ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Latest on ARpiCADE new releases, release notes, and history of previous versions.

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dee2eR
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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by dee2eR » Wed Jun 09, 2021 3:26 am

cool_factor wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:45 am
Any update on the PlayStation fix (curling)? Also Data East Cobra Command ROM and CHD in 231 has sound but no sound effects (gun fire and missile fire sounds)
I haven't got there yet... haven't forgotten either but I've been distracted with lightguns and lockdowns lately.

Japan
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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by Japan » Sat Jun 12, 2021 2:08 pm

My first post here. I everyone!

Thanks Dylan,
No worries. I finally got it all working just now tonight. Took all all day but I got it working.
Lots of trial and error but basically I just needed to:
1. Image the 4.3 .img to an SDcard as is.
2. Resize the boot partition by first moving the Linux hidden partition over. I used that free one mentioned. Any would work I'm sure.
3. Copy the roms over to the boot partition roms folder.
4. If vertical use the service button on my cab’s power supply. Now I know what (Cabside) means.
a. F4 does work. Somehow I must have broken it with my tinkering and copying files. Just use v4.3 as is and it's great!
5. The update to 4.3.1 made a positive difference I noticed to the picture size and quality. Thanks. Even before I realized my monitor needed low res.
A. But then I realized I actually needed to use the 'low res' mode in the service mode. Now my old Astro City monitor doesn't flicker and it's fast as hell in games! DoDonPachi flies!!!!!!!!!!! SO MUCH MORE FUN!!! Wow. THIS is what I've been looking for. Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. Dodonpachi was upside down but I google searched and found I have to hold down F2 for 3 seconds and it’s flippable within the menu. Other settings adjustable there too.
a. Hold down F2 to exit.
7. I learned to use Golden Axe to calibrate the monitor colors and horiz/vert position as it has a great f2 calibration menu. You have to use f2 to choose things though within the menu.
8. For anyone who was seeing the bottom of their Galaga screen cut off, setting it to 'low res' fixed it for me. 240 mode it was cut off still.

All day to figure those out. But got it. All set. Time to play now that it's 11pm. lol.

I have to say, this arpicade unit is actually performing much better than I thought it would. And....

THIS IS WORKING ON A PI4 8GB!

No issues with the standard 4.3 image with the update copied over to the updates folder and applied via the service mode as recommended. Just wanted to confirm that for you and anyone else wondering.

Next to figure out why my donpachi dai ou two files are showing static and not opening. Maybe they're missing? Need to look and see. Also want to test mmpork and some other cave games.

I'm not overclocking. Yet. Might. But I'm looking for a good fan hat like the Argon one but with pass thru pins for the gpio header. Anyone?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y9 ... J23Z&psc=1
Maybe I can find some male to male pins to go in between?

PS. By the way, I did see one bug in the attract mode earlier when I still had the resolution set to stock. When it had 4 tiles on the screen one of them would cycle rapidly through a ton of game screenshots non stop. The other three were stable. I don't think that's supposed to look like that but wanted to mention it in case its fixable.

Update: Donpachi daioujou two files are not missing. Something else is going on. It seems they're incompatible with the pi4 perhaps? Anyone know? I tried downloading other versions from the .0198 mame pack and none of them run. I tired the 0.106, 0.172 and FBA folders with now luck even after rescanning and rebooting. Need ideas here.

So are newer mame releases not supported on the arpicade? Like 0232?

dee2eR
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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by dee2eR » Sun Jun 13, 2021 3:20 am

Good to hear it works on a 8gig Pi4 (I'll get one eventually...) - I'll update the first post to reflect that, thanks for checking.

The static 'preview' in the frontend just measn you don't have a preview (snap vid or image) for that game, it's not an indicator that the game won't work necesarily.

If it's the PGM version of DDP you may need the pgm.zip bios in there with it, otherwise your issue is probably rom related one way or another. The emulators you tried are the ones I'd recommend for CAVE generally.

Mushi Mushi Pork will need as much overclocking as you can manage and is still likely to be full of slowdown. It seems like one of the harder to run newer CAVE games... All the newer CAVE games will need as much OC as possible, some work better than others... some work better with particular characters, weapons, etc... I have some ideas to try that may get these running a bit better in the future...

I wouldn't worry about getting a fan based heatsink. If your cab has a fan inside there's probably good enough airflow without it. Also the fan hat doesn't look like it actually has a heatsink included... If you do go with a heatsink try to find one that doesn't block the edges of the ribbon cable (on one of mine I had to mod the heatsink mounting and the ribbon cable to fit both...). A not overly large stick-on heatsink is probably fine, most screw on types will probably get in the way of the ribbon cable. Many heatsink kits come with heatsinks for the Pi USB chip which is completely unneeded... The biggest change to power use and heat production for Pi4 actually came from firmware updates.

Not certain but I suspect the 'bug' you have in the Attract-Mode screen saver is just having 3 videos and one pane of still pics cycling through games. I may be wrong. If you have video previews for all games (or possibly change the screen saver settings) it should behave how I imagine you want it to (all videos).

I'm yet to compile any newer versions of MAME than 0.230 largely because it takes many hours to compile MAME on RPi (especially current versions). If there's a good reason to we can always update to newer versions though, no reason it won't work. I don't think I've released a new ARpiCADE since 0.230 was the current version... pretty sure MAME in ARpiCADE 4.3 was up to date for almost a week or so there...

Japan
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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by Japan » Sun Jun 13, 2021 4:32 am

Thanks for the quick in depth reply.
Both Dodonpachi daioujou games just kick back to the selection menu. Neither run.
Also, I tried your guide to enable ftp but it was a guide for 3.8. It seems things have changed. Like wifi isnt' enabled by default now.
Not that I want wifi on anyway as I prefer Ethernet. But it is saying above the command prompt when exiting from the service menu "sudo: unable to resolve host arpiade1" Temporary failure in name resolution." It says this twice and then lists the correct version info - Arpicade 4.3.1. Just an fyi.
If you know of a good guide for enabling ftp on 4.3 I'll follow it. For now I'll just keep swapping in and out my sdcard.

I'm still looking into how mame updates work. Seems like a deep and complex thing to maintain from the videos I'm watching for using clrmame pro on the PC. It'd be nice for me to figure out how to get up to 0.230 roms working if you say you already have these running. Do I just put 230 roms into a 230 folder and rescan? Going to try creating a 198 folder for those additional versions I downloaded to see if they'll load. Perhaps this will be a waste of time if I'm not comprehending all the requirements though.

I did see the pgm.zip in there when I searched. They were in 106 and fba folders. But they didn't start up when I copied the roms into those folders last night. I'll test again though to be sure.

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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by dee2eR » Sun Jun 13, 2021 5:27 am

haven't seen that host error before, but I usually keep my arcade Pis offline so it may just be because of that... I can only use ethernet, my office seems to be in a blackspot, has no WiFi signal, can't even get 4g phone signals unless I'm in the doorway... I just plug SD cards in and out of my RPis/PC like a pleb, lol. I'll try to fix up the WiFi setup for the next release.

230 should work with some roms and a rescan. Mostly the performance won't be as good as 172 but lots of stuff is fullspeed in 230 (especially if you overclock), 230 had audio system changes so may sound more accurate than earlier MAME versions in some games.

To add 198 will take a little more effort than just adding the emulator. You need to also make a launcher (for 198 I'd start by copying 203's launcher as it's the closest version), update the romscanner to add 198, and add it to Attract-Mode so attract knows what to launch. After that you'll probably find the performance is similar to 203, although I haven't tried 198. I'd also patch the white loading box out prior to compiling with the ozfalcon supression patch to make its appearance fit in with the rest of the emulators. Honestly, it's probably not worth your time - I don't think it'l do anything you can't already do in 172 or 203.

I think there is some more MAME performance to be found in moving to a 64bit kernel, but that requires entirely rebuilding everything (or near enough). I've basically been waiting for the 64bit RaspiOS (formally Raspbian) to be upgraded to a non beta release to try 64bit though. It's also possible a little more performance can be gained by compiling MAME using a newer version of GCC (I will try this with 172 eventually, but as I said it takes hours to compile MAME on RPi4 so my motivation to try it over other things has been low...). My hope is one (or both) of these little tweaks to 172 will see some later CAVE games running nicer (prob still needing OC).

If you have the bios files in the bios directory try putting them in with the roms as I have realised this week that the bios directory isn't being used by Naomi/Atomswave/Dreamcast anymore (and prob other emulators too). I think I must have broken it at 4.3 (or the 4.3.1 update) - I figured out last night that only games that had their bios in the rom zipfile were working in Naomi/Atomiswave. For MAME and FBA just having the bios rom zipfiles in the emulators rom folder with the games is enough, no need to have them in the rom zipfiles.

Could also be rom version issues, in which case auditing your romset(s) with CLRMAMEPro or Romcenter should help you figure that out and possibly fix them up for you.

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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by Slam_Bradley » Tue Jun 22, 2021 7:22 am

Just bought a RPi4 8GB last night. Looking forward to some experimenting!

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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by Slam_Bradley » Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:40 pm

So today I installed the latest image and then also copied over the update on a new micro SD, and put it into the new Pi4 which I put put into the arpicade (swapping out the pi3). So I get it plugged into my Double Dragon machine, turn everything on.. aaaand my screen is blank. This was working fine before with the pi3 setup.

Here is a picture of how I have everything hooked up:
Image

Notes:

- I added that HDMI to mini/micro HDMI adapter as that was the only way I could figure out how to hook it up.
- I do get red light and then green flashing on the pi4, so it does look like it is booting..
- I removed the jumper that was sitting over the connector labeled "pi3" on the Arpicade.
- For some reason, the coin door lights never glow despite the marquee light glowing which I found a bit odd.
- Threw my Klax jamma board in the cab to make sure everything still played as normal and it did.
- Just swapped the Pi3 back in to rule out anything being wrong with the actual Arpicade. Worked fine.
- Re-imaged the SD card with 4.3 and no partition re-sizing to try to rule out software/filesytem issues. No change.

Not sure what else to try at this point..

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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by cool_factor » Mon Jun 28, 2021 12:13 pm

Faulty mini HDMI adapter maybe?

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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by dee2eR » Tue Jun 29, 2021 2:25 am

It does sound like the micro HDMI adaptor is the likely cause of the issue.

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Re: ARpiCADE 4.3 (for RPi4)

Post by Slam_Bradley » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:23 pm

I wondered about that. What brand of adapter do you guys have that is working for you?

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