No Keyboard or gamepad when starting mame

[mwoods98]

I recently jumped on the raspberry bandwagon and I wanted to install retropie_v2.4.2. I was able to get it installed, expanded the space on the card, started SSH and put some roms in the proper directory.

When I start a mame rom it does start but I have no control via the gamepad nor keyboard. I have read in another thread that you can hit tab and set the buttons for the emulation but I was not able to do this.

The same thing is true with: The Atari 2600, N64, Sega Master System emulators. However, on the 3 just listed I can at least escape by pressing Escape.

Thanks!

[Floob]

Thats odd that pressing tab isnt working for you.
I presume you have put the roms in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame ?

When the game has loaded, hitting tab should bring up the menu – I guess your keybaord is detected ok as Esc works. Could you try a different keyboard?

I guess you could wipe your cfg file for it, but that seems extreme. I forget the path for that at the moment, but I think its somewhere near /opt/retropie/configs/mame4all I think.

I have a video showing the button config on my signature link.

For those other systems, you would want retroarch – check my videos for controller configs.

[mwoods98]

Floob,

Thanks for your reply. I have actually seen some of your videos when searching youtube for examples.

So, some things to report.

I have my roms in this directory:
~/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame
I will move them to the ~/RetroPie/roms/mame dir to see if I get a different result.

Here is an example of the permissions in that directory:
-rw-r–r– 1 pi pi 22302 Dec 26 2007 dkong.zip

I have wondered if the locale was not setup properly so I tried to run the setup when I noticed that there is an error every time I try to set the keyboard to a US keyboard. I have included a screen shot.

I’ll report back with the result of the changes. If there is anything else I can try please let me know.

Thanks

[Floob]

Roms in here will run ok: (The permissions you have look fine.)
~/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame

but it uses a different emulator, and can use a newer romset.
If you put them in
~/RetroPie/roms/mame you need to make sure they are version 0.37b5.

Saying that I’m sure ADVMAME uses tab to configure still, so that should work, but the performance in the mame directory will be better (as that runs mame4all-pi).

hmm, about the locale, I’ve not changed it as I’m in UK. but then it shouldnt present a problem keeping it as that for you. Maybe something has changed in the 2.4 build to remove that – I need to check when I get home.

[mwoods98]

Update:

When the roms are moved into the mame directory and the game is trying to run I get a message that the file can’t be found and it reboots back to ES.

[mwoods98]

Thanks for the reply

Odd. I installed mame-4-all from source but.. there is no mame4all-pi in the Retropie directory..

This is getting weird.

I’m perfectly happy starting over from scratch as I figure I would be doing this a few times until I got it the way I wanted.

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks for your help

[Floob]

I would be very tempted to use the 2.4.2 image, then you dont need to update from source or binary as its all already installed. Pretty much no extra config needed at all then.

https://www.petrockblock.com/retropie/retropie-downloads/download-info/retropie-sd-card-image-v2-4-2-beta/

Then you would need to make sure you have the 0.37b5 romset (It has 2271 zip files in it), and put it into
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame (This is the dir mame4all will look in)

I have put some info on mame versions here:

MAME romset versions?

[mwoods98]

Ok I think I may have hosed this install. I’m going to start fresh with the 2.42 beta, prep the card (getting the max space) and update the raspi-config script. I’ll confirm that the roms I have are from that set and get back to you.

Thanks

[mwoods98]

Update:

Re-installed with 2.42 beta. Expanded the size updated the scripts and put (what I think are compatible) roms in the mame directory. Both don’t work.

I’m also trying a few other emulators. I am trying something on C64 which has made it to the boot screen and then paused.

I was able to get one NES game to work but the game pad did not work.

[Floob]

If you only put a few roms in they may be clones that need parent files. Its easiest to copy the full set if you arent sure.
Do you know what version the romset is, it has to be 0.37b5 to work.

To get the gamepads working check these videos:

[mwoods98]

Thanks for the Video it was very helpful.

Update:
SNES, NES, SegaMaster, Atari 2600 – Working and working well since they use the retroArch configuration.

Not working Intellivision and MAME

Mame is still giving me problems and I think I was able to find a list of roms that should work with it.

Progress… :)

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