Oct 29

AdvanceMAME .deb

UPDATE:  Debs with Sound now available here

Hey All,

It’s been a long time coming.  Between work, prototyping, other complications I present the AdvanceMAME  Debian package.

I was able to get past the issue with AdvanceMAME compiling on Raspbian. It’s the sh2 processor for the Saturn, so I had to disable that. After that, it compiles.

I have the src code up on github if anyone wants to check out the changes I had to make.

Github: https://github.com/ssilverm/AdvanceMAME_RaspberryPi
Debs: http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/debs/advancemame_0.106.1-1_armhf.deb http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/debs/advancemame-raspberrypi_1-1_armhf.deb (with sound)

To install:

  1. sudo dpkg -i advancemame_0.106.1-1_armhf.deb
  2. Once it’s installed, just type advmame and it will create your configuration file.
  3. Roms go in ~/.advance/rom/
  4. Edit your advmame.rc for your display:
    1. For HDMI try:
      1. device_video_clock 5 – 50 / 15.62 / 50 ; 5 – 50 / 15.73 / 60
    2. For NTSC TVs try:
      1. device_video_clock 5 – 50 / 15.73 / 60
  5. to run a game: advmame gamename (ie advmame sf2)
  6. ENJOY!!!

 

Also, another goodie… My deskcade project is coming along incredibly well! I just got in these 18mm Sanwa buttons. They are awesome.

I hope everyone enjoys. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

-Shea

Oct 26

Friday Post: One step forward, two steps back

Hey all,

So I got MAME compiled.  The performance took a HUGE nosedive.  Whereas before SF2 was playing flawlessly, it now looks like a slideshow.  I’m going to work on it some more.  Sorry for the huge delay in these Debs.  I’m getting much closer!

I found some 18mm buttons for my DeskCade project.  I’m really excited with how that project is going.  Can’t wait for the buttons to arrive.

Time to let a compile run overnight again!

-Shea

Oct 25

AdvanceMAME compilations issues on Raspbian [SOLVED]

Hey all,

If anyone is having compilation issues of AdvanceMAME on Raspbian,  here is the relativly simple fix:

Change the line:

CONF_CFLAGS_OPT= -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-merge-constants -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused

to

CONF_CFLAGS_OPT= -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-merge-constants -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused

in your Makefile.

.Debs to be released shortly now that this is sorted!

Oct 19

Friday Post: New Pi and Deb Beta Users Wanted!

Happy Friday Everyone!

It’s been a fun week over here.  I was able to order my 512MB Raspberry Pi from Element 14, and it arrived on Wednesday.  Protip: Call Element 14 when they have stock and you will get it really really fast.

Some high quality shots below:

I’ve been working on my Mini Arcade Cabinet project, and I was able to source a mini joystick from P3America.com.  I’m going to be working on the cabinet this weekend, and will be incorporating this into it.

Now for the big news….I have created some .debs for you all to test!  The latest version of Raspbian has been giving me a lot of compiling errors.  What I have gotten done I would appreciate some of you to beta test for me.

The two debs available now are PCSX_ReARMed and Gngeo.  PCSX worked for me when I made the framebuffer larger in config.txt, and gngeo seems to be crashing or hanging randomly.  I’m hoping it works better for you all.  Please provide me with any and all feedback you have regarding these!

Oct 12

Friday Post: Mini Cab in Orlando Sentinel

Happy Friday Everyone!

I got an email this morning from the Orlando Sentinel that the interview with the Raspberry Pi foundation at FamiLAB was ready.  I have a small part in it, as you will see 🙂

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/videogallery/72853227/News/FLA360-Raspberry-Pi-Foundation-s-Eben-Upton

It has been an exciting two weeks, busy, but exciting.  I have not had time to work on emulation at the moment.  I have a long list of priorities to get done, but I’m working hard on things for the Raspberry Pi every day!

Also tonight I am going to see the Mythbusters Behind The Myths Tour! Should be a fun time.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sep 15

Friday Post: Stuff in the pipeline

Not much to blog about tonight.  My PCSX_ReARMed binaries are getting a lot of hits.  I’m really impressed by the performance.  This weekend I’m working on my NeoGeo controller project.  Got more of the parts I need and a bunch of the Arduino code written.

Still working on the Mednafen Emulator.  Their IRC channel on freenode is really active, so that’s a great sign.

Also, VIA Technologies tweeted my APC unboxing video 🙂  That was a neat little treat.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Sep 13

Better PlayStation Emulation on the Raspberry Pi

Shoutout to CodenameV for bringing PCSX_ReARMed to my attention!

Tonight I have uploaded the source and binaries for PCSX_ReARMed.  This is an amazing emulator that is running a lot of PSX games at full speed.  I have not been able to get sound to work through HDMI yet, but since my last reformat, I haven’t been able to get sound working on anything, so I’m kinda bummed about that.  I’m hoping some of you have better luck with the audio.

Guide to running PCSX_ReARMed:

  • Download Source and Binaries
  • unzip pcsx_rearmed.zip
  • cd into pcsx_rearmed/
  • ./pcsx
  • Have fun having fond memories replaying some favorites from a couple generations ago 🙂

Let me know if you have any issues.  Enjoy!

 

Sep 12

Good News Everyone!

Good News Everyone!  I was able to recover my corrupted filesystem.  I also completed a large chunk of a major project I’m working on at the University.  This one piece of code has been bugging me for a couple of days, and I finally solved it today, so I feel a lot better.  I’m exhausted but hopefully tomorrow I can do some more emulation testing.

I have been testing PCSX_ReARMed for the Pi and it’s working really well.  NeoPop-SDL (Neo Geo Pocket Color) emulator is working as well, though it doesn’t fullscreen properly.  Mednafen 0.8 (a multi console emulator) is already in the Raspbian Repos.  Mednafen 0.9 has trouble compiling out of the box but I was able to get past the issues and it’s working.  I’ll be posting binaries this week as well as some tutorials.

Have a great night!

Sep 07

Raspberry Pi SD Card Corruption

Hey All,

So this week started off cool then took a turn for suckage.  I’ve been working on getting two more emulators working.  One is a Neo Geo Pocket Color emulator, and it works, but has some minor issues.  The other is another mass emulator like MESS.  The older version compiles, but the latest one errors out.

The reason I am not posting binaries at the moment is because my SD card’s filesystem got corrupted during a test I was doing, and won’t boot.  I’ve made a bit for bit backup of the card using DD, and I’m going to try and retrieve as much data from it as possible.  Luckily I have other SD cards to use.

I was hoping to have the binaries for NeoPop available tonight but I have to recompile them on the new SD card.  If you want you can click the link above and download the source and compile it yourself.

The other emulator I’ve been working on compiling is called Mednafen.  The old version (0.8) is available in Raspbian repos, so just do sudo apt-get install mednafen and you should be good to go.   Make sure you run it once, then edit the ./mednafen/mednafen.rc file.  There is a part that says video and it tries to use opengl, set it to SDL and you should be good to go.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sep 01

Friday Post: Arduino Keyboard Joystick

Hey all,

It’s been a long week, and I am really glad I have a long weekend to sleep in.

When the Arduino Leonardo was announced I was really excited to see it have built in USB HID support and could act as a keyboard, mouse, or joystick.  I was even more excited to find out that my year old Teensy++ (Arduino compatible board) was based on the same chipset that the Leonardo now uses, and is able to act as a keyboard as well!

This is a new feature that was introduced in the Arduino 1.0 IDE.  You can now send keyboard presses with this simple line of code: Keyboard.write(‘a’);  If I wanted the Up joystick to be the up arrow on the keyboard, I would just use: Keyboard.write(0x0E); .

.

My goal is to use my Neo Geo AES controllers as an input for MAME.  The Neo Geo pads don’t have any control boards built into the unit.  The console itself interprets each pin individually, just like an actual arcade board.  The pad uses a standard midi gameport (DA-15) connector, with each pin representing one button.

My idea is to make a Neo Geo pad to usb adapter using the Teensy++ as go-between.  The Neo Geo pins will be wired up to the digital pins on the Teensy, and the Teensy Arduino sketch will interpret each button press as a keyboard press.

I’m looking forward to working on this project.  I hope everyone has a great weekend and a restful Labor Day.