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chunksin

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I've built an image for installing 15khz GroovyMame running Windows 7 Embedded so you can write protect the OS partition and not have to worry about powering off your cab and PC at the same time and Windows getting corrupted. It has Attract Mode as the frontend with Windows completely hidden and comes with all of the software and applications you need and an automated installer process if you're not familiar with how to install and configure drivers and modelines.

You can grab the image here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pue_kw ... p=drivesdk

And instructions here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f5- ... p=drivesdk
 
Excellent! People are always asking about this. Hopefully it helps a bunch of folks.
 
Used this the other day and successfully got my groovymame setup for my Astro city up and running. Thanks a lot.
 
Sorry for the necrobump but I'm using the opportunity of a corrupted HDD to install this build of groovymame.

Only way I could get the USB to be read was when I changed the BIOS from Legacy to UEFI - eventually got the USB to boot and the image restored.

After rebooting though, I've received a nice little blue screen :)

Pb3zbjJ.jpg


Anyone ever come across this before? Tried doing my searches, but I don't think there's many that has this build installed.
 
Yeah switched it back to legacy.

I then also tried creating a legacy based boot disk but still ended up with a bsod. Also tried clean fresh disk, but still no good.

PC is an optiplex 990. Maybe I'll just go back to a normal win7 build
 
Windows 7 doesnt really work anywhere near as well as Windows 10 in terms of picking up different sata/disk controllers... Thus your BSOD.

@chunksin would have to inject extra drivers (to what end) into his Windows 7 image to accommodate _all_ the different disk controllers out there.

There would be some tool out there to let you manually inject/insert disk controller drivers into an existing windows 7 installation but it just turns into a time waster some of the time - especially with branded hardware like HP who use odd disk controllers as opposed to other "white box" systems of the same era.

@mR_CaESaR try a different motherboard if you have any spare hardware. The more generic the better probably eg Gigabyte, ASUS, etc mainboard. Change the disk settings in the bios controller as suggested too.

good luck!

@chunksin excellent work and thankyou for providing this for everyone. Until more cores are made available for the Mister, MAME is still a favourite for many and mostly unnoticeable in terms of it being emulated instead of simulated. How else am I going to play Turtles in Time (too expensive), Ivan 'ironman' stewarts super off road (wheel and stuff is expensive)!?
 
Thought I should update this post for future reference

I noticed the default settings on my BIOS had SATA operations configured as "RAID On"

aOay6pV.jpg


The moment I changed to that to AHCI, I was able to get through the installer and everything else in the documentation

It took me a while to realise any edit I made when "rotated" was going to a totally different folder in attract. So after a few hours on it, I managed to get demul to work for the few vertical shmup on naomi. Also struggled with the copying of roms - every time I used the copy roms/videos from the ui

https://i.imgur.com/qc7FLf6.mp4

I love how I can set it to read only and how windows is pretty much hidden, down to the mouse cursor (one of the things I disliked with demul was the cursor that always appeared when I launched a game, even though I had no cursor - maybe it was me who didn't know how to get rid of it).

The hardest part I'm having with this build now is when it comes to modifying anything, I either have to turn the windows settings back on or unplug the hdd and make the necessary edits (only edits I'm making is in attract and moving files around)

Once again, thanks Chunksin for providing this for everyone. I'm now going to do the same for a horizontal build and am currently trying to work out how to configure the "cpu" settings in mame as I'm reading a bit about CPU and Blitter settings for CV1K games (I found blitter settings, but can't find CPU)

Edit: found the CPU setting by changing the "cheat" parameter of the mame.ini from 0 to 1 under the # CORE MISC OPTIONS section. Once I did this, I could see it in the slider settings.
 
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Was just made aware of this recently. Finally took the time to walk through this and got it up and running first try. Thanks so much for putting this together!
 
I ended up giving this a try this weekend.

I have an old PC that I sometimes use as a backup Plex server. It's got an AMD FX-6300 (6 cores) w/16 GB RAM.

I wanted to try GroovyArcade linux image. I purchased an AMD 6450 video card for $15, from ebay, to put in the old PC . Pretty low cost of entry.

I got GroovyArcade running easy enough and was pretty impressed, at first. Unfortunately, it kept freezing when I would exit most games. This made it unusable.

I did some searching and learned that this is pretty common. I found a thread that seemed to indicate the issue was related to ffmpeg or variable bit rate videos...
I deleted all my videos and it still froze.

The more research I did, the more I saw that Windows is the way to go.

I'm not anti-windows (far from it) but I did not want to, essentially, recreate GroovyArcade in Windows. It would have required a massive amount of research, and (like I said) I only wanted to TRY GroovyArcade. I was not committing to anything. I have been pretty down on emulation for a while, and it's why I got into purchasing JAMMA PCBs. But I do come back to emulation from time to time, because I can't fork out $400 for every game I want to play.

I came across this post in my google results when trying to solve the GroovyArcade freezing issue.

The instructions were excellent and everything worked exactly as it was supposed to.

Since it worked like a charm - I am committing to a J-PAC setup using this image.

I am VERY impressed with the quality of MAME's emulation when it is running on something other than low-powered hardware. I have spent too much time with Raspberry Pi(s) and other low-powered devices over the past few years. I forgot how good proper emulation can be. It was awesome to play in 15khz; it was a very similar experience to my real boards.

I wanted to post here to say THANK YOU for putting it together. You did an excellent job, and I really appreciate it.

@chunksin - THANK YOU!
 
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I ended up giving this a try this weekend.

I have an old PC that I sometimes use as a backup Plex server. It's got an AMD FX-6300 (6 cores) w/16 GB RAM.

I wanted to try GroovyArcade linux image. I purchased an AMD 6450 video card for $15, from ebay, to put in the old PC . Pretty low cost of entry.

I got GroovyArcade running easy enough and was pretty impressed, at first. Unfortunately, it kept freezing when I would exit most games. This made it unusable.

I did some searching and learned that this is pretty common. I found a thread that seemed to indicate the issue was related to ffmpeg or variable bit rate videos...
I deleted all my videos and it still froze.

The more research I did, the more I saw that Windows is the way to go.

I'm not anti-windows (far from it) but I did not want to, essentially, recreate GroovyArcade in Windows. It would have required a massive amount of research, and (like I said) I only wanted to TRY GroovyArcade. I was not committing to anything. I have been pretty down on emulation for a while, and it's why I got into purchasing JAMMA PCBs. But I do come back to emulation from time to time, because I can't fork out $400 for every game I want to play.

I came across this post in my google results when trying to solve the GroovyArcade freezing issue.

The instructions were excellent and everything worked exactly as it was supposed to.

Since it worked like a charm - I am committing to a J-PAC setup using this image.

I am VERY impressed with the quality of MAME's emulation when it is running on something other than low-powered hardware. I have spent too much time with Raspberry Pi(s) and other low-powered devices over the past few years. I forgot how good proper emulation can be. I was awesome to play in 15khz; it was a very similar experience to my real boards.

I wanted to post here to say THANK YOU for putting it together. You did an excellent job, and I really appreciate it.

@chunksin - THANK YOU!
That's awesome. My Linux groovyarcade setup has been smooth sailing, but it's definitely a YMMV situation. I do eventually want to try this out to see if it does any better, given I have found MAME to run better in windows than Linux on the same hardware (personal experience, not claiming that as gospel).
 
I have an old PC that I sometimes use as a backup Plex server. It's got an AMD FX-6300 (6 cores) w/16 GB RAM.

Way overkill! For MAME I go no lower than a Intel Core 2 Duo based PC and no higher than an i5 with 4GB RAM, sometimes 8GB RAM.

I've never used @chunksin's image, but I build MAME PC's the hard way all the time. You're right, it took a lot of research. Now that I've mastered the process, It is about 2.5 hours of active engagement (installing Windows, drivers, updates, configuration, saving restore points), plus the time it takes to copy roms which is 3-5 hours. But I also never have any issues with freezing.
 
Way overkill! For MAME I go no lower than a Intel Core 2 Duo based PC and no higher than an i5 with 4GB RAM, sometimes 8GB RAM.

I've never used @chunksin's image, but I build MAME PC's the hard way all the time. You're right, it took a lot of research. Now that I've mastered the process, It is about 2.5 hours of active engagement (installing Windows, drivers, updates, configuration, saving restore points), plus the time it takes to copy roms which is 3-5 hours. But I also never have any issues with freezing.
Yeah, it's what I had laying around.

It turns out it's actually an FX8300... I forgot I swapped the FX8300 into that PC when I got the Ryzen a few years ago.

If it doesn't cost me extra money, it's the correct PC! :)
 
I have some time after this week and am working on a small project: a PCB for the DaemonBite Encoder in the multi-console form factor originated by Akishops PS360+ and now carried on by Brook. Will use it with SCART2ARC3 and/or JAMMAizer. Might get to tinker with @chunksin's image if time permits. If all goes well, I will post a video of a well setup MAME machine to inspire the rest of those to follow.
 
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