Need some serious help with mame and Mala

[loganm187]

I am trying to turn an old pc into a dedicated MAME machine with MALA front end and I am having some serious trouble. When I run Mula it just lists like every game ever made with no option or anything. I don't even have ROMS for these games it's listing, but that's all it doe sis list them. no option to do anything. How do you get mame to run within mala? And even through MAME I can't get any games to run as I get an error they are missing files. It is driving me nuts and I am using this tutorial and it's getting me NOWHERE. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/featur ... c?page=0,8

Any help or a tutorial would help a ton. I want a pc that just boots into MALA/MAME and I can control with an arcade stick etc.

[loganm187]

Also, I just added 180 NEO GEO games that have been confimed to all work and when i place in my ROM folder than launch MAME it lists about 12 of them and all of them state they are missing zip and CHD files when I try to launch. Do you have to download CHD files for each game or something? I never thought running an emulator would be such a bitch.

[SamuraiMegas]

Some games just don't work, even if MAME says they are fine.

[loganm187]

Using Mameui64 all the files I have work...but I was told that i can't use that in conjunction with MALA for the front end.

[loganm187]

when i go to CMD to create a MAME.ini file and enter cd C:\Emulators\Programs\mame which is CORRECT it just says this " is not recognized as an internal or external command operable program or batch file." I have used command promt for all kinds of stuff and this is just not working!

and when i go to create an XML it also pops up Command for me too ,but It won't allow me to enter anything therefore it won't even accept a ROM path afterwords. This is driving me crazy.

Using this tutorial: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=83570.0

[CRTGAMER]

Mala looks nice, but If it is running standby in the background will it slow down a loaded Game Rom? Why not just use the MameUI or Mame32 front end? You can list by so many variables including Genre, Controller, Year, Manufacturer, Vector or Rastar, etc.

[AppleQueso]

Mala looks nice, but If it is running standby in the background will it slow down a loaded Game Rom? Why not just use the MameUI or Mame32 front end? You can list by so many variables including Genre, Controller, Year, Manufacturer, Vector or Rastar, etc.

Probably because he's wanting a dedicated PC for use in a cabinet (or something similar) and needs mouse/keyboard free control, along with probably hiding the OS.

I've played around a lot with MAME and various frontends, but I've never messed with Mala, so I can't help you much.

As for the neogeo stuff not working, you do have the neogeo bios rom right?

[loganm187]

I just got the neogeo bios so that is working now. And YES, I am looking to have a dedicated MAME machine that I can just hide the OS and use my arcade sticks from booting with no mouse or keyboard needed. What frontend would you recommend? I'm looking at gameex right now as an alternative.

[AppleQueso]

It's been a while since I've messed with this stuff, so I really am not sure what to recommend. You should just try a few different ones and stick with whatever one you get comfortable with. Mame itself isn't super hard to get running, but getting it to play nice with frontends, depending on the frontend itself and what you're trying to do, can sometimes be a huge pain in the ass.

Hyperspin is pretty flashy and neat looking, and surprisingly pretty easy to setup in my experience. It's kinda a little too flashy though, and can be a huge resource hog on an older system. It's also a pain in the ass to get it to look as nice as it can, since all those crazy themes pretty much have to be installed one at a time, or even made from scratch. I personally gave up on it after a while.

I never had huge rom collections, so when I played around in most frontends I made all my romlists by hand. Worked well enough for me.

If you're working on a REALLY older PC, I might suggest doing a bunch of research to find frontends that can group multiple emulators into a single list. This way you can use lighter emulators like Kawaks or Final Burn Alpha for smooth CPS/2/3/NeoGeo stuff.

[loganm187]

Thanks for the info. I am running a windows 7 machine with 2 gigs of ddr2 RAM and a nvidia 6600 card. I am told that is plenty to run mame and a good front end. I won't be emulating any consoles. Just arcade games and MAME will be the only emulator I will be using.