No, there is no metadata stored in the actual ROM zip, it's just a compressed file containing one or more files of binary ROM data.

That binary data might be a valid parent ROM, a valid split child ROM, a valid non-merged child, a picture of your cat, or random garbage.

The only way to check the contents of the zip against known ROM contents is to checksum the contents and compare them to known checksums. Those checksums are what a DAT file contains.

thx for the help, finally got it compiled, but it mostly just crashes back to retroarch 10 seconds into startup on the games I wanted it for. ahh, well, that's why it's called experimental.

@silence0101 said in Does anyone have or know a MAME download of 10 or roms?:

i find downloading all these roms one at a time can be super tedious so if anyone has a download that has 20 in one or something that would be great thanks!

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

@silence0101 said in Does anyone have or know a MAME download of 10 or roms?:

if anyone has a download that has 20 in one or something that would be great thanks!

FORUM RULES ALSO ON POSTING IN REGARDS TO ROMS/GAME IMAGES:

Due to the nature/complexity of Copyright/Intellectual Property Rights Law, which differs significantly from Country to Country, before posting on the Forum regarding Emulation please read the following rules. BIOS/ROMS/Game Images are prolifically available on the Internet (a quick search in your favourite Web Browser should suffice), however, to protect The RetroPie Project from possible legal action by the Copyright Owners please DO NOT ask for roms, post links or ask where they can be downloaded.

@nickuspga this powerblock might be of interest to you. Then if it is an arcade button you are trying to use, find one that is not a momentary pushbutton

Update

Yesterday I went ahead and FTP'ed the retroarch.cfg to this folder on the SD card:

\retropie\configs\from_retropie\configs\all\retroarch.cfg
-- Note to be honest I am at work and not in front of the RPi3 so I am guessing that was the path to the file.

I rebooted the Rpi3 and went down to the game-room to see what the controls now did. Well they worked! They all did something and that was great. No they are not all correctly mapped to the MAME/iPAC2's default settings. One example of an issue is that in MAME to exit MAME you traditionally do a P1 & P2. On this current button configuration I have to do a P2&P1. This will need to be changed in the config.

I also noticed that Player 1's buttons correspond to getting into and out of menus. I will need to disable those menus and the white dialog config box in the end.

Otherwise MAME setup is looking good!

One question is this can I create a retroarch.cfg file for just the MAME versions I am using and let the original mapping work for all other consoles? What I eventually want to do is to have matching USB joysticks on a hook on either side of the cab in case I want to hit some SMB3 or old school SNES game.

Thank you,
Battlecat

@mitu No, that's also still the regular version. Those are floating around plenty. I also managed to find this one, but that's cheating imo, as it's not the actual game logo...

batsugunsp.png

EDIT:
I managed this with an automated online vectorizer (I know nothing of this process). Not great, but at least it's something.

batsugunsp-logo4.png

If you delete the joystick cfg files, it would probably recreate them after you go into the RetroPie menu and configure inputs again.

After that, get to the terminal (press Esc on your keyboard), then type the following commands,

cd /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/ ls

There should only be a couple of files in there, look for something with logitech or rumblepad in the name and:

sudo nano YourFileNameHere.cfg

Look for these lines:

input_enable_hotkey_btn input_exit_emulator_btn

If you don't have those lines, add them somewhere towards the bottom.

Mine is listed as:

input_enable_hotkey_btn = "6" input_exit_emulator_btn = "7"

This means, my enable hotkey button (tells the Pi you're going to issue a command that isn't related to the game itself) is the "Select" key (or better yet the "Back" key because I'm using a Logitech F710)

And the command button is the "Start" key. Now I can hold down "Back" and press "Start" to get back to the main menu.

This page should be a little more descriptive if you need a hand: RetroPie Wiki -> Logitech controllers

@pjft It's more a pain I can't roll back easy. I going to have to do a fresh 4.3 install. But I agree, shit ain't broke so should have stayed with it :)

@dankcushions said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

i also got mouse/trackball support working :)

WOOT WOOT!

@UDb23 Thanks, I will try one of those

@jkristof

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

@aaaccc1

Remapping the core controls will not affect the the main control configs at all. Rather, it will create a new .rmp file that will be automatically loaded everytime the core is loaded. Should you ever decide to switch back, you could just return the core remapping to it's original state by changing the controls back and saving the core remapping again, or if you don't happen to remember what they, you can always just delete the remapping file altogether. At that point, RetroArch would have no remapping file to load, leaving the original control scheme in tact.