MAMEDEV Forum

Posted: **Tue Aug 15, 2023 10:31 pm**

hi!

when trying to run a homebrew rom (like https://notabug.org/nitrofurano/borielz ... onTheSnake ) i'm getting this from the terminal:

mame smsj -bp ~/.mame/roms -cart1 simonthesnake.sms

Ignoring MAME exception: Unknown slot option 'xterminator' in slot 'slot'
Unknown slot option 'xterminator' in slot 'slot'

usually, since over a decade or more, such error never happened, i have no idea what caused that

mame version is 0.251, from ubuntu repository (recently updated/upgraded, from the current ubuntu version)

this bug is affecting all sms-related consoles, like smsj, sms1, smsbr, smskr, etc.

thanks

Posted: **Thu Aug 17, 2023 10:32 pm**

nitrofurano wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 10:31 pm hi!

when trying to run a homebrew rom (like https://notabug.org/nitrofurano/borielz ... onTheSnake ) i'm getting this from the terminal:

mame smsj -bp ~/.mame/roms -cart1 simonthesnake.sms

Ignoring MAME exception: Unknown slot option 'xterminator' in slot 'slot'
Unknown slot option 'xterminator' in slot 'slot'

usually, since over a decade or more, such error never happened, i have no idea what caused that

mame version is 0.251, from ubuntu repository (recently updated/upgraded, from the current ubuntu version)

this bug is affecting all sms-related consoles, like smsj, sms1, smsbr, smskr, etc.

thanks

This problem appears two-fold.

1. An initial regression where the -cart1 simonthesnake.sms loads but shows nothing - appears to start happening after this commit: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/7377

2. A further regression which causes the confusion with "xterminator" which appears to be a game gear based device. This started, as near as I can determine, with this commit: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/7674

I'll poke someone about this. It might be some simple fixing. Thanks for reporting.

Posted: **Wed Oct 18, 2023 9:01 pm**

The initial problem occurs when the driver tries to identify special cartridges. In my case, the SG-1000 driver thought my homebrew rom was a codemasters or x-terminator rom.

I'm not sure about the slot part of the error message though. Does it falsely determine it's a special rom and then can't identify it?

Posted: **Wed Oct 01, 2025 12:39 pm**

SMS cart slot bogusly detect any kind of 0x1000 / 4096 length ROM as x-terminator, which obviously crashes because it's a Game Gear only option. I know it's a thing because Super Magic Drive BIOS also has the exact same phenomenon.

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