Tips for Mac users?

[chubsta]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for those of use that use Macs for our computing as most of the advice given in terms of building images/scraping etc seems naturally to revolve around PC/Windows usage.

Just a couple of things i have found out are:

Paragon EXFS https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/ works great and allows you to access the full sd card image, therefore making transfer of roms etc much quicker than over wireless or messing around with sftp. (there are reports of it crashing the Mac so be warned, although i have had no problems personally)

ABetterFinderRename http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/ is a fantastic tool for quickly batch renaming whole folders-worth of files, very flexible and saves ages.
ApplePi-Baker (https://www.tweaking4all.com/software/macosx-software/macosx-apple-pi-baker/) is a great tool for formatting the sd card/writing and backing up images etc.

Another tool that allows usage of Windows programs on the Mac is 'Crossover' (https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac) - it doesn't work with everything but is certainly handy and allows the Diskinternals Linux reader to access the sd card image.

JDownloader2 http://jdownloader.org/jdownloader2 is a very handy program if you need to download anything from Mega, rom etc.

Cyberduck https://cyberduck.en.softonic.com SSH connection and ftp transfer, free and just about the best.

Transmit https://panic.com/transmit/ is another excellent sftp client.

SDFormatter https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ - does what it says and may work when other programs fail.

@caver01 wrote: 'I use SMB network connections exclusively once I have written an image to SD card. My typical process is to burn the image, then edit a couple of details in the boot specific to my system (audio settings, overclock, video etc.). Then I move the SD card to my arcade cabinet, boot, and make almost all other changes via network SMB connections (transfer ROMs, images, configs etc.)'

Filezilla, alternative to cyberduck - https://filezilla-project.org/

iTerm, for terminal replacement - https://www.iterm2.com/

BBEdit, text editor - https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ (no need to buy it just use the free version!!)

NameChanger, for batch editing file names - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21516/namechanger

ECM, allows you to reduce the size of a typical CD image file - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ecm/id490370398?mt=12

MultiPatch, all-in-one file patching and creation too - http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/746/

ClrmamePro-Beta, Validating, Rebuilding, and Filtering Arcade ROMs - https://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=3997.0

etcher https://etcher.io is a great cross platform utility for writing to sd cards/usb etc

iPops - https://ipops.julianxhokaxhiu.com to convert psx ROM files to Eboot.

Running sselph's scraper binary from my Mac was helpful as well.

I downloaded a version of PowerShell for Mac to run a script @Nismo Shared on the forums to add video and marquee tags to gamelists.

Handbrake https://handbrake.fr to convert videos, especially if running the VLC version of ES.

@caver01 wrote "Discovered a useful one last night. . . I typically access my Pi over wifi, but the network I am using for that at the moment is hit or miss. The Pi tends to drop off the wifi and it is very frustrating. It happens to be sitting next to my Mac, so on a whim, I tried plugging an ethernet cable into the Pi and directly into my mac. I am not using a hub and this isn’t even a crossover cable. Anyway, after a few moments, in the Finder, I can now pull down the menu on my mac Connect to Server and put in smb://retropie.local and it connects! I have to pick GUEST for the connection, but it gives me each SMB shared volume. Obviously, transferring ROMs over ethernet is fast, so this is super helpful if you have access to a network cable."

If anyone else can think of Mac-specific programs that are useful when messing with Retropie etc then i would appreciate if they could post the details here, particularly when it comes to scraping etc. It may just save people some time in the future, i spent hours transferring stuff backwards and forwards over sftp and wireless but now can do it in minutes thanks to EXFS so stuff like that should be useful to others hopefully. If i add any tips to the top hopefully it will save searching etc, thanks to anyone one who contributes!

[Capeman]

Cyberduck for SSH connection and ftp transfer, free and just about the best.

I agree with PiBaker, great card backup/writer.

I tried Paragon EXFS but it crashed my mac every time i tried to use it, so i got a refund.

[caver01]

@chubsta I use SMB network connections exclusively once I have written an image to SD card. My typical process is to burn the image, then edit a couple of details in the boot specific to my system (audio settings, overclock, video etc.). Then I move the SD card to my arcade cabinet, boot, and make almost all other changes via network SMB connections (transfer ROMs, images, configs etc.)

[chubsta]

Cheers, guys, that is the sort of info i am after, even if it is only that someone has tried a method that works for me and didn't work for them such as Paragon EXFS. I will try to update the first post if more stuff comes in...

[InsecureSpike]

Filezilla, ive found much better than cyberduck - https://filezilla-project.org/

iTerm, for terminal replacement - https://www.iterm2.com/

BBEdit, text editor - https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ (no need to buy it just use the free version!!)

NameChanger, for batch editing file names - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21516/namechanger

ECM, allows you to reduce the size of a typical CD image file - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ecm/id490370398?mt=12

MultiPatch, all-in-one file patching and creation too - http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/746/

ClrmamePro-Beta, Validating, Rebuilding, and Filtering Arcade ROMs - https://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=3997.0

totally agree with ApplePi-Baker too!

[caver01]

Alternative to BBEdit, TextWrangler is good.

[InsecureSpike]

@caver01
yeah, but its not being developed anymore, they're soley supporting BBEdit now, and the free version of BBEdit is gnna be a better version of TrxtWrangler

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

[AlexMurphy]

etcher is a great cross platform utility. I know I always mention this, but only because it's good, simple and it works.

[pjft]

There's a PSX-iPOPS app (I need to double check the name) to convert psx ROM files to Eboot.

Running sselph's scraper binary from my Mac was helpful as well.

I downloaded a version of PowerShell for Mac to run a script @Nismo Shared on the forums to add video and marquee tags to gamelists.

Handbrake to convert videos, especially if running the VLC version of ES.

[caver01]

@InsecureSpike said in Tips for Mac users?:

@caver01
yeah, but its not being developed anymore, they're soley supporting BBEdit now, and the free version of BBEdit is gnna be a better version of TrxtWrangler

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

Hey, good to know. Thanks!

[chubsta]

Great stuff - i will add to the original post as it goes along and will try to tidy it all up later when i get a chance, certainly some interesting stuff for me to look at though!

[Capeman]

@caver01 said in Tips for Mac users?:

Alternative to BBEdit, TextWrangler is good.

I love text wrangler, the same company makes BBedit, but they recently announced they are discontinuing updates for textwrangler to focus more on BBedit. Lame.

[dankcushions]

sublime text is a good text editor: www.sublimetext.com

xcode, which comes with OSX, is a decent IDE for C/C++, if you want to do any coding.

i use filezilla also. samba is ok but often very slow, and i've had it just give up during bulk transfers on several occasions :(

[caver01]

@Capeman said in Tips for Mac users?:

@caver01 said in Tips for Mac users?:

Alternative to BBEdit, TextWrangler is good.

I love text wrangler, the same company makes BBedit, but they recently announced they are discontinuing updates for textwrangler to focus more on BBedit. Lame.

Wait, what? No more TextWrangler? Ha ha. Just kidding. Yeah, @InsecureSpike mentioned that above. I followed his link to read about the differences etc. I always knew they were developed by the same company, so streamlining their product line is certainly convenient. Looks like the free BBEdit has just as many features (more) and it looks and works the same. So, I already downloaded it and I am happy!

[saiyan7702]

@caver01 i dont mean to hijack the thread but i have no idea how to message people on here i dont think you can. so heres my problem, caver i need youre help, i saw in a preivous post that you had an ipac 4 setup and i have the same buttons as you but i can figure out how to put the code into the cfg files for the emulators can you maybe email me youre config files or help me get them running thank you. email is Jryder528@aim.com

[caver01]

@saiyan7702 You are right. The forum does not have private messaging. In a way, this allows any knowledge posted to be shared and searchable. It also discourages "secrets", as everything is out in the open so no chance of violating the terms of use.

Ok, so what you really want is the combination of configs, from my IPAC switch key mapping to the relevant retroarch.cfg files to make emulators work the way I want them to. You can get all of that from this post.

Note that this combination basically gets me into a working config for 4-player arcade, two-player consoles, FBA per-rom configs for NeoGeo and a different FBA per-rom config for fighter games. For MAME, it is a good start, but I am almost always making some adjustment in the MAME GUI (TAB) to support my odd, three-panel cocktail design. This often includes re-mapping player 1 and 2 for vertical games. None of that adjustment is covered in the retroarch configs. It's all game-by-game using the MAME GUI.

I have another per-rom retroarch.cfg that I use for arcade games where I want to setup a single-joystick "tankstick" (Vidicators, Sarge) This config basically maps all of the Player 1 and 2 inputs to "nul" so I don't get the double inputs that prevent <CODE_NOT> mapping. This may be more complicated than you care to know, but you can easily search for posts by me with "<CODE_NOT>" and get all of the gory details.

Finally, none of this applies to AdvanceMAME besides the IPAC keys. They are basically MAME defaults, but my hardware build requires plenty of in-game remapping which gets saved in the .rc file for AdvanceMAME.

[saiyan7702]

i must be editing the wrong area of the cfg file, can you send me youre cfg files so i can see what youre doing in there and i can edit them accordingly? email is jryder528@aim.com

[caver01]

@saiyan7702 you aren't using smart quotes in your cfg files are you? That will fail.

[caver01]

@saiyan7702 I already gave you the configurations from my files in that post I linked. Why don't you share yours and we can all help you.

[tulpan]

I suggest to try KrojamSoft BatchRename