PiPlay (PiMAME)


PiPlay Forums

Download PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 9 Here! (Mirror 1)

Download PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 8 Here! 

Download PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 7 Here! 

Download PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 6 Here! 

Download PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 5 Here! 

Download PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 4 Here! (Second Mirror and Berry Boot Image)

Download PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 3 Here!

Download PiMAME 0.8.0 Beta 1 Here! (Second Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.7.10 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.7.9 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.7.8 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.7.7 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.7.6 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.7.5 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.7 Beta1 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.6 Beta5 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.6 Beta4 Here (Main Mirror) (Mirror 2)

Download PiMAME 0.6 Beta3 Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.6 Beta2 Here (Main Mirror) (Mirror 2)

Download PiMAME 0.6 Beta Here (Main Mirror)

Download PiMAME 0.5 Beta Here (Main Mirror) (Mirror 2)

Download PiMAME 0.4 Here (Main Mirror) (Mirror 2)

Download PiMAME 0.3 Here (Main Mirror) (Mirror 2)

This is a fully configured Raspberry Pi image that auto boots into AdvanceMENU and runs your MAME games for you.  It includes a copy of a Free MAME ROM so you can see it working right from the start. SSH is already enabled, memory split is setup, and everything is updated.

Once you have it flashed to your SD Card, I recommend running “sudo raspi-config” and expanding the file system, otherwise you will only have a few megs of space left to use.

Updates:

  • 0.8.0 Beta 9
    • Numerous bug fixes!
    • Updated to latest Raspbian (2-2015)
    • SQLite Backend
    • Webserver now a background process via supervisor
    • File Watcher automatically scans for game files and updates the PiPLAY menu
    • Raspberry Pi 2 comparability
    • Controller config updated
    • Moved more repos to GitHub
    • Master games list updated
    • Toggle menu item visibility (in beta mode still)
  • 0.8.0 Beta 8
    • Latest Raspbian (1-2015)
    • Pi2 Support
    • Removed Stella (temporarily)
    • Switch to SQLite for config files
    • Speedups
    • 8GB card required
    • New themes.
  • 0.8.0 Beta 7
    • Added changelog popup
    • Themes now support background music (uncompressed preferred)
    • Fixed problems with semi-transparent labels
    • 2 player controller config support added
    • Controller Config list sorted
    • Now using gunicorn for web frontend.
  •  0.8.0 Beta 6
    • modified romlist layout to include area for game descriptions
    • added 2 player controller config support
    • added “button combo” support for PiPlay Menu actions
    • optimization, screen updates only happen on controlled events
    • removed horizontal romlist option in theme support
    • Wifi Config built in
  • 0.8.0 Beta 5
    • Speed optimizations to the menu.  Loads much faster
    • Fixes a memory leak
    • Controller setup is now part of the popup menu
      • Press tab or button 3 to access it.
  • 0.8.0 Beta 4
    • Theme Support
    • DISPMANX
    • Cave Story reimplemented
    • Joystick Support
    • Latest version of Raspbian with Xin-Mo support
    • ZX Spectrum, Sega Master System, Neo Geo Pocket Color, Turbo Grafx 16, and Game Gear emulation have been added.
    • Tips & Tricks
      • MAME is not installed by default.  There is a tool in the menu to install MAME.
      • Press the K + S button on your keyboard at the same time for a listing of all backers.
      • To setup your controllers, keyboards, and joysticks, use the Controller Setup app.
      • Press tab (or the 2nd button on your joystick) to bring up the settings popup menu.
      • There are multiple themes available from the settings popup menu.
      • If you access the IP address of your Raspberry Pi from another computer, you will have see the Web Frontend which allows you to upload games files and manage your Pi.
    • Known Issues
      • Menu Speed – i know it can sometimes feel slow or sluggish.  We are working hard to optimize it.
      • Dual Shock Support – Limited dual shock support.  I had numerous issues with finicky controllers.  I am hoping to put official dual shock support in the next release.
  • 0.8.0 Beta 3
    • Recompiled kernel with Xin-Mo encoder support.
    • Better GBA support.
    • Better Neo Geo support.
    • Fixed issues with Genesis and Final Burn Alpha emulators not running.
    • Genesis emulator can now use Zip files.
    • Updated PiPlay to have a better updater system.
    • 2 player keyboard support in SNES emulator.
  • 0.8.0 Beta 1
    • New Menu System
    • Upgrade to latest version of Raspbian
  • 0.7.10
    • SD Card Image includes Xin-Mo kernel module driver and bootsplash video.
    • SD Card Image and Update Script now include mupen64plus-rpi.
      • Alpha version of Nintendo 64 emulator.
  • 0.7.9
    • Now includes DGen
      • Genesis emulation
    • Update script now will not overwrite most config files.
  • 0.7.8
    • Updated version of Final Burn Alpha
      • Supports 2 players
    • NES support through AdvMESS
  • 0.7.7
    • Latest version of Raspbian (7/26/2013)
    • Final Burn Alpha
      • CPS 1, CPS 2, NeoGeo, Cave, Sega System 16 emulation
    • VICE
      • Commodore 64 emulation
    • xboxdrv installed and set to run at startup
    • Changes to getip.sh which now show wifi addresses.
  • 0.7.6
    • GPSP (Gameboy Advance) added.
    • Gearboy (Gameboy & Gameboy Color) added.
    • ScummVM added.
  • 0.7.5
    • Cavestory Added.
    • Stella (Atari 2600) Added.
  • 0.7 Beta1
    • MAME4All Added.
    • SNES9x Added.
  • 0.6 Beta5
    • PCSX_ReARMed PlayStation emulator added.
    • Fixed speed issue in AdvMENU
  • 0.6 Beta4
    • GNGeo Neo Geo Emulator Added.
    • Raspbian upgraded and updated.
    • 4GB or larger SD Card required
  • 0.6
    • Support for the XArcade Tankstick.
    • New menu at start to choose options before launching emulation.
    • PIP (the Pi IP service) is available to install (but off by default).
    • New admin options in the web frontend to Reboot and Shutdown your Pi.
    • Smaller image should now install on most 2GB cards (with some room to spare).
  • 0.4
    • PiMAME is now built around the 2012-12-16 version of Raspbian.
    • AdvanceMAME 1.2 and AdvanceMENU 2.6 are installed.
    • PulseAudio has been removed.
    • Snapshots of supported games are loaded and will appear in AdvanceMENU.
    • The ROM uploader file size limit has been increased from 2MB to 200MB.
  • 0.3
    • AdvMENU theme with IP address in the background
    • Web Front-End which enables uploading of ROMs from your computer to the Raspberry Pi
    • Sound Fixes Built-In
  • 0.2
    • Your game files should go in the /home/pi/roms/ directory.
    • If you want AdvanceMENU to not start at bootup edit .profile and remove advmenu from the bottom of the script.
    • The username and password are the default Raspbian ones.  User: pi Password: raspberry

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

Sound Fixes Here

 

331 thoughts on “PiPlay (PiMAME)”

  1. Downloading! I’ve been working on this in parallel and have everything working with an Arch build except for getting the GPIO to play nicely… hope this works out! I might owe you a christmas present.

    Reply ↓

  2. Hey this is great! I look forward to getting piMAME running over Christmas holidays.
    Any differences in the build for Model B with 512KB ram?

    ps – (rapidshare mirror 1 says you exceeded your public download limnt)

    Reply ↓

    • Don’t have any experience with PIMAME, but years and years of experience with MAME. I built arcades for s hobby/business. so answering from a MS Windows vantage, I’ll tell you no version of MAME natively supports any joystick.
      Typically they will work for a while and then fall off. MAME was designed to run from keyboard, so those of us in the “biz” use keyboard encoders mapped to a joystick or joy encoder. For windows there are a few software pieces that’ll do it, but they are finicky. You’d be best to use a keyboard encoder (or hack an old keyboard) and map the joy controls to letters, unless you want your arcade to fail in the middle of game night.

      Reply ↓

      • Yes, that is exactly what is puzzling me. The old PiMame just works for a standard Mame keyboard encoder, with PiPlay and RetroPi I have to setup console controllers. WTF? I just want to play arcade games, and an occasional console game, in which case a not 100% complete MAME keyboard map suffices.

        Reply ↓

    • Yes its simple. I use a USB to PS1 converter and then a PS1 Control and its works great. However the buttons are mixed up from normal PS1 controls. If your a seasoned PS player then your going to need to try to forget the button layout. Configurable of course but still. Good luck.

      Reply ↓

  4. I Currently ‘working’ on my own station emulation but I’ll try it with great pleasure.
    Good ideas are always good to take and I’m sure I’ll find some in this release.
    Thank you again for the work done and future.
    I hope that the end of the Year will be an opportunity to rest and not too ‘working’ on the Pi 🙂
    (just kidding)

    Reply ↓

  5. This is awesome. I got my first few games running! I figure since SD cards are cheap and I don’t want to take out a keyboard every time (I’m using an NES USB controller) I should try and put a specific game on each card and have “advmame [game]” run on boot. Any ideas 1) how to get advmenu to stop from starting, 2) bypass the login screen on boot (automatically login to a passwordless user?), and 3) get a command to run on login (I guess this could be done in .bashrc)?

    Reply ↓

  6. trying to add new roms. do I put them in /pi/roms/ or in .advmame/roms

    what version of mame are you running.

    Ps… thanks for the all your work and for sharing. Awesome!

    Reply ↓

  9. Hello and thank you for your work on this! Just a quick question… I’m probably doing something stupid but when I add rom files (in .zip format) to the /home/pi/roms/ directory, they don’t show up in advmenu. I viewed the tail of the ~/.advance/advmenu.rc file and saw the gridlee rom specifically identified there, so tried to add my files there as well, but it kept saying it’s ignoring them. Is there some scrubbing/re-scanning method I need to perform after adding them into the /home/pi/roms/ folder?

    Thanks,
    Jake

    Reply ↓

  12. Hi Shea, CodenameV again , PIMame is awesome already after everybody gets through with testing and reporting any bugs this is going to be a perfect addition to my PI sdcard collection :).
    For people who what a more out of the box solution , I wondered if any of the roms from http://mamedev.org/roms/ could be added with the appropriate permission of course ??? just an idea
    All the best

    CodenameV

    Reply ↓

  13. Just received 3 RPi’s. got wheezy distro running first time. Downloaded pimame and tried several different SD cards but it just doesn’t boot!

    This is the newest B board with 512 KB.

    I picked up an old atari arcade cabinate and I was hoping to get mame running so that I could give it to my son as a Xmas gift!

    Reply ↓

      • I was using OS X but for some reason it doesn’t work (the standard wheezy loads onto the card fine). Anyway, I tried using my windows machine and it worked first time!
        Thanks for all your hard work, I picked up an old Atari cab and a used xarcade dual joystick and we have been enjoying the classics all through the holidays.

        Is here any way to rotate the display so that I can use a widescreen tv on its side? I tried editing the config.txt file but this only rotated and produced a large letter box effect.

        Thanks

        Ady

        Reply ↓

        • This happen to me to, but then i saw that i used wrong dd command. thought it might help someone 🙂

          [code]
          sudo dd if=pimame-0.3.img of=/dev/disk1s1
          3935232+0 records in
          3935232+0 records out
          2014838784 bytes transferred in 2015.592212 secs (999626 bytes/sec)
          [/code]
          here i used disk1s1, and thats just wrong.

          should be:
          [code]sudo dd if=pimame-0.3.img of=/dev/disk1
          3935232+0 records in
          3935232+0 records out
          2014838784 bytes transferred in 3010.930598 secs (669175 bytes/sec)[/code]
          then it booted.

          /MR

          Reply ↓

        • Using 0.5 beta… has anyone found a way to rotate the screen (via the /boot/config.txt setting) and have AdvMenu use the entire screen (instead of just the middle portion / letterbox effect)?

          Everything about PiMame is better than RetroPie IMO, except for the rotation of the menu. With a 4:3 monitor (HDMI -> DVI) installed sideways in the cab, I’d like to be able to read the console text without wrenching my neck 🙂

          Reply ↓

  14. Shea,

    I put the image on an SD card, and then booted my Pi. AdvancedMenu works fine; however, once I run a ROM my keyboard no longer functions. If I exit out of AdvanceMenu after boot, and StartX my keyboard and mouse both function.

    Any thoughts?

    Reply ↓

  15. Hey man, This is incredible and great!
    By the way only one question… anybody have a list of supported roms?. People said ..”it is so slow (the game) or “not working propertly… or the Rom xxx dont have sound (perhaps it´s only the version). I want try it (of course, when i buy one Raspberry), but i dont want spent money yet. I was thinking that Raspberry dont have so much procesor to “move” heavy roms…
    It´s only a reflexión.. I dont have so much idea. Anyway it´s incredible for me. And congratulations, it´s a great work.
    Xavi

    Reply ↓

    • Hola Xavier com va això?

      First of all thank you very much Shea. this is just what i was looking for. Good job.

      The problem si not all the roms are running perfectly well. Only the old ones can run at full speed (asteroids, tetris, contra, 1942,…) others like Street figter II, Xmen, Outrun, runs slow. Maybe the RPi is not the most appropriate computer for make an arcade machine. But anyway ,is fun to play with it.

      Reply ↓

  16. i just found that if i change : device_mouse to auto and device_joystick to auto, i can use them right away.
    Make the change by modifying the advmenu.rc in the .advance menu.

    Reply ↓

  17. G’day, I’m fairly new at all this but I have some experience. I was wondering if there is a means to change whether the screen is displayed as portrait or landscape in the video menu. I have, as of yet, been unable to figure it out at that level. thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

    Reply ↓

    • You can rotate the screen on pi with:
      $ sudo nano /boot/config.txt

      display_rotate=0 Normal
      display_rotate=1 90 degrees
      display_rotate=2 180 degrees
      display_rotate=3 270 degrees

      ctrl-X to save.

      $ sudo reboot
      /Henrik

      Reply ↓

        • mayoneez – The games are all in a 4:3 aspect ratio (rectangular, but very close to being square). Your LCD is most likely 16:9 (widescreen, a wide rectangle and nowhere near square). Without stretching the image out, stretching everything on screen taller, it’s not going to take up the entire screen.

          Reply ↓

        • mayoneez – Sorry. It just occured to me that you might mean that the image does not expand out to the sides. If so, my apologies. You can hit tab and change each game’s virtual resolution, but it won’t help with many (most?) games.

          Reply ↓

      • Hi,

        I tried display_rotate=3, but found that the frame rate dropped from 60/60 to 15/60!! If I have display_rotate=0 and in the mame.cfg have rol=yes, then everything runs at 60/60 and is vertical. The only problem is that PiMenu and PiPlay are all Horizontal. Has anyone else had this problem/have a solution please?

        Thanks,
        TT

        Reply ↓

    • This worked for me. Edit file /home/pi/.advance/advmame.rc and add this line to the end of it:

      vertical/display_rol yes

      This rotates the screen for “vertical” games. You can also use “display_ror” to rotate to the other direction.

      Reply ↓

  18. Is anyone else experiencing extremely slow downloads or complete failure downloads of the newest version of Pimame? Other things seem to currently be downloading fine on my computer except for this. Thanks for all the work by the way!

    Reply ↓

  19. this is an awesome build, for my pi-cade I disabled sound completely in advancemenu by setting the sound output to none.
    What are you for the setup for the pi web interface? I’m assuming is was some variation of Apache, and a webpage. I really don’t want to redo my whole build, but I’d like to add the webpage uploader. I don’t suppose you could post the HTML doc\config you used to make the uploader?

    Reply ↓

  20. Hi.
    is there any list of roms that work? i tried a couple (MSlug 1-X) but none of them are recognized by the advmenu.

    anyone has some links?

    thanks.

    ciao

    Reply ↓

    • I had this issue too.
      1. Start the game
      2. Press [TAB] to open options.
      3. Select ‘VIDEO’ and alter ‘COLOURS’ with the left/right arrow keys.
      Can’t remember which but one of the options sorted this out for me.

      Hope it helps.

      Reply ↓

      • hdmi, sound worked on one boot but was very choppy(but so was gameplay so prob not best rom) rebooted pi no sound(on the boot i had sound the free rom worked fine the other i tested wasnt full speed so expected choppy sound)

        Reply ↓

        • I have not been able to get HDMI sound to work on my raspberry pi, but I put this in my .bashrc file to send sound output to the stereo jack

          amixer cset numid=3 1

          Reply ↓

  23. It would be nice to have a build where all packages that aren’t really needed, would be left out. Then the image could be so small that it could fit in a 256MB card. Everybody has that kind of old small cards that are left to drawers because these days they are too small for cameras etc. It would give those cards a new life. And of course reduce need of bandwidth on the download site!

    Reply ↓

    • Attempted to download this 3 times today, all attempts ended in corrupt files. Go for a 4th or is there another download method I can try?

      Reply ↓

  25. Hey Shea,

    I have a quick question what build of AdvanceMame are you using? I’m finding it hard to get compatible roms, I think I’m using the wrong ones. The AdvanceMame version information I think could help. Also was thinking if i post your Pimame build in a torrent, I run a unraid server that never sleeps. Just an idea.

    Thanks again for all your efforts
    Edward

    Reply ↓

  27. Pingback: Less Radiation » Raspberry Pi MAME Arcade Emulator SD Card Image Released

  28. I’m really interested in what you’ve done although much to my annoyance as a while ago I spent ages getting a similar (although inferior) set up on my raspberry pi. In order to improve mine (as I don’t want to abandon all of my work), could you tell me how to add the IP address to AdvMenu.
    Thanks

    Natu

    Reply ↓

  29. Hey Shea,
    I’m loving pimame. Every time I show a friend their mind is blown.

    Anyway, I had a question: was wondering if something like Xarcade’s tankstick would be a simple plug and play affair when using pimame.

    If so I was planning on getting one and trying to mount the pi inside the controller casing to use as a semi-portable arcade cabinet.

    Also a pipe dream is to include a pico-projector in the controller so all you need is power and a wall.

    link for reference
    http://www.xgaming.com/store/arcade-joysticks-and-game-controllers/product/x-arcade-tankstick-includes-usb-cables/

    Reply ↓

    • Hey Ryan,

      I’ve spent the better part of today trying to get the tankstick to work. So far, I have only had partial success, and by that I mean I used the trackball in that demo game.

      I ran into a problem with numlock not being on for the tankstick, so I had to do some tty hack to enable it during bootup. Now the stick seems to be throwing all the codes mame expects, but it still does not work. In the menu it does, but once it’s into a game…

      I may try another rom to see… maybe that is the problem.

      Anyway if you go this route, let me know if you get it working and HOW

      Thanks!

      Reply ↓

    • Hey! i’m also trying to make work X-Arcade Tankstick! i think that if it is working as a Keyboard there is no problem to use. But i’ve not tested yet!

      Now im’ installing PiMame 0.4 and i’ll check it! 😀

      I didn’t think about the idea of pico-projector, but,,, is a really good idea!! 😀

      Reply ↓

  30. Is there a complete guide for idiots to this because I’m going wrong somewhere. I’ve written the latest 0.3 image to the SD card, no issues. I’ve booted the Pi and loaded the free demo game. It plays fine, but I have no sound at all through HDMI or otherwise. Is there something I’m missing?

    I even loaded up the advmenu.rc to check the sound fix solution was in place and that’s fine too.

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply ↓

    • well I don’t know about a guide for idiots, but I know a guide for dummies!
      just search raspberry pi for dummies that book is great for telling you all about the raspberry and how it works. it worked for me so it can work for you and P.S this is not a another one of those people trying to sell you stuff on the internet. happy building and I hope this helps 🙂

      Reply ↓

  31. sudo nano /home/pi/.advance/advmame.rc
    Then change input_joystick none to input_joystick auto
    Then the rest of the input_* to something suitable depending on what buttons you wanted to do what.

    Reply ↓

    • I got my Tank Stick working by changing the joystick and mouse settings to auto in the advmenu.rc and the advmame.rc. files in the .advance directory in the pi user’s home directory. This got the mouse (trackball and two side “mouse” buttons working) and the joystick working but only while I didn’t have a USB keyboard plugged in (using a powered USB hub). Then I needed to map some keys. I’ve tried to explain here: http://garan.org/blog/tankstick-pimame

      Reply ↓

      • Great work!

        I do not own one of these yet but I’ve been strongly considering it. Do you know if there is enough space inside the controller housing to mount the Pi inside? I think having that with a pico projecoter, either built in or dongled would be a pretty cool piece of kit.

        Reply ↓

  32. So I’ve downloaded file archive and made and seeded a torrent of it.

    Here’s the torrent file (MD5: 819bf487f5ae849f65dd5f1599bca7c5), hosted on Google Drive: http://goo.gl/QHdOZ or BayfFiles: http://bayfiles.com/file/zkuP/NQ6Tip/pimame-0.3.img.torrent

    Here’s a magnet link
    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:cc4367ba7bb3cc478187166fa7b7d003724ec3f7&dn=pimame-0.3.img.zip

    I have a fairly good US server tracking this file right now and will leave it running for the foreseeable future.

    Reply ↓

  33. I don’t know if the card image is completely filled, but in case it isn’t if you can provide a smaller image to fit 2Gb cards I will be very grateful.
    I have tried to wirte it in windows and the diskwriter complaints becouse the image has 3935232 sectors while my card only has 3932160 sectors.

    I have tried to find how to resize the card image and it seems that is not easy to do that, and every tutorial just tell you how to expand and not shrink.

    Anyway thank you for the great work I am looking forward to see what great things can do this small computer.

    Reply ↓

    • Same here, was trying to put it on a 2gb card to test and it’s ever so slightly too large. Would love a sub-2gb version.

      who am I kidding, I’ll pick up a larger card tomorrow – just wanted to play tonight 🙂

      Reply ↓

  34. Hi, great work on all this.
    To get my usb stick to work properly i need to use the xboxdrv driver. This needs to be ran as su.
    If i sudo the advmenu command in the .profile, it no longer works. is it easy to get advmenu and advmame to run under a sudo command ?
    Cheers.

    Reply ↓

    • I didn’t need to run xboxdrv as sudo when I tried it. Other than that, advmame and advmenu will work under sudo, but all configs and things will now be under /root/.advance/

      Reply ↓

      • Thanks for taking the time to reply. I got it working although my xboxdrv will still only talk to my usb device under sudo.
        For info, the mistake i made was, thinking because you had a working setup under user pi, i copied the .rc config files over into /root/.advance. This didn’t work. I deleted the copies and let advmame and advmenu create their own config files when first ran under user root and everything is now fine.

        Reply ↓

        • Im trying to get a xbox 360 (wired usb) to work. I Installed xboxdrv but it does not work.

          Could you give me some directions on how to get this to work? I must say im very new to using the raspberry. Im try to config the raspberry through ssh, but i’m not able to find the .rc config files and root/.advance or the .profile.

          Is there an easy way to get a visual of the whole map structure inside the pi?

          Reply ↓

  35. Hi Shea,
    Happy 2013 to you!! Thanks for some awesome work to date. I’m an old dog learning many new tricks thanks to the Pi and your blog. Cheers!
    I’m hoping to setup PiMame so that I’ll have a fully Joystick controlled standalone arcade machine. 🙂 ie no keyboard needed.
    I had a slight brain fart the other day and thougt if my Pi autoboots into AdvMenu It would be great if it shutdown the Pi on exit of AdvMenu as well….
    So I added the line ‘sudo shutdown -h 0’ at the end of my .profile file. Which works perfectly on exit of AdvMenu….. BUT of course now I can’t find a way to get back to a shell prompt to do any editing.

    Is there a key press that will stop the .profile file being executed ???

    I have not networked the Pi atm.
    Thank you again for sharing thru this awesome blog!
    Cheers Sam

    Reply ↓

  36. Thanks for this great mame build!!. Im new to Linix based OS and the like so am a complete idiot when it comes to the Pi. I have downloaded the PiMAME 0.3 image and loaded it to my SD card with ‘Win32DiskImager’ it loads into AdvMAME menu fine with the free rom game which plays great. But can someone please give me a step by step guide on how to add more rom files please as i dont have a clue, i have read about getting access to the web front end just type the IP address that is displayed in AdvMENU into your web browser, but i dont see and ip address on the AdvMAME menu screen or even how to put the IP address in, if someone could please explain in idiot terms that would be great.

    Reply ↓

    • Hey Karl, I’m fairly new too. If you’d like to see some roms in action I suggest going here: http://mamedev.org/roms/ thank codenamev. I’ve personally had success with these. so once you’ve downloaded a rom, move it to home/pi/roms then reboot your pi. should be right there in the menu now. as for other games, like nes or snes, im still trying to figure out if it can.

      Reply ↓

      • Also if you esc out of the Advmenu you’ll see just a few lines up “my ip is….” once you have that you can type that into your browser and go.

        Reply ↓

  37. Im having fun looking through this and have all intentions on working on this project.

    The plan is:
    PiMame
    ipac
    real arcade controllers
    lcd
    table top game(s)

    ideally I would like to do mini replica cabinets of street fighter II and Mortal Kombat that would directly boot to the rom

    and then a generic mame mini cab

    I will be in touch for help 😉

    Reply ↓

  38. Pingback: AdvanceMame per Rapsberry PI | the Retrogames Machine

  40. Was running 0.3. Installed .04 and it runs slower with same settings (overclocked or not) with same games.

    Tried different SDcard just in case with same results. Reverted back to 0.3 and performance back to normal

    Not sure what to check.

    Reply ↓

      • I think I found the problem. When I chose my overclock it didn’t change in the config file.

        When I did the sudo nono /boo/config or whatever it is, it was overvolted, but the core clock was still at 500 instead of 1000

        I’m a newb so many you should check yourself to be sure.

        Reply ↓

        • With me overclocking settings are fine. Same games (hardly intensive one like for e.g. ‘Galaga’) slow on 0.4. Only tried a few and they all seem sluggish compared to 0.3. Which one for you guys works fine on 0.4 so I may test? All mine seem slower.

          Reply ↓

    • Yes, I noticed that too. Was running 0.3 earlier and performance was quite decent (without overclocking). I just installed 0.4 on the same SD card and even the simplest ROMs are now running unplayably slow. Is there something that can be configured differently?
      BTW: Thank you so much for all the effort you are putting into this, Shea!!

      Reply ↓

  43. Hi.

    Can you make .deb of advance mame 1.2. I would like install it to my xbian setup. Older version advancemame-raspberrypi_1-1_armhf.deb worked fine with my xbian install.

    Thanks
    -spirit

    Reply ↓

  44. You should consider adding renice to the advmame task, having slightly higher priority seems to boost the framerate a little. I’ve tried it on -19, as high as critical system processes, YMMV.

    Reply ↓

    • You will need a program like this:
      http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

      once that is installed and running you enter the pi’s IP address, User:pi, and Password:raspberry.

      Then navigate to /home/pi/roms and drop the zips into here.

      to get the raspberry pi’s IP it is watermarked at the bottom of the advanceMENU.

      Reply ↓

    • You can also use a bootable Linux CD/DVD/USB to boot into Linux or a program like DiskInternals Linux Reader that will let you open Linux partitions in Windows and just insert the SD card and goto the folder that Genuine mentioned to add the ROMs if you’re strapped for Ethernet ports and don’t have wireless set up on your Raspberry Pi or just prefer to not do it over the network.

      Reply ↓

  47. Has anyone had success using the MAME Artwork feature? I have tried all manner of changes to the advmame.rc but have had no success.

    background: some arcade machines have bezels and overlays that mame emulates using the /artwork folder. a zip file matching the rom-name holds .pngs of art and a file describing the layout for emulator. Some games (such as armor attack) are unplayable without this feature.

    Reply ↓

  48. Hey, I am in the process of building my own MAME-Couch-Table. I first tried PiMAME yesterday and was surprised on how slow some games are running. For example Metal Slug would run extremely slowly. I overclocked the Pi to 900 Mhz and changed the memory split, which helped a little. Can I expect significantly better performance with the next release?

    Btw, when I first played, the colors were all messed up (weird contrast and green everywhere). I fixed that by messing with the video settings in AdvanceMAME, if somebody has the same problem.

    Reply ↓

  49. Pingback: Raspberry Pi-ando – Diario Salta | Noticias e Información las 24 horas

  51. Hi Shea,

    I also have an X-Gaming tantstick (original with serial connector and just today received parts to convert to usb which i’ll be swapping out at some point) and thus would be interested to know about your findings in using it.

    Reply ↓

  53. Thanks for making this. Works well but I’ve been unable to get sound working on every release I’ve tried which is 0.3 up to the 0.5 beta. I use hdmi and can get sound on my pi when I’ve used xbmc on it.

    Reply ↓

  54. Howdy, we’re planning on building a full sized arcade cabinet with a plywood frame, 19″ crt and PiMame. Naturally it needs a sturdy platform for joystick and buttons, too, just like back in the early 80’s. 🙂

    >I have not put in the GPIO joystick driver. That’s a great recommendation, as I’m getting ready to use that for my DeskCade project. It should be in the next release.

    Last month you wrote about adding the GPIO support for the next build. Is there any update on that progress?

    I understand GPIO will be the only sensible way of adding (custom made) buttons to PiMame. Am I correct?

    All the best, super job!!

    Reply ↓

    • The traditional way of doing this is to use an I-PAC for button input. It’s an external device that you wire your buttons to, that uses no matrices to simulate keypresses. No ghosting or dead keys. You can push any chosen arcade buttons at once and only the buttons you push will actually register as being pushed, and none that you don’t push will be “ghosted,” or, register as being pushed when they’re not.

      GPIO isn’t needed. Of course, if you want to do it with GPIO, then go for it.

      Reply ↓

      • I’m trying to get beta 0.5 working with an i-pac and im not having any luck unfortunately.
        With the ipad plugged in to the Pi, it outputs all the correct keystrokes, but when in advmame none of the i-pac input does anything.
        Which is odd as the same keys work on the keyboard.

        Any ideas?

        cheers

        Reply ↓

        • replying to myself with some additions.
          OK, I got the i-pac working with the new X-Arcade Tankstick config from the latest blog post, butt here is still 2 aspects that are missing for me.
          1. how do you map the esc key to an i-pac input?
          2. how do you map the enter key to an i-pac input?

          These two keys are the only ones missing, in order to quit a game and return to the advmenu screen.

          cheers

          Andrew

          Reply ↓

          • For posterity, with my jpac, hitting the 2 player button while holding down the 1 player button simulates Esc.

  55. Awesome! Actually using this in a class, creating an arcade using an old IKEA coffee table. My students are programming games for it as part of their final.

    Reply ↓

  56. Pingback: PiMAME - Test Setup

  61. If you have a full set of ROMs for the latest MAME, you can build a full set of ROMs for this build of AdvanceMAME.

    To do this, you will need to have and do the following :

    -set of current MAME roms (i.e. C:\MAME\roms)
    -download AdvanceMAME and create a ‘roms’ folder (i.e. C:\ADVMAME\roms)
    -download ClrMAME
    -configure a new ClrMAME profile using the ADVMAME.EXE (ClrMAME will export the XML data) / set the ROMS path to C:\ADVMAME\roms and the ‘Add Paths’ to C:\MAME\roms
    -using the ADVMAME profile, use ClrMAME to ‘Rebuild’ a set of ROMs using C:\MAME\roms as the source and C:\ADVMAME\roms as the destination) / when you are on the Rebuild screen, click the checkboxes to use ‘Add Paths’ and ‘System Folders’
    -when the rebuild is done, your original MAME roms will be left untouched and a new, full set of AdvanceMAME compatible roms will be in C:\ADVMAME\roms
    -now you can copy the roms from C:\ADVMAME\roms to your SD card
    -you can also copy the ‘samples’ from C:\MAME\samples to your SD card

    ClrMAME – http://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/
    AdvanceMAME – http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/advancemame/advancemame-1.2-windows-pentium.zip?download
    MAME – http://mamedev.org/downloader.php?file=releases/mame0148b.exe
    ROMS – use your favorite Usenet service and head over to alt.binaries.emulators.mame

    Reply ↓

  62. Pingback: Rasbian and MAME vs PiMAME « Lars Mame Cabinet

  63. Thank you, Shea!
    I’m not sure if anyone else had this problem with 0.4, but expanding the filesystem with “sudo raspi-config” on PiMAME 0.4 causes the OS to lock-up while the expansion is being performed during the next reboot. This behavior was not observed in earlier versions. I have not attempted this on 0.5 Beta yet, later today perhaps. Thanks, everyone.

    Reply ↓

  64. Hey there I have installed the bootable os to my SD CARD and then booted it up all works fine. I then added joysticks to the pi. All the buttons work but the joystick seems to auto bounce back to original position. It works when I use the keys on the keyboard but the joystick plays up. Anyone know how to fix? Settings that I have to change?? THANKYOU

    Reply ↓

  65. Testing v0.5 on model B. I found that in general games work fine until 1991+, then I started to notice latency using the pi, most noticeably with sound. When the cpu idle hits 0% there’s a buzzing sound in the audio. Your advmame.rc has the sound_samplerate set to 44100, I turned it down to 22050. This gave me a better gaming experience.

    Reply ↓

  66. Pingback: Raspberry Pi emulator workingComp Sci Teacher

  67. Just a quick question is it possible to use multiple keyboards at once with PI MAME?
    I tried today to play a 4player game and it seems only one of the 2 keyboards is active, It seems to be a raspbian problem as mame seems to support it, but I haven’t seen any info about how to do that.

    Reply ↓

    • Ok I was able to get it working it was just a matter of advmame.rc config but I still don’t get why are you using all those scan0 on keyboard2 in your config.

      Reply ↓

        • I just modified al the mappings first by hand and later within advmame to add suport for up to 4 players in one keyboard.
          Also remember to connect both keyboards before starting the raspberry becouse it will not detect them if connected later.

          Reply ↓

  68. Hay ,
    mame can only see my gpio inputs when i disconnect the keyboard,
    can anybody help me to set up the multiple keyboard switch .
    i can’t get it to work.
    Thank
    Mike

    Reply ↓

  70. So I have tried v0.6 and unfortunately I could only get ms pacman to work and that was at maybe 25% speed versus v0.5 running a bunch a game at normal speed. The one thing I think I did that was out of the ordinary was install the Pi IP

    Reply ↓

  72. I’m running pimame v0.5 and I set display_rotate=3 in config.txt.

    Upon bootup, the pi displays the running boot commentary along the entire length of my (now rotated) screen, but AdvMenu only uses the middle section…and when I exit out of it, the only portion of the screen in use is the middle section. It’s as if AdvMenu somehow resets what the pi is allowed to use. If I break the run of AdvMenu, then I still have the entire screen available.

    If I do rotation just using AdvMenu / AdvMAME, I’m okay, but then when I try to use X – I’m hosed, because X doesn’t seem to have a setting for rotating the screen 270 degrees.

    Any suggestions for resolving … either one?

    My monitor reports back that I’m using DVI (correct) RGB Full 5:4 resolution 1280×1024 @ 60Hz, progressive…at least the last part of which is correct (5:4 RGB? I dunno.)

    Anybody get BattleZone to work yet, either?

    Thanks!

    Reply ↓

  73. Pingback: PiMAME 0.6 Beta 2 | Shea Silverman's Blog

  75. Hi Shea,

    Excellent work. Thanks for your efforts. I have a pole position arcade cabinet that I pulled out of my storage area after having it for about 20 years. I decided to use MAME instead of repairing the boards in the cabinet. I got it up and running with a an old PC and then saw your project here and decided to give it a go. It would be a much better solution to use.

    I have a RPI rev B. I have tried 0.5 and just tonight 0.6 Beta 2. Pole Position works but I am struggling with the sound. I am using the analog port into an amp that is driving the speakers in the cabinet. I do get sound but it is way low in volume compared to a rumble (low tone) popping. I have tried a couple other games. The other games I tried also have the sound issue. Gridlee, the reference game does not have the sound issue but that sound does not seem to work exactly right. I have tried overclocking and a little messing with the sample rate with no luck.

    Any suggestions? It would be great to get this working in my arcade machine.

    Thank you,
    Blake

    Reply ↓

    • Hey Blake – I’ve had ZERO luck w/analog sound. Even went as far as trying this – https://sites.google.com/site/semilleroadt/home/raspberry-pi – on a test card, no luck at all. Decided to stick to HDMI – sound to monitor via HDMI cable, analog jack out from monitor to speakers. This is my “bench” setup and it works and sounds okay for pre-85 games (Pacman, Dig Dug, etc.). When I’m not testing, my PI is connected to my Sony 65 (HDMI) and the sound is sent through ARC to my receiver (7.2) – sounds beautiful (put the receiver in surround all channels).

      If you can go HDMI sound, do it. I don’t think many projects have had luck w/analog sound.

      Reply ↓

      • Thanks for the advice InputMap. Unfortunately the monitor I am using does not support HDMI and I am using a HDMI to DVI cable. I am going to give this a try http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Analog-Converter-Digital-Extractor/dp/B008LOIKX6/ref=pd_sim_sbs_e_1
        It looks like others have had some success with it when powered. It looks like there is also some success with a couple of different USB sound cards. It will drive the cost of the solution up but for me this is a learning project so something more to play with.

        Blake

        Reply ↓

        • I have been using deafult config on 0.5 and analog output works flawlessly.
          My setup was using a HDMI to DVI cable and a desktop speakers contected to the minijack output (the RCA is only for video), the volume is a bit too low but worked at least with: Snwobross 2, The Simpsons, Pang and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

          Also always start the raspberry with everything connected as it seems it doesn’t like changing confing on the run.

          Reply ↓

          • Finally got the HDMI to audio converter today (http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Analog-Converter-Digital-Extractor/dp/B008LOIKX6/ref=pd_sim_sbs_e_1). Gave it a whirl tonight. After banging my head for a while, I figured out I had to put in the config.txt the following to make it produce sound:
            hdmi_drive=2
            hdmi_force_edid_audio=1

            I was then getting sounds without the large pops and cracks. The sound on Pole Position was still not right though. At 700mhz (standard clock) the sound is slow and the game plays slow. At 900mhz (overclock) the game plays about right – slightly slow but the sound is not good. It sound like the car has an issue (wa wa wa wa – cyclic sound). The sound is better at 700mhz.

            At 1G (overclock) it is all good. Sound is great and game plays well. Hope the RPi holds together. I wonder if playing with the sample rates on the audio may allow it to sound o.k. at a little slower speed? For now will see if the RPi holds together at 1G.

            Blake

  76. Hi – I’ve been so looking forward to trying this. Got my Pi and have Win32DiskImager.

    When I write the image to my SD Cards, neither of them boot at all.
    I put wheezy onto both of them and they both boot fine, but then tried PiMame 0.4 and 0.6b2 and neither boot.

    I have retried the downloads, the unzip, the imaging multiple times, all no go. Also tried on XP and Win 7 creating the SD but no joy.

    Can anyone suggest what I might try?

    Many thanks, Daz.

    Reply ↓

    • Hey Daz – I’ve been using Beta 5 as my base and haven’t had any image issues (and I’ve done a few through the learning process). What I’ve been doing on my 16GB (test card) and 64GB (live card) is read the image w/Win32DiskImager and write it. Boot it up, expand the FS, set the time zone, set a root password and then the following (as the PI user) :

      sudo apt-get update
      sudo apt-get upgrade

      reboot after that round of updates, then :

      sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
      sudo apt-get update
      sudo apt-get upgrade

      This will update any packages that were “held back”. This gives me a fully updated SD card that I can start to work with (I’ll even write back the image of the 16GB in case I need a quick rollback).

      Try Beta 5 and see how you make out.

      Reply ↓

      • Good recommendation, but Daz said the images wouldn’t boot so he can’t get to that stage.

        Think (s)he’s looking for help with writing the image (I don’t use Windows so I’m at a loss myself).

        Reply ↓

        • Hello,
          I have the same problem but i work with Ubuntu 12.04.

          I made this command :
          dd if=pimame-0.6-beta2.img of=/dev/sdc bs=1MB
          after that the sd didn’t boot. I tried the same command with the raspbian image and it was ok.

          I tried with diskimage …..the same issue.

          have i some thing to do to make bootable sd ?

          Reply ↓

      • I have the same problem as Daz, I’ve tried both 0.6 beta 2 and 0.5 images and neither will boot for me. It’s not the SD card, after trying the PiMAME images I tried both Wheezy and OpenELEC on it and they both work fine. What might I be doing wrong?

        I can’t do what InputMap suggests as it doesn’t boot at all. It’s an 8GB card.

        Reply ↓

        • I have loaded both 0.5 and 0.6 beta 2 using Mac laptop with SD card slot and RPI-SD card builder v1.2 with great success. Downloaded from main link (not mirrors).
          Blake

          Reply ↓

        • I have the same problem, after some research I have found statements that the new version of raspberry pi only work on the latest version of Raspbialn 20-13-02-09 and will not work on 2012-12-16 .
          If this is true, it would make perfect sense, I can boot from the latest version of wheezy from the Pi website, but not on this one.
          Will you be updating to the newer version in the future?
          Many thanks
          Darren

          Reply ↓

          • Hi Shea, Sorry for the slow reply, I have been on holiday, I did try version 0.7 but it wouldn’t fit on my 4gig sd card, I will try again and get a larger card if I need to.
            Many thanks,
            Darren

          • Scrub that, it must have been 0.6 Beta 5 I tried. 0.7 is much smaller. Trying it now.

          • Hi everyone,
            I got it working at last,
            I had to get an 8gb memory card to install, I couldn’t get Advancedmame to turn the screen to vertical so I went with Mame4all.
            Not tried the sound just yet, and I need to get two keyboards running at the same time, one hacked for buttons and one for joystick. other than that I’m chuffed to bits.
            Many thanks for all of your hard work.
            Darren

  77. Hi Shea, thanks for all the work! I’ve gotten .6 beta two working with a mini-pac encoder.

    http://www.ultimarc.com/mp_inst.html

    It’s working quite well, but only if there is no other keyboard plugged in. I think it’s a matter of power drain, I still haven’t gotten a powered hub. I’ve tried a number of games, and wasted a lot of time and had a late supper because of it! 🙂

    Two little things…
    1) I can’t find any shutdown options on the web interface, I might be missing something.
    2) Since I can only currently use the controller, is there a way of adding another option to the boot menu, i.e shutdown? I’m getting too lazy to ssh into the Pi and shutdown from there every time… (sad huh?)

    Anyway, thanks for all the work!

    Jim

    Reply ↓

  78. To give a little back, I’ll share some of my experiences on my first mame cab project (still at the components stage, using a 512 MB RPI).

    I have replaced the advmame binary from the PiMAME (0.5) installation with the one that comes with RetroPi (default installation). RetroPi uses MAME 0.96 and I saw a huge performance boost over the one with your image/post upgrade (1.04?). Of course, the number of games it supports is much lower (version is from 2005, I think). But for a retro cab, that doesn’t matter.

    There are some small differences with the configuration. Most notably, it doesn’t work with the PiMAME default config. It will create its own (if you delete the existing one), but then the video clock settings have to be defined manually before being able to run it. Using “advcfg” allowed me to get it running.

    Later, after supplying my monitor’s clock settings (15″ NEC 1560NX), I was able to tune the display to crisp settings (e.g. mame menu isn’t blurry).

    Re sound, I gave up on the analog port altogether and picked up a Creative Sound Blaster Play! (USB). Very easy to get it working. It didn’t help with the advmenu sounds (still distorted), but setting them to ‘none’ did the trick.

    Hope this helps someone.

    Reply ↓

  80. please help as I am a complete noob to this,ok I have PiMame up and running on a model B and using a 16GB sd card I have expanded the file system but when I put my sd card back into my pc it shows I only have 20mb or so free so I guess I’m doing something wrong there plus when I go into my sd card [on pc] the is no rom folder so do I have to create it first if not on pc then how?? all advice will be welcome thanks

    Reply ↓

    • Sadly, you can’t just pop the SD card into a PC and drop ROMs into it. The files you are seeing are the FIRST partition of the SD card, which stores the initial bootup information for the Pi itself.

      To put ROMs onto PiMAME, you can either use an FTP program to connect to it, by using the ip address and the username / password: pi / raspberry, or you can put the IP Address into your web browser and upload files through the web interface.

      Reply ↓

      • What I’ve done to make servicing roms more manageable is mount a FAT-formatted USB card and change the advmame roms folder to a symbolic link to that mount point.

        Reply ↓

      • I’m putting this here for posterity, in case anyone (like me) hasn’t bothered to hook their Pi up to their router or PC:

        An alternate way to transfer ROMs is this:

        Put your SD card into your PC, in windows, you’ll be able to see a very small boot partition with about 50 MB of free space. Drop as many ROMs as you can fit here, then put the SD card into the Pi and power on.

        Once you get to the menu, choose option 6 which will spit you to the command line. Type “startx” to boot into raspbian wheezy.

        From here, load the file manager (under accessories, I believe). Navigate up to the boot folder, copy the ROMs you placed there and then paste them to the appropriate folder in the /home/pi/ directory for the emulator you’re going to use.

        There are probably about 75 better ways to do this, but if you’re completely new at this and a bit skittish about SSH and command lines, this is a visual/GUI way to make it happen.

        Reply ↓

    • Thanks for the info (I thought it would be something like that) will try on my next day off (will prob by back for more advice )

      Reply ↓

  81. I just got my raspberry pi a few days ago. First thing I did was loaded it with raspbian to test that everything works. (Everything was fine) I then flashed it with PiMAME 0.6 but when I powered it on there’s nothing showing on the tv or my dell monitor. (Tried connecting to HDMI and composite) I reflashed it back to raspbian and it still works.

    Is there some extra steps that I missed?

    Reply ↓

    • Same here.

      I’m super psyched to get this going but unable to load up the 0.4 or 0.6 image. I’ve used:

      dd if=pimame-0.4.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
      and:
      dd if=pimame-0.6-beta2.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M

      Setting bs to 4M or not including it doesn’t make a difference to the end result.

      I notice when booting raspbian or openelec i see the green LED is quite active but not the pimame image(one brief flicker is all I get). I am able to mount the SD card and view the contents so I know it does contain an OS.

      My suspicion is that it isn’t a display issue but a booting issue given that the SD card activity LED isn’t very active.

      I have the 512MB ram version of the Raspberry Pi.
      Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

      Reply ↓

        • Thanks for your reply.

          I just got it booting now by:

          * loading the raspbian image on my SD
          * copying the boot partition files across to my laptop
          * load the pimame 0.6 image on the SD overwriting the raspbian
          * removing all files from new boot partition
          * copying raspbian boot partition files from laptop to boot partition on SD

          Essentially, I’ve replaced the pimame boot partition with the raspbian one.

          I had to power cycle the raspberry pi once before it decided to boot (not sure if that is needed or not in this instance)

          I haven’t tested anything further but at least it boots and I can see the pimame menu.

          Off to bed – 1:04AM

          Reply ↓

          • I am having the same problem. It boots using raspbian but not with .6 Beta 2. I don’t know how to do all of the fancy copies you did. I assume there is something wrong with my download of .6 Beta 2. Anyway I can get a bootable .6 Beta 2 copy?

  82. Hey,
    very nice work. I think there is a problem with your data on /boot-partition that makes PIs from RS equiped with Hynix RAM trouble with booting.
    The current Raspian image is fixed, maybe you can take this solution for the next release.
    I’m also a fan of the GPIO-Joystick driver!!!
    Best regards from Germany, Florian.

    Reply ↓

  83. Do you use any special settings in your MAKEFILEs ?

    I decided to build and compile from scratch on a spare memory card. I started w/the latest distribution image from Raspberry site. Ran all the updates, upgrades and basic configurations (time zone, root password, expand out the system, etc.). Next I followed the instructions from here – http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=22403 – and started my compile. With one small change to the ADVMENU MAKEFILE, everything compiled perfectly and installed (took overnight to finish).

    My memory split is 64 on the 512 model. No overclocking – these are the same settings I use on your distribution images. Your build runs perfectly for me. My new compile will run, just really, really slow. No errors, just slow.

    Any tips on compile changes ? source changes ? different tweaks you’ve done for your images ? anything removed from the base image (services, etc.) ?

    Thanks for any help/tips you can provide.

    Reply ↓

  84. i’m not sure if i am doing this right… I downloaded pi mame 0.6 beta. Ran weezey win32diskimager on windows 7. The file installed both on my 8GB chip and my 4 GB chip. ran the installer, Advanced mame loaded fine. ran the sudo raspi-config program, it did its thing….

    But, when i read the SD chip on the windows 7 OS it says i only have 20 MB left on the drive. What gives? i’ve tried several times and i’m not sure what i am doing wrong.

    any help is much appreciated.

    Reply ↓

    • That is because what you are seeing when you put the SD card in your computer is the boot partition. Not the actual data partition. The boot partition is very small. the rest of your space is avaialble once you turn on your pi. You can then connect to it via FTP, SSH, or from the web front end to upload items.

      Reply ↓

      • Thank you for your reply. I’m still having some difficultly as i am a linux newb. please excuse the next dumb question:

        i accidentally set my setting to go to X when it boots. now when i restart the PI it keeps booting to X. i tried pressing different keys so i could access the boot sequence screen… apparently not mashing the right key. how do i get back into the setting tab so i can have the system booting back into advance mame

        sincerely,
        linux newb

        Reply ↓

        • No worries. From the desktop, double click on lxterminal. In the terminal, type sudo raspi-config and hit enter. In the config menu, change boot settings to not boot to X and you should be good to go 🙂

          -Shea

          Reply ↓

          • OMG you’re brilliant. i only get a chance once or twice a week to play around with this, so thank you so kindly for your quick reply! its working now

  85. Pingback: Raspbmc and Emulators

  86. I just got my Raspberry Pi, I have Raspian Wheezy up and running. I wiped my SD card and flashed.6 beta onto my 16gig SD card. The Pi won’t boot up though. I’m running it off a cell phone charger. Do you think there is not enough power? I want to be sure before i go out and buy a powered USB..

    Reply ↓

  87. I had it working great, playing roms. But something wonky happened and now when I start MAME from the menu, I get a brief error that’s ‘no emulator found’ and I should read advmenu.txt file.

    Something messed up the image? A crash maybe?

    Reply ↓

  88. Pingback: PiMAME 0.6 Beta 3 now available. | Shea Silverman's Blog

  89. Hi All,

    Has anyone got golden axe working properly? I’ve tried a handful of settings including turning sound off completely(did make a difference) and overclocking the pi to 950mhz. With both those “tweaks” there is still some slow down. Is goldenaxe just too much for the pi?

    Cheerio

    Reply ↓

  90. Hi, gang – I’ve got this working, installed in a table, bought an X-Arcade off of craigslist and then purchased the USB replacement kit for it.

    If the XArcade is plugged in…my wireless keyboard and mouse don’t work.
    If the XArcade isn’t plugged in…my wireless keyboard and mouse *do* work.

    I’m wondering if it’s a power draw issue – is anybody else having this problem?

    Reply ↓

    • It could be a power issue. There are many choices for power for the Pi, I went with this – http://www.rpips.com/ – and don’t have any problems at all (and I have quite a few devices connected at all times).

      The only problem with this power supply is that it doesn’t fit in most standard cases. Wasn’t an issue for me, I am using the “standard” red case from Allied Electronics (where I got my Pi) – all I had to do was Dremel off one support to clear the daughter board.

      Reply ↓

  92. Hi,

    Does anyone know of a way to hide the pi “background” that appears when selecting a game from advmenu before advmame starts the game? I have looked through the advmenu options but the nearest I can find is misc_quiet which just prevents the advmame startup info being displayed.

    Thanks.

    Reply ↓

    • Do you mean to clear the console, so there’s nothing on screen before switching to the game? Also, if you could post this on the pimame forums, that would be awesome

      Reply ↓

      • Yep, at the moment you get the raspberry pi boot up text, or whatever commands I was messing with before I started up mame. (I have taken out the menu and go straight into advmame).
        I have put a “clear” in the .profile before calling advmame and this works for the initial bootup but obviously not afterwards, especially if some games give errors to screen.

        I will pop this question into the forum – good idea. It will be easier to track threads that way.

        Cheers.

        Reply ↓

  93. Hi….

    This is awesome!!! One problem I found is that the coinage setting doesn’t save. Every other setting does save. Is this intentional? Any way I can change the coinage setting?

    Thanks for your work. It is much appreciated!!!

    Brad O.

    Reply ↓

  94. More info… the coinage project appears to only be with Galaga when you select 1 Coin/1 Credit. If you do that and save, it reverts back to FREE PLAY. The other coinage DIP switches appear to work correctly.

    Reply ↓

  96. Hi admin and lucky user of pimame.
    it work great,and very happy to testing it.
    just some problem with config.txt,(i replace it by an other from raspbian) and all is ok.(problem is hdmi tv is switching all the time,when in full screen) dont know why,but work good with just replace another one.
    i have an other problem,after startx,open midori,after some minutes (5) my system losing internet connection.(eth0 is missing after)packet were send,but not received.
    dont know if one can help me.i’m little noob and french 🙂
    but love pimame,very easy to play,excellent job Mr sheasilverman,and happy for your mariage.(if i have understand)
    thanks

    Reply ↓

  97. Hi All

    This is a call project i have a few roms working and am planning on turning this into a gaming cocktail table. So i have put together a control pad for initial testing. i got the buttons and USB interface from http://www.ultracabs.co.uk/usb-interface–standard-joystick-set-109-p.asp . and it all seems fine but i cant get half of the buttons to work when trying to configure the player one controls. For example i can setup down and left but not up and right on the joystick.

    I have tried plugging the controller into my windows 7 laptop and all the buttons are being picked up fine. Was hoping that someone might have an idea its been driving me a bit mad for a while.

    Reply ↓

  98. after some research,i have this problem with “midori” but it seem not with “the other lightweight navigator internet” (not dillo,the other)
    if someone have the same problem,tell me.
    is it possible to return “in menu selector” after going to X with “startx”?
    thanks for your great job.

    Reply ↓

    • finally,
      you can delete my thread.
      it”s only a problem with my sdhc card (buyed in supermarket with no name)
      not the first time have similar problem with it,
      i take another and all is resolved soon.
      sorry for that.
      work like a charm

      Reply ↓

  100. Hello! I love PiMAME. I have been using it for a few months now. Recently I’ve seen that in 0.6 B2 and 3 have been slightly lagging. Also, a suggestion for future releases. When you first bootup and see the screen to select AdvanceMAME, Command line, reboot etc., I think that you should put a shutdown button to power off the Pi safely.

    Reply ↓

  101. Pingback: Raspberry Pi MAME Arcade with XBox Chatpad Controller - Mike Tedesco's Project Blog

  102. Pingback: Friday Post: PiMAME 0.6 Beta 4 | Shea Silverman's Blog

  103. Pingback: Arcade Cabinet – Technical Details & Hints | Matthew Robertson

  104. Pingback: PiMAME 0.6 Beta 5 – Now with PlayStation support! | Shea Silverman's Blog

  105. does anyone know of an inexpensive usb joystick that they can recommend that works with PiMAME pretty much out of the box? Looking for an option until I can afford the TankStick.

    Reply ↓

  107. I love PiMAME!

    I do have an issue with exiting the PS1 emulator, though… It’ll frequently crash my Pi. The only way to reboot is to pull the power, which has corrupted the data on the SD card once forcing me to reinstall PiMAME.

    Can’t wait for updates

    Reply ↓

    • If the Pi is connected to the network, you can always goto http:// which has the PiMAME admin panel. You can reboot and shutdown the Pi from there as long as it isn’t hard crashed.

      Reply ↓

  108. With the additions of all of these emulators, does this mean you have integrated AdvMess, and we can add Nintendo, SNES, GBA emulators to the iso and it will work?

    Reply ↓

      • If you need a beta tester for the ADVMess, I would be more than happy to help. Every single one of your release, I have done the install for ADVMESS. My Nintendo and GBA work but my SNES shows black screen.

        Reply ↓

  109. Pingback: 라즈베리파이 지원 Linux 및 그 외 OS 목록 (Linux And another OS for R-Pi List) |

  111. Pingback: Home Arcade » The Start….

  112. I’ve tried this a few time and read the comments, but still can’t get it to work. It will not boot. I may have missed something.

    Raspberry Pi 512mb
    4Gb class10 SD
    AC USB hub
    mouse/keyboard
    TankStick

    I have downloaded PiMAME 0.6 beta4&5 and PiMAME 0.7, extracted all files, wrote to SD. (using Win32 Disk Imager)
    Was I supposed to use all PiMAMEs 0.2-0.7?

    Reply ↓

    • What SD Card are you using? I’ve heard reports that some 4GB SD Cards are actually too small by a bit 🙁 Not all SD cards are made alike apparently. You should only need the 0.7 image.

      Reply ↓

      • I tried that first. that may be it and it could’ve been corrupted after that first format. I ordered a larger SD card. it seems its only a 3.64G SD after all.

        I was also using an Raspberry Pi micro SD adapter. I saw a few sites that people were having trouble with micro SD cards, but most likely the same issue.

        Worse case I’ll just order a preloaded one from PiHut.

        Thank you so much.

        Reply ↓

        • Sorry that looked a little confusing after I read it.

          My original 4Gb SD only reads as a 3.64 on my PC. That’s probably too small. lol.
          I downloaded 0.7, extracted and wrote. didn’t work
          formatted
          downloaded 0.6 beta4, extracted and wrote. didn’t work

          I believe that first write or format may have corrupted the SD card. I formatted it again and I can’t put any files on it.

          Reply ↓

  114. Ran into a little problem with roms.

    I have a few MAME ROMS I’ve been trying to work, but no luck yet. I’ve kept them as zip files and have tried them in each folder. roms, mame4all, etc. nothing seems to work.
    I did use a flashdrive to move the roms to my Pi. Would that keep them from working?
    Could you please give me some of the reasons for this problem?
    Thank you for the help.

    Reply ↓

    • I’m having the same problem,

      – I’m very new to MAME, but adding them from a flashdrive to the roms folder is fine, I tired both using the webfront thing and flashdrive and I’ve had the same results…

      from researching this I’ve found that there’s different types of MAME -like updates etc, I heard the version on PiMAME is 0.106? this could be totally wrong-

      I didn’t get much further down that route, but then I began looking up stuff about MAME 0.106 and there’s something called clrmame and it clears everything up but I haven’t found a decent tutorial on how to use it :L

      Can anyone help me out?

      Reply ↓

      • I’ve found that it’s a hit or miss on some roms. The ones I’ve downloaded in the Pi’s web browser have worked. for the most part anyway. This is also my first time trying to work Raspberry Pi or MAME. I’m having some problems every now and then.

        slow and steady.

        Reply ↓

    • I wanted to see if you found a solution? I’ve been getting .37b5 ROMs and most work great. I haven’t had much problems from that point. Some ROMs are still missing files, but it’s easy to find different ones complete.

      Reply ↓

    • Some sticks are programmable you can set them up to use up, down, etc arrows instead of w,a,s,d or 2,4,6,8 as normal for most sticks. If your stick isn’t programmable, it would probably be a better idea to leave it as is.

      Reply ↓

  117. do the latest updates include all of the files from all of the previous updates like it says that version 0.6 beta has ◾PCSX_ReARMed PlayStation emulator added. and the 0.7 has the snes in it so does this mean that if I download 0.7 that I will get all of the previous versions and there functions included like the ◾PCSX_ReARMed PlayStation emulator and the rest of the updates functions all the way through to the first update

    Reply ↓

  118. Pingback: PiMAME 0.7.5 uploaded! | Shea Silverman's Blog

  119. I am still having some problems with MAME and SNES ROMs. I was told to use a MAME converter, but would just like to know what versions of MAME and SNES ROMs are compatible with the PiMAME emulators. Please help. It’s been a good while of experimenting with this problem. Could anyone tell me which type of ROMs work? I’m not looking for ROMs or asking where to download any. I’ve just been stuck on this problem for a long time. Thank you.

    Reply ↓

  121. Pingback: Friday Post: PiMAME 0.7.7 Released! | Shea Silverman's Blog

  122. Pingback: Nouvelle version de PiMame 0.77 | lewelby

  124. I’m new with al this Linux, Pi gaming stuff. But your build is great. Even I understand it. I was really impressed by that new emulator Final burn. That runs games super smooth compared with mame. Now I must find a good joystick somewhere. Gaming with a keyboard sucks. I saw that a xbox usb controller should work although that’s not a joystick. Is a universal usb arcade joystick also supported?

    Reply ↓

    • I use an TankStick and my friend uses a usb fight stick for PS2/PS3/PC. His stick works great. I haven’t been able to use a 360 fight stick yet.

      Reply ↓

  125. Pingback: 用树莓派享受MAME街游的乐趣 - 极客范 - GeekFan.net

  127. Pingback: The Kingdom of Philtopia » The Arcade with Pi

  128. Pingback: The Kingdom of Philtopia » The Arcade with Pi: Lets get Physical

  129. I getting most things working. I was wondering If PiSNES supports 2p and what is the button mapping for each player. The PiSNES does not give me a menu with ‘Tab’ so I can map the buttons. Thanks for the help.

    Reply ↓

  132. Pingback: PiMAME 0.7.10 Uploaded

  133. Unfortunately, the FTP and the WEB Server only allow small roms. Anything larger than an Atari Rom will not upload. This seems to be some type of upload limit on the linux but I cannot figure it out.

    Reply ↓

  134. Pingback: Raspberry Pi and a Mission | Lahtela.com

  135. Pingback: Raspberry Pi and a Mission - Lahtela.com

  136. PiMame has been working great for me… just need to image another SD card with it for a another pi.

    But the download is so slow, 160KB/s? Why not release the next version onto torrent? that way we can download it a decent speeds.

    Reply ↓

  137. Pingback: Briefcase Arcade Machine: Arcade Man Mk. V

  138. Pingback: Arcade! – Kroesch.DE

  139. Pingback: Briefcase Arcade: Aktenkoffer zum Spielen | GamingGadgets.de

  140. Pingback: Briefcade, de mobiele Arcade machine met Raspberry Pi » Mancave

  142. Is there a way to set the display size of gpSP to a certain value? My Games are going out of the screen! I am using a 4.3 inch RCA-Display.

    Reply ↓

  143. Pingback: Friday Post: PiMAME 0.8 coming this weekend! | Shea Silverman's Blog

  144. When i try to upload roms into my roms folder through a web frontend, it will only allow me to post 35 into, is there any way to rectify this?

    Reply ↓

  145. Pingback: Friday Post: PiPlay 0.8 Beta 3 | Shea Silverman's Blog

  146. Pingback: The Arcade with Pi: Lets get Physical #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi « adafruit industries blog

  147. Pingback: DIY Arcade Cabinet Using A Raspberry Pi | Tinkernut Labs

  148. Pingback: Maturità 2015 – scaldate i motori – TGLabs

  149. Pingback: MAME Arcade Game Fun With A Raspberry Pi | The Developer's Tidbits

  150. Pingback: Friday Post: PiPlay 0.8 Beta 4 Released! | Shea Silverman's Blog

  153. Pingback: Raspberry Pi MAME Arcade with XBox Controller | Mike Tedesco's Project Blog

  154. Pingback: PiPlay (PiMAME) 0.8 Beta 4 Publicado!!! - Raspberry Pi | Emuladores

  155. Hey,

    I’m having trouble burning the beta5 to my SD card. This is the first time I’ve tried piplay. My SD card is a Kingston SDC4/8GB Micro SDHC card. I’m using a rpi b+ with a mac to burn the image.

    Its partions looks like:

    /dev/disk1
    #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
    0: FDisk_partition_scheme *7.7 GB disk1
    1: DOS_FAT_32 BOOT 7.7 GB disk1s1

    When I run dd I get an IO error and it doesn’t boot on the rpi.

    sudo dd if=piplay-0.8-beta5.img of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m
    dd: /dev/rdisk1: Input/output error
    7385+0 records in
    7384+0 records out
    7742685184 bytes transferred in 1607.133161 secs (4817700 bytes/sec)

    Any help would be greatly appreciated as I’m stuck. The piplay-0.8-beta5.img is 7.2GB so it should fit fine.

    Thanks,

    MeatPlatter

    Reply ↓

    • What command do you use to image it? I always use sudo dd if=piplay.img of=/dev/disk3 and thats it. Obviously your drive mapping will be different. You can also try dd-gui.

      Reply ↓

  157. I’ve got 0.8.0 beta 5 installed with my TankStick. Do I need to map buttons or does it automatically recognize my tankstick as the controller?

    Reply ↓

  158. I’ve tried to download the latest version of pi play 3 different times from 3 different servers but each time I try to extract I get a zip file corrupted message. Any ideas? Gutted because I’m looking forward to trying it out.

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply ↓

  159. I installed PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 6 and got the following error:

    Kernel panic – not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block

    How can I solve this problem?

    Reply ↓

  160. Pingback: Friday Post: PiPlay 0.8 Beta 7 | Shea Silverman's Blog

  161. Hi,

    I have just downloaded PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 7. Please, be so kind as to confirm what MAME4all romset is compatible with this 0.8.0 Beta 7 build. Thanks in advance!

    Reply ↓

  162. Pingback: Turning a Raspberry Pi into a Retro Arcade | Marc2912

  163. Pingback: Raspberry Pi arcade game emulator in an Atari Lynx | Raspberry Pi Pod

  164. Can you have retropie and pi mame at
    the same time. I originally had the retropie image on the sd card. then I downloaded pimame and wrote it to the card as well. it booted fine in pimame but now I cant get back to emulation station

    Reply ↓

  165. Pingback: Friday Post: PiPlay 8 Beta 8! | Shea Silverman's Blog

  166. Have installed on my pi2 but am having no end of problems with the mame installation. The install script does not unzip and copy the folders and advance is also completely unusable, missing folders wrong file names. I hope this will be updated soon. Thanks for this great software however. Am waiting for feedback on the forum how to get advmame running

    Reply ↓

  167. Pingback: Friday Post: PiPlay 0.8 Beta 9 Released! | Shea Silverman's Blog

  168. I just received my Pi2b today and have just finished installing PiPlay. But none of my keyboards work!. It just stays on the top left icon. If I move it it makes a boing sound and jumps back. Sometimes it just gets stuck repeating the sound. I rebooted the pi etc. Shifted USB ports and what not. Using the latest beta of PiPlay too. Any thoughts. I haven’t found anything yet.

    Reply ↓

    • If I press tab into the settings it insists on scrolling up continuously. If I quit I get a screen full of SDL_JoystickGetAxis value :-32767 :

      Downloading the previous version to see if there is a difference. Going to take all night. Have crap internet in the Australian outback. I’ve previously ordered a full set of stick and buttons for the setup. but not sure when they get here. SO Have to use the keyboard in the meantime. I was hopping to play around with PiPlay in the mean-time and get familiar.

      Reply ↓

    • Sorry to bug you. Just wanted to add that before I installed PiPlay onto the SD I tried Raspbian and nothing odd occurred.

      Reply ↓

    • I figured something out regarding the keyboard today. First the older image failed to start. I guess that’s a Pi2 Support thing. So re-flashed with beta9 to tackle the keyboard again. Found that the wired keyboard was ok if it was plugged in before startup. After that it was ok to plug and unplug it. But the wireless one refuses to perform right at all. Seem to just be the up arrow that stays in the down position.

      But have no noticed another issue. I have rotated my display and adjusted it’s ratio using the config file. which is perfect during boot. But after it’s all started and a reload of the GUI occurs the PiPlay logo (white background) is zoomed and clipped; I can only see the left half of the image.

      Reply ↓

  169. Hi!
    (Sorry for my english I’m French…)

    I’ve just build an arcade for my brother birthday wich is in few day, I make him a surprise 🙂
    I test piplay on my TV and everything works fine, so I put the Pi in my arcade with a VGA-HDMI adapter and plug it into the monitor. When I launch an emulator I got an error “pygame.error: Invalid resolution for surface”. With the preinstalled game Cave I don’t have this problem… What can I do to solve this ?
    I’ve edit the config.txt to force the HDMI and resolution at 640×480 (monitor resolution) and my Pi is a Pi2 with the lastest version of piplay.

    Reply ↓

  170. Hi
    I like to autorun at startup advmame+rom and, at exit from game, load advmenu.
    how can I do?
    Also I wish I could turn off the raspberry pi from advmenu
    I hope it is possible

    thanks
    best regards

    Reply ↓

  171. Pingback: Raspberry Pi – le principali distribuzioni / progetti disponibili – Gda Tech

  172. Pingback: Raspberry PI: Cosa ci possiamo Fare? | Andyllon

  173. Pingback: Emulador no Raspberry Pi, impressões sobre: Retropie, Recalbox e PiPlay | Luiz Volso

  174. unfortunately this will not install on pi 3..tried multiple builds. retropie,lakka and recalbox all do without a problem. too bad, was looking forward to trying.

    Reply ↓

    • I am aware. Retropie has grown leaps and bounds so I suggest sticking with that distro until we can update. I am currently working on more hardware to work with Retropie and PiPlay. Thank you for your time though! I really appreciate you checking this out.

      Reply ↓

  175. Hi,

    I built a custom cocktail table using Piplay. It has a joystick and some buttons on every side. The buttons and joystick are connected to the Pi with a Xin-Mo dual controller.
    In the emulators this setup works fine, I am able to configure the buttons. But is it also possible to configure the buttons for the Piplay menu itself? Currently the for example the “up” and “left” button are swapped. Of course I could change the physical connection of the buttons, but I’d prefer to solve this in the software.
    Also the buttons are bouncing in the menu. Some entries are always skipped, if I navigate through the menu with the joystick.
    Did someone face similar issues and has some hints on how to solve them? I did not have to install a driver for the Xin-Mo, it worked out of the box. Does anybody knows, how the pre-installed driver looks like, is it some python script?
    I would be really glad, if someone answered one of the questions.

    Regards Phil

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *