MAME emulator selection not appearing upon startup

rbaker

@beteljuice How may roms? and did you wait long enough? (Was the usb still blinking?) It is far easier in my experience to transfer roms directly from your pc, especially as you have a pi3 with wireless. Just go to your file explorer and if you have configured your pi for wireless, just type \\RETROPIE and you will get access to the bios, configs, roms and splashscreens folders. You can now edit configs, drag and drop roms very easily.

beteljuice

Only a few ROM files. I've validated that the ROMs were copied to the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro directory on the SD card. Interestingly, the USB stick was not showing as mounted when I performed a "mount" command. Should it be?

beteljuice

Okay...here's an update:

I've determined that the USB drive is not supposed to be mounted, and that the MAME ROMs are where they need to be on the SD card (as cited previously). I took the extra step of adding GameBoy ROMs to my installation, and the GameBoy selection appeared on the RetroPie home page for me to choose. So, this issue appears to be MAME emulator specific.

So...how does RetroPie determine which MAME emulator should be used? Is there a configuration I can look into to ensure that the emulator I'd like to use (lr-mame2003) is enabled to look for my ROMs?

Thanks!

rbaker

@beteljuice Put your roms in the Arcade Folder. Do you have the correct romset?

beteljuice

ROMs were placed into the "arcade" folder, but still no MAME selection on the RetroPie start page. The ROMs are v.78.

I have also tried using v0.37b5 ROMs that I've validated on another RetroPie installation, to no avail.

rbaker

@beteljuice said in MAME emulator selection not appearing upon startup:

but still no MAME selection on the RetroPie start page

There will be no MAME. There will be ARCADE. You launch games from there.

I have also tried using v0.37b5 ROMs

In what folder? If Arcade, you will need to change the default emulator to MAME4ALL.

Read this:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7247/guide-arcade-games-and-how-to-play-them-a-non-technical-mame-fba-tutorial

beteljuice

No "Arcade" selection available, either. With respect to the v0.37b5 ROMs: I placed them in mame-libretro, but no MAME selection was available.

Let me pose this question: If the ROM was the wrong version, would that keep the "Arcade" (or "MAME" selection) from appearing? Meaning, does RetroPie validate the ROM prior to making the selection available?

Also: Thanks for the link. When I do manage to figure this out, that page will help immensely.

BuZz

You have probably switched "parse gamelists only" on in Emulation Station.

beteljuice

Didn't think of that, BuZz...but I checked that option and it is set to "off".

rbaker

@beteljuice said in MAME emulator selection not appearing upon startup:

With respect to the v0.37b5 ROMs: I placed them in mame-libretro

That folder is reserved for roms from the 0.78 set. See the details here:
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/MAME

For the 0.37b5 roms, you must place them in mame-mame4all folder then choose a libretro or non-libretro emulator.

If no emulators are showing, I would suggest that there are no roms present. Have you typed \\RETROPIE yet into your windows network? Much easier to browse the folders and see if the roms are there and if not drag and drop them.

rbaker

@beteljuice said in MAME emulator selection not appearing upon startup:

If the ROM was the wrong version, would that keep the "Arcade" (or "MAME" selection) from appearing?

I don't think so, as wrong romsets just boot you back to the gamelist.

beteljuice

Here's a screenshot of what's in the arcade folder (using my Mac's Terminal program to connect):

Is that how you would expect to see the directory structure?

rbaker

@beteljuice No, it looks to me like you have unzipped the roms into folders for some reason.

BuZz

@beteljuice you should not be unpacking anything - mame uses zip files

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/MAME

[edit] sorry @rbaker - I will leave it in your hands ;-)

beteljuice

Ah-hah! To get the zipped ROM files into the RPi, I've been saving the files to my USB stick from my Mac, then inserting it into the RPi. I do see what you're pointing out (that the files aren't labeled something similar to "elevator.zip" in the directory, as they should be). Is it possible that the migration process from the USB stick to the RPi is doing an extraction?

I'm going to FileZilla the zipped files directly to that directory, and we'll see what happens.

rbaker

@beteljuice said in MAME emulator selection not appearing upon startup:

Is it possible that the migration process from the USB stick to the RPi is doing an extraction?

I have never heard of that happening.

beteljuice

The ROM files I was downloading to my Mac were showing up as folders. I had to right click on them and select "Compress..." to change them back to .zip files. Once I loaded those .zip files into the mame-libretro folder, all was good with the world.

Thanks so much for your assistance!

beteljuice

By the way, I'm using v0.37b5 ROMs on a v4.1 build of RetroPie (for RPi 1) in the mame-libretro folder in order to address an "insert coin" issue I was having with the select button on my XBox 360 wireless controller. The solution posted here...

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/879/mame-and-coin-up

...is what corrected my problem.