The Rombox thread.

ElectricGrave said:

Would you mind explaining the whole raspberry pie thing to me, is that a kit, does it come preassembled and just ready to be set with emulation and so on?

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The Raspberry Pi does come preassembled. It's powered over USB (you can use a standard phone charger), plug in USB controllers, hook up a TV via HDMI, load up something like Retropie on an SD card and you're good to go.

When you buy the Pi is just the pcb, but is assembled. You can buy kits that come with a case, power supply, wifi dongle, etc. Loading up Retropie is easy, just download an image, load the image to a micro sd card, plug it into the pi. From there things get a bit more complicated, but a lot of that is my need to tweak every little setting to perfection.

GohanX said:

When you buy the Pi is just the pcb, but is assembled. You can buy kits that come with a case, power supply, wifi dongle, etc. Loading up Retropie is easy, just download an image, load the image to a micro sd card, plug it into the pi. From there things get a bit more complicated, but a lot of that is my need to tweak every little setting to perfection.

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Same here. It's initially a very simple setup that goes awry quickly once you realize it doesn't behave at all like you'd expect. You cannot drag and drop anything you need onto your sd card. You can only access the file system over ftp.

You also have to learn a few Linux command line stuff to tweak things.

If you aren't expecting a plug and play device that you know you will have to spend some time tinkering with, then it's pretty rad. Just expect to read some forums and faqs.

People have been making all kinds of superguns, consolized MVS/CPS2/PGM systems, STV/CPS2 multicarts and whatnot but no one ever thought that it would be a good idea to make a mame box that actually works. I'm pretty sure it would sell like hotcakes. I'd rather pay $250+ for something that works great than $70 for a piece of crap that won't even let me play my shmups in tate mode.

It is making me learn Linux, which is useful. I liked it well enough that I took Windows 10 off my shitty netbook and loaded Debian, which made the ancient thing useful again.

CORY_POOOOOOOOON! said:

People have been making all kinds of superguns, consolized MVS/CPS2/PGM systems, STV/CPS2 multicarts and whatnot but no one ever thought that it would be a good idea to make a mame box that actually works. I'm pretty sure it would sell like hotcakes. I'd rather pay $250+ for something that works great than $70 for a piece of crap that won't even let me play my shmups in tate mode.

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MOst people if not all that make MAME setups and what have you, spend more time and money on everything that isn't important, the projects looks awesome but it plays like shit...no amount of lights, buttons, joysticks, trackballs, spinners, cooling fans, Hyperspin skins, flashy interfaces, absurdly populated control panels are gonna make up for a shitty MAME configuration. My MAME runs awesome, pixel perfect on native rez, whether you use LCD, VGA CRT, HDMI, 15khz, or anything else, setting up your MAME pixel resolution and timings should be the most important thing above all.

As for the Multicarts, I actually do enjoy them and for 70 bucks I'm not gonna cry over some shmups shortcomings...

ElectricGrave said:

MOst people if not all that make MAME setups and what have you, spend more time and money on everything that isn't important, the projects looks awesome but it plays like shit...no amount of lights, buttons, joysticks, trackballs, spinners, cooling fans, Hyperspin skins, flashy interfaces, absurdly populated control panels are gonna make up for a shitty MAME configuration. My MAME runs awesome, pixel perfect on native rez, whether you use LCD, VGA CRT, HDMI, 15khz, or anything else, setting up your MAME pixel resolution and timings should be the most important thing above all.

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Absolutely.

As for the Multicarts, I actually do enjoy them and for 70 bucks I'm not gonna cry over some shmups shortcomings...

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I'm more of a shmup guy so this is important to me. I can't really stand playing vertical games in fake yoko mode with scaling glitches and I'd rather pay more to get something better if I can.

SO an update to my Rombox build as it stands. It sucks, the embedded AMD quad core is brought to it's knees while running Win 7. Framerates are all over the place. I'm going with a an Intel Mobo and a Pentium processor, I will return with and update.

That sucks, you'd think it wouldn't choke on a two versions old os.

Kid Panda said:

SO an update to my Rombox build as it stands. It sucks, the embedded AMD quad core is brought to it's knees while running Win 7. Framerates are all over the place. I'm going with a an Intel Mobo and a Pentium processor, I will return with and update.

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Yeah the a4 sucks pretty bad. If you're looking for a decent priced cpu I recommended a dual core Intel like the one Todd used in his build. Plenty of.processing power for mame.

Well, dumb ass me, forgot to order any memory for the computer so when I went to start building it. nothing!

Oh well, easily fixed but can't believe I made that dumb mistake. I think because I changed my mind and ordered a different unit and the one I originally was going to get was a package deal that came with some memory.

Anyhow maybe next weekend I'll have something up and running.

In terms of hardware, would an old P4 (probably around 3ghz) with 3GB of RAM be man enough for the job?

MtothaJ said:

In terms of hardware, would an old P4 (probably around 3ghz) with 3GB of RAM be man enough for the job?

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For early 90s and 80s it should be. Don't be expecting to run most shmups at full speed though.

If using older hardware you can always use an older version of mame like 0.78 or lower. MAME switched code base I believe after 0.78 so everything is slow as hell. That should be good enough for most shooters, even Taito F3 stuff. There's also always raine or FBA as well if you just want some good shooters minus newer Cave stuff. FBA even has the sound added to the Taoplan driver so you get fairly accurate sound in Batsugun.

I've taken the plunge on the rombox idea. Just ordered a JPAC and an ATI Radeon HD4550 512mb, all I need now is a suitably cheap Core2Duo box with a couple gig of ram and we're getting there!

lachlan said:

I've taken the plunge on the rombox idea. Just ordered a JPAC and an ATI Radeon HD4550 512mb, all I need now is a suitably cheap Core2Duo box with a couple gig of ram and we're getting there!

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Get yourself a newer Core i3 processor or overclock the hell out of that Core2duo if your mobo supports it.

DecepticonZero said:

For early 90s and 80s it should be. Don't be expecting to run most shmups at full speed though.

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By way of an update it turned out that Fujitsu P4 machine I got for free had a busted motherboard. Just when I was about to throw it out and go and get a new modern day mobo / ram / cpu (probably the smart choice), I found a replacement used motherboard locally for c.a. 5 USD so I decided to give this shitbox one more go.
The upshot is that I know have a working P4 3.0Ghz HT with 2GB Ram running Win 7 32bit. The downside is that the new motherboard only has 2 ram slots vs 4 of the old board so I am down by 1GB of Ram and it supports AGP and not PCI-E graphics, so I cannot use the Radeon X550 card I had in the old machine (but not sure if it was compatible with soft15hz anyway). Also no luck getting the sound to work so far, but for general testing purposes its sufficient.
I ended up getting two AGP graphics cards today, with one of them being the ATI RADEON 9200. While the card is compatible with soft15hz the problem I run into in Windows 7 is that when shutting down the computer, the card's drivers cause the computer to crash (problem is well documented), so when the computer restarts it goes to last known good settings, ignoring soft15hz settings. * UPDATE - resolved this by installing just the driver and not the whole ATI Catalyst bloatware package. *
In Windows XP 15hz mode boots up fine, the last hurdle is getting it to output correctly on the BVM. Problem seems to be the cable (off the shelf VGA-->Scart by Vivanco) - sync seems to be incorecty wired - image is green and moving around. I just ordered another cable : http://www.ebay.pl/itm/Cable-VGA-RG...748414?hash=item1ea2a51bbe:g:1bsAAOSwuMFUf0R9 - looks solid, will post back on results when it arrives.


PS. The other card is an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 - just to give a heads up that this one is not compatible with soft15hz.

not necessarily relevant to mame, but the wii does a remarkable job with basic emulation of 8 and 16 bit games.

I am currently awaiting for delivery of the VGA to Scart cable so can't post any CRT related experiences just yet. However the P4 shitbox is now fully operational - I have tried a few games on a standard VGA monitor using a very early version of MAME (something like v0.111, will need to confirm) namely SF2CE, Ghouls and Mortal Kombat. Out of these SF2CE and MK played IMHO perfectly, with Ghouls there was some screen tearing, which I am hoping stepping up to a newer version of MAME will fix.

Also, perhaps ths will be of interest to someone, I hooked up a Hama VGA switcher, to switch between the VGA monitor and the BVM:






Works perfectly well with no interference or degredation in image quality, also build quality is pretty good too with a metal case and a sturdy rotary selector.

Stellarola said:

Get yourself a newer Core i3 processor or overclock the hell out of that Core2duo if your mobo supports it.

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Despite your advice my wallet decided not to open up far enough for an i3 system. I opted for a cheap dell OptiPlex 780 with an e8400 3ghz core2duo and 4gb ddr2 ram. It'll support the radeon hd4550 so we'll see how well she runs. I only want to play CPS1,2,3 and maybe some other 2d stuff, not expecting too much from it.

lachlan said:

Despite your advice my wallet decided not to open up far enough for an i3 system. I opted for a cheap dell OptiPlex 780 with an e8400 3ghz core2duo and 4gb ddr2 ram. It'll support the radeon hd4550 so we'll see how well she runs. I only want to play CPS1,2,3 and maybe some other 2d stuff, not expecting too much from it.

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That's what I use in both of mine and they run perfectly fine. You're not gonna run 3d stuff in mame, but most things including shmups run flawless.

Are you guys looking to just run games or run them well? Y'all gonna need faster processors than you think...

GroovyMAME is more demanding than vanilla MAME. Even more so, ASIO build of GroovyMAME requires more than regular GroovyMAME.

lachlan said:

Despite your advice my wallet decided not to open up far enough for an i3 system. I opted for a cheap dell OptiPlex 780 with an e8400 3ghz core2duo and 4gb ddr2 ram. It'll support the radeon hd4550 so we'll see how well she runs. I only want to play CPS1,2,3 and maybe some other 2d stuff, not expecting too much from it.

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I have that exact computer minus the video card hooked up as a HTPC. I haven't used it for games much, but it did great with TMNT on Mame, as well as the early Wing Commander games in Dosbox and Brutal Doom.

Stellarola said:

Are you guys looking to just run games or run them well? Y'all gonna need faster processors than you think...

GroovyMAME is more demanding than vanilla MAME. Even more so, ASIO build of GroovyMAME requires more than regular GroovyMAME.

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I'm running groovy mame perfectly fine on a dual core. Groovy mame is no more demanding then normal mame until you add in the scanlines. The video card is there to handle that. Very few games support dual core processing in mame, so one core running at 3ghz is plenty for most games.

I agree that the ASIO build is more taxing for sure, but to be honest zip don't really notice much of a difference. I'm not a big audio guy though, so maybe it's just me.

DecepticonZero said:

I'm running groovy mame perfectly fine on a dual core. Groovy mame is no more demanding then normal mame until you add in the scanlines. The video card is there to handle that. Very few games support dual core processing in mame, so one core running at 3ghz is plenty for most games.

I agree that the ASIO build is more taxing for sure, but to be honest zip don't really notice much of a difference. I'm not a big audio guy though, so maybe it's just me.

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Once you notice the audio latency...you'll be forever changed. Also may want to look into frame_delay and other settings...

I would suggest everyone check the framerate by pressing F11...I believe? Make sure it sits at 100% all the time. If it drops...you'll know you need to upgrade.