I need a way of setting up a display for only games that can play 2 player due to the bickering. I haven't had any luck with creating my own display with a tag filter in place for games that I tag as meeting these criteria. Do you have any ideas on how to make this work?

[dee2eR]

What games arn't flipping? It sounds like you have the settings for cocktail mode already so I may need to check it out. I know some games that originally came as a cocktail machine don't have a cocktail mode in MAME, Asteroids comes to mind as the original had a unique harness for cocktail mode instead of switch settings. Some others may have different ways of selecting cocktail made eg. from their test menus.

Which game/s are you struggling with starting 2 players on? Assuming they're two player games I would like to check it out.

I can understand the hassle, I have twin 4 year olds and they can definitely find some odd reasons to get upset at each other... Attract-Mode can be set up with multiple lists and a button to switch between them. You could make a list of only the 2 player games in there own display, although offhand I don't have a way to automate that for you.