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MAME internal debugger documentation
Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:10 pm
by mhoes
Hi,
Without any specific purpose or use case in mind whatsoever, and for my personal curiosity and informational purposes only, I was wondering if there is any documentation out there on how to use the MAME internal debugger, or on how/what it functions/covers/doesn't cover/does/doesn't do ?
I looked on the 'mamedev.org' website, and couldn't find anything there. Perhaps I have simply overlooked it, or looked in the wrong places ?
Re: MAME internal debugger documentation
Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 10:08 am
by Andrew Gardner
There really isn't much written on how to use the internal MAME debugger. It's one of those parts of MAME where, if an individual really needs it, there's a good chance they're some sort of programmer and the MAME source will tell him/her everything they need to know.
That being said, there is documentation for debugger functions accessible from within the debugger. Run the debugger, type 'help' at the prompt, and hit <ENTER>. This will print a few function names and a list of categories that you can type 'help [category]' and get further information. You can always type "help [functionName]" to get detailed information about how the function works and some examples of its use.
Happy hacking.
/Andrew
Re: MAME internal debugger documentation
Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 1:52 pm
by mhoes
Hi,
Thanks for the reply and the information, I guess that makes sense.
I did do some more googling though, and found this site 'letshackarcadegames.com' which seems to have a lot of information on the subject, including information on how to (start) using the debugger to reverse engineer a game. The last article in the series seems to be from September 2015 though, so I guess it's no longer updated.
Introducing the MAME Debugger
http://letshackarcadegames.com/?p=338
Thanks again for the help.
Re: MAME internal debugger documentation
Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2016 9:20 am
by Andrew Gardner
Good find! I didn't know about that site.
There was once a text file on how to emulate asteroids, but that fell so far out of date that it's only worth reading for the intuitions about arcade hardware - not so much about how to use the MAME debugger. The link you posted, however, is quite modern and pretty thorough.
Thanks for the info.
/Andrew