Help with MAME, please

[markulous]

Okay I'm kind of a newbie with MAME. I looked at a few different faqs and tried running a search for my answer but to no avail. I have currently about 17 games. However, MAME will only show 15 for some reason. They are there because if I type in the name they appear. But I can't just scroll through the whole list of them for some reason. Is there any way to just view all the games I have without having to type it in?

I downloaded clrmame, but it lists ever game made for MAME, not just the ones I have. I still really don't understand that program either. All my games run fine yet it says I have missing bios files and wrong named roms. The only game I've ever had a problem with was Street Fighter Alpha 3, but I just deleted it(it said something about a missing ROM...).

Also I downloaded FRI and that worked fine with my SNES roms but not with my MAME roms(I guess because they are zips?). So...I still can't view them...

Any help would be appreciated.

[FatTrucker]

Download mameUI which is the windows based GUI version of mame. Click 'file' from the menu at the top then click 'audit all'.

Now select the 'Available' folder from the left hand pane and it will display all the available games you have.

Many games in mame require a seperate bios file and/or a CHD (Compressed Hunk of Data) image which is a large file typically a few hundred meg to a couple of gig for games that had mass storage media in them in the arcade.

Here is a list of the various bios roms mame uses for different types of game systems. You leave them zipped and place them in the mame/roms folder just like any other game rom.

Acclaim PSX-acpsx.zip

Arcadia System Bios-ar_bios.zip

Atari PSX-atpsx.zip

Atlus PSX-atluspsx.zip

Baby Phoenix/GV System-konamigv.zip

CVS Bios-cvs.zip

Cassete System-decocass.zip

Crystal System BIOS-crysbios.zip

Hyper Neogeo 64 Bios-hng64.zip

MPU4 Video Firmware-bctvidbs.zip

Max-A-Flex-maxaflex.zip

Megaplay Bios-megaplay.zip

Megatech Bios-megatech.zip

Multi Amenity Cassette System BIOS-macsbios.zip

Neo-Geo-neogeo.zip

Nintendo Super System BIOS-nss.zip

PGM (PolyGame Master) BIOS-pgm.zip

PS Arcade 95-psarc95.zip

PlayChoice-10-playch10.zip

ST-V Bios-stvbios.zip

Super Kaneko Nova System BIOS-skns.zip

Konami System GX-konamigx.zip

TPS-tps.zip

Taito FX1-taitofx1.zip

Capcom ZN1-cpzn1.zip

Capcom ZN2-cpzn2.zip.

If you click the CHD folder in the left hand pane it will display a list of all games that require a CHD image as well as the rom. Again these are placed in the mame/roms folder the same as the game rom.

Lastly bear in mind that many mame roms are periodically updated as better dumps and things become available, dependent on where they are sourced from, some out of date roms won't work with newer builds of mame, so if it reports missing files and you already have the correct bios and/or CHD then chances are your game rom is out of date and you need to source a newer dump. Clrmamepro can rename wrongly named roms and report any missing files but it cannot physically create any missing files. If mame reports files as missing then they aren't there and the only way to make them work is to physically obtain/dump/download them.

As always, all these files are subject to copyright and discussion on how or where they might be obtained is prohibited by this forums AUP.

Happy hunting.

[markulous]

Excellent. Thank you very much. That worked.

I'll keep that in mind about those BIOS roms. Like I said all of my games work fine at the moment aside from that SFA3. I'm assuming I probably need that capcom bios. I'll take a gander and try to acquire one her in a minute.