Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone

Folly

I am a bit in the dark as I can't reproduce the problem.
But I have changed some things again.
Could you re-download it, overwrite it and try it out ?

JimmyFromTheBay

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@jimmyfromthebay

I am a bit in the dark as I can't reproduce the problem.
But I have changed some things again.
Could you re-download it, overwrite it and try it out ?

No change :(

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay @rott42

~~On which RPI do you run the script ?~~
~~Do you use the binary or source of mame ?~~

I don't have a solution right now.
But I can reproduce the error on a RPI3.
~~The RPI4 doesn't seem to have a problem.~~

So I tried the script on my old RPI3.
It seems mame complains about having too little virtual memory :

drc_cache: Error allocating virtual memory

Right now it looks like it's an issue of mame ~~and RPI3 combined~~.
Mame can't get enough virtual memory an therefor can't output all the data.

So when you go into another sub-menu it just get's only a part of the database and then produces the error because it doesn't have all the data in the memory.

So it looks like there are no issues with the script.
But if there is no fix then perhaps I should come up with a different database solution for the RPI3.

It seems more alike issues are posted here :
link_to_issue

EDIT ( latest conclusion) :
I backupped mame on the RPI4 and updated the binary from 0.227 to 0.232.
Now I have the problem also on the RPI4.
Basically it's a mame issue, not sure how to deal with this.

Folly

@DTEAM

Do you have this problem too ?

DTEAM

@folly
I didn't update MAME to 0.232.
I'll do It this week and I'll do some tests.

Folly

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@folly
I didn't update MAME to 0.232.
I'll do It this week and I'll do some tests.

Thanks,

Be sure you backup the old version !
Otherwise it's gone.

Folly

@DTEAM @JimmyFromTheBay @rott42

I created add-mamedev-systems-test6_temp.sh to fix the issue with mame temporarily.
It will use a good mame0310 database placed in my repository.

Install instructions are changed in post 1.

Be sure to remove the old version as it will clash !

Let me know if it works for you.

JimmyFromTheBay

@folly All seems to work fine :)

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@folly All seems to work fine :)

Thanks for testing !

Glad we have found the problem.
At first I wasn't really sure what it was.
Nice to know it wasn't an issue in my script in the first place.

Also a nice discovery is that extracting the data from a text file will improve the speed drastically.
For now we don't see that because the data is still downloaded.
I did this for the simplicity, otherwise it get's too complicated now.

But if I can structure it decent then we could place the files on the SD/harddrive and get the data from there, this could be quite an improvement.
We could even filter multiple data files, If we know how to, and use these multiple data files.

rott42

@folly now it works without any errors. Thanks again.

Folly

@rott42 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@folly now it works without any errors. Thanks again.

Super, thanks for testing ;-)

JimmyFromTheBay

Guys, any chance of support for the NEC PC-6000 series with tape loading? Works beautifully straight out of the box with ROM carts, but sadly only about 1% of its games were on cart.

You can boot to the OS and type CLOAD, and a little counter briefly flashes up, but then nothing happens.

I notice in the MESS menu there's a reference in the Devices section to something called "-cashack", but no way to change its settings and I can't find any documentation about it.

dmmarti

@jimmyfromthebay Hm....interesting.

Looking at the MAME -listmedia for the pc6001, it looks like you load cassette files into the "-cart2".

pc6001
cartridge1 (cart1) .bin
cartridge2 (cart2) .cas .p6

Try loading the cassette files using the -cart2 emulator config.

===UPDATE===

I just tried it on my Windows PC MAME 0232 loading a cassette *.cas file using the "-cart2" option.

I just hit <enter> when asked about number of pages.

Then once loaded, I typed "CLOAD <enter>"....saw the counter....then got my prompt back. I typed "RUN <enter>" ... and lo and behold .. the game started!

JimmyFromTheBay

@dmmarti said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@jimmyfromthebay Hm....interesting.

Looking at the MAME -listmedia for the pc6001, it looks like you load cassette files into the "-cart2".

pc6001
cartridge1 (cart1) .bin
cartridge2 (cart2) .cas .p6

Try loading the cassette files using the -cart2 emulator config.

===UPDATE===

I just tried it on my Windows PC MAME 0232 loading a cassette *.cas file using the "-cart2" option.

I just hit <enter> when asked about number of pages.

Then once loaded, I typed "CLOAD <enter>"....saw the counter....then got my prompt back. I typed "RUN <enter>" ... and lo and behold .. the game started!

Ooh, that's excellent info. But something's going wrong at the last step for me :(

I load with the -cart2 option and I get the menu asking me which version of BASIC I want and how many pages. The filename specifies what those should be (it includes "m2p2"), then I type CLOAD and the counter goes nuts but when it's finished, no prompt :(

Will try other tapes, maybe it's just that one.

dmmarti

@jimmyfromthebay Yea, I grabbed a TOSEC cassette game for the game Galaxy.

Here's the filename I used:

Galaxy (19xx)(-)[Mode 1, Page 1]/Galaxy (19xx)(-)[Mode 1, Page 1].cas

I didn't get prompted for which basic to choose, just the number of pages.

It's a sort of Asteroids clone type of game.

JimmyFromTheBay

@dmmarti I just had some luck trying files with the PC-6001 emu rather than the PC-6601. Will keep experimenting. Many thanks for the very useful info :)

JimmyFromTheBay

@jimmyfromthebay Actually, while I've got lots of games running now, they're all going far too fast. Same for you?

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay

You can under-clock the pc6001 in Retroarch using lr-mess, this will slow down the game :

You can even make game specific option files (.opt).
So setting the best options for every game.
This will be loaded once you run that game again.
The opt files are create here : /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/config/<core> .
These are just text files and can be altered manually if nessesary.
Creating a game specific .opt file is done like this :

If you use 'tosec' games, the file names will say what mode and what pages you have to use.
With pages the memory is set.
Here is an example filename :
Break Through (19xx)(Compac)[Mode 2, Page 2].zip
So you do :

You use mode with the pc6001mk2 machine, if you install that.
So with both options (mode and page) it looks like this :

JimmyFromTheBay

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

You can under-clock the pc6001 in Retroarch using lr-mess, this will slow down the game :

Haha - I actually saw that option and then ignored it because it had no negative options :D

Putting it 30 seems to make most things run at the speed of YouTube videos on real hardware, thanks :)

Now can you please tell me there's a way to make savestates work, so that it doesn't take 10 minutes to load Tiny Xevious every time? :D

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay

Use hotkey "space" to speed up the loading in lr-mess !
If a libretro-core supports it (lr-mess does), then press hotkey F2 for save and press hotkey F4 for load.

I think you can also make save-states in the mame menu (use tab).