Monthly Archives: March 2014

Mar 28

Friday Post: Framebuffer Copy and new PiMAME 8 beta release

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Hey All,

Another week another PiMAME release 🙂

This is beta 2 of the new PiMAME 0.8.  I’m loving the feedback.  I know there are bugs and issues, but I’m able to iterate so much faster now.  This latest release includes:

  • Added NES support again.
  • Added C64 support again.
  • Put back in restart, shutdown, and updater tools.
  • Menu will now notify you if there are updates available.
  • PiMAME bootsplash video
  • Tankstick support

High priority features I’m working on:

  • Adding back in screenshot support
  • More joystick configuration options

Framebuffer copy

I’ve started playing with Notro’s FBTFT module again.  This allows you to use little inexpensive LCD screens for things like the console and X Windows.  The problem is that most programs expect output on framebuffer 0.  These screens operate on framebuffer 1, or /dev/fb1.  Tasanakorn has created a program called fbcp.  This mirrors the screen from the hdmi / rca port and onto the SPI based screens you see above.

It doesn’t work 100% yet for me.  I don’t know if its my screen or the program.  I’m going to purchase some more and test them out.

Little Arcade Machine

Steve Smith has created this awesome little MAME cabinet.  Plans and more images are below at the imgur link.

http://imgur.com/a/Pr4rG

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Shea

Mar 21

Friday Post: PiMAME Updater

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Hey All,

New week, new revisions to PiMAME 0.8.

The new version of the frontend now includes:

  • TankStick support.
  • Numpad support.
  • Shutdown, Restart, and Update commands.
  • A notice in the menu when a new update is available.

Please run the following on the command line:

wget -O - http://pimame.org/update.sh | bash

Have a great weekend all!

Mar 21

1 year

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Hey All,

I can’t believe it has been one year already since K and I got married.  A year has flown by.  To my wife, I love you, and too many more wonderful years going on silly adventures.

-Shea

Mar 14

Friday Post: Book Stats

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Hey All,

Happy Friday!  I got an email this morning from Packt giving me the stats for my book sales from October to December of 2013.  I’m happy to report that I have sold over 200 copies.  Thank you all so much!

This weekend I will be doing a last minute presentation of PiMAME with FamiLAB at the Orlando Science Center.  I will then be preparing for PyCon in Montreal, where I will be doing a poster session on how PiMAME was built in Python.  I will also be attending Instructurecon in Utah and speaking about LTIs and how we program and implement them at UCF.   It’s going to be a fun two months of traveling 🙂

I have gotten some great feedback on PiMAME 0.8, and I am going to be working on some fixes this weekend (these are my two low hanging fruit goals to complete):

  • Tankstick / Numpad support
  • Configurable Buttons through config.yaml

Have a good weekend all!

Mar 07

Friday Post: PiMAME 0.8 Update and some stats!

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Hey All!

First of all, HAPPY FRIDAY!  Spring break is over for us at UCF, which means that campus won’t be dead for us full time employees and the food court will finally be reopened.  Little things in life…

It’s been a week since PiMAME 0.8 Beta 1 has been released and there has been great feedback.

Updating PiMAME

A small update is available.  All you need to do is go to the command line and run:

wget -O - http://pimame.org/update.sh | bash

This update includes Commodore 64 support and fixed NES emulation.

PiMAME Stats

In one week, PiMAME 0.8 has been downloaded from SourceForge over 400 times.  My server (which hosts a mirror copy) has transferred 84GB in 5 days.  My usual monthly bandwidth is 30-40GB.

I’m excited about this release.  There are bugs, but they are getting fixed, and this version has a great new foundation to grow on.  Thank you all for the feedback, suggestions, complaints, issues, and support!

-Shea