MAME on Linux does not see my roms.

[Gps 2084]

Introduction:
I am on openSUSE tumbleweed, and installed mame.

I already have 2, 60 gigabyte roms packs, but both don't seem to work.
One of those packs worked fine with mame while I still was on a different version of openSUSE, called leap.
Tumbleweed is the rolling release version of openSUSE.

I found this:
https://www.mamedev.org/roms/

I added in mame the path to my rom folder, and after a restart of mame, I saw mame does remember the link.

Questions:

Is my assumption right that these roms from that mame devs page, should work with every mame version?
I downloaded star fire, but it has the same problem as the two other roms packs, mame does not seem to see it.

I also tried to start mame from the commandline, but sadly that did not gave me any errors, to point me to what the problem is.
Right now I am installing the mame debugging tools, but I have no idea on how to use it.

Is there a page that explains how to use the debugging tools, and or has command line options with which I can track down what the problem is?

Last question, how hard is it to compile mame myself?

My success rate with compiling programs myself is not that great.

What did work was compiling Doom 3 (a game) for Linux, but with a program called LMMS I sometimes failed and sometimes was successful.
I am far from a Linux expert, I see myself as a bit of an advanced user.

[Klez]

Please do the following tests,

Open a terminal and type as your normal user: "mame -cc"
This will create if does not exist /home/yourUser/.mame/mame.ini

The line #11 in mame.ini config file points to the path for roms. Multiple paths in the same line are allowed using semicolon ";"
example:

Code: Select all

rompath   $HOME/.mame/roms

Put all your zipped roms inside that folder, like:

Code: Select all

/home/yourUser/.mame/roms/neogeo.zip
/home/yourUser/.mame/roms/mslug.zip 
[...]

Then verify your roms typing: "mame -verifyroms"

It´s possible that older rom packs contain some obsolete bad rom that changed in more recent mame versions, however many of them will be fine.

By the way, in OpenSuse Leap 15.2 i´m seeing that mame package is from version 0.193 wich in my opinion is quite old nowadays.
Because of that you may have problems emulating certain "modern roms" from recent packs using your older mame.

You can type "zypper info mame" to show installed version.

You can consider using Opensuse tumbleweed for a more recent repositoy, including mame 0.2xx versions.

Hope it helps!

[Gps 2084]

Thank you , will try and report back.

I am on Tumbleweed though not leap, which gives version 0.211.

Code: Select all

guus@linux-2ls4:~> zypper info mame
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...


Information for package mame:
-----------------------------
Repository     : openSUSE:Tumbleweed
Name           : mame
Version        : 0.211-4.2
Arch           : x86_64
Vendor         : openSUSE
Installed Size : 168,9 MiB
Installed      : Yes
Status         : up-to-date
Source package : mame-0.211-4.2.src
Summary        : Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
Description    : 
    MAME is an emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game
    systems in software on modern personal computers. The source code to
    MAME serves as this hardware documentation. The fact that the
    software is usable serves primarily to validate the accuracy of the
    documentation.

[Gps 2084]

Code: Select all

guus@linux-2ls4:~> mame -cc
guus@linux-2ls4:~> mame -verifyroms
romset breakout is best available
mac2bios    : macs2os_l.bin (524288 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
mac2bios    : macs2os_h.bin (524288 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset mac2bios is best available
romset pongd is best available
romset pongf is best available
romset rebound is best available
mb90082     : mb90082_char.bin (2048 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset mb90082 is best available
hd63484     : hd63484.bin (256 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset hd63484 is best available
qs1000      : qs1000.bin (65536 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset qs1000 is best available
ldp1450     : ldp1450_bios.bin (8192 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset ldp1450 is best available
ldp1000     : ldp1000_bios.bin (8192 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset ldp1000 is best available
m68hc705c8a : bootstrap.bin (240 bytes) - NOT FOUND - NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset m68hc705c8a is best available
11 romsets found, 11 were OK.
guus@linux-2ls4:~> 

[Gps 2084]

Although the problem is not fixed yet, I made some progress as in locating were the problem is.

The problem is with the official mame package for openSUSE Tumble weed, the mame package for openSUSE leap works just fine.
This explains, why I had no problem before, my previous pc was running leap.

Don't we love computers?


For those confused, openSUSE has two flavours for home users. Leap and Tumbleweed.
Tumbleweed is a rolling release. ( latest kernel and such and a much newer version of mame )


I will now see if I can find the openSUSE package maintainer and report the problem.

Thanks for the help.