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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

KnoppiXMAME 1.0 Released 212

Posted by michael from the mame-in-a-box dept.
Ant writes "KnoppixMAME is a bootable arcade machine emulator with hardware detection and autoconfiguration. It works automatically on all modern and not-so-modern hardware, including gameports and joysticks. It is powered by Knoppix Debian GNU/Linux, X-MAME, and gxmame." Update: 06/19 23:18 GMT by S : Although there are earlier versions in the release directory, looks like V1.0 hasn't made it onto the FTP just yet. Meanwhile, Jim points out the AdvanceCD image, which is "..also a bootable ISO image of a minimal Linux distribution containing MAME, but weighing in at 16 MB rather than 200 MB so there is more room for ROMs."
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KnoppiXMAME 1.0 Released More

KnoppiXMAME 1.0 Released

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  • Except for a very few gems, the current crop of games has been pretty lackluster.

    It's like all the ideas for games has dried up and all that's left to do is rehash old tried and true ones.

    Played Out.

  • always wondered how to suck the roms off.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kaitiff ( 167826 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:10PM (#6248706) Homepage
    Not being nasty, I just always wondered how to pull the roms off the old nintendo and sega cartridges. God only knows I have a buttload of them laying around. What about Sega CDs too? I assume since I 'own' the cartridges it's legal for me to 'make copies' if I don't distribute them, correct?

    • Re:always wondered how to suck the roms off.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bedouin ( 248624 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:21PM (#6248811)
      Save yourself the time and download them like everyone else does. Most of the Genesis games were what, 512kb? Hit up a ROM channel on IRC.

    • Re:always wondered how to suck the roms off.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:22PM (#6248813)
      You'd need to desolder the ROMs from the cartridge and read them with an EPROM reader. The pinouts are often different from EPROMs, so that's another thing that needs to be dealt with. (with some wires and an IC socket or 2)

      Sega CDs are just CDs. Really easy to copy these days, and I've heard the Sega CD console has no protection (so it can actually run games on CD-R).
      • Indeed, the Sega CD has no protection at all. I've played burned Sega CD games several times, the only problem is that there's next to no good games for the system, other than Lunar Silver Star Story.

        The reason why it has no copy protection is that when the Sega CD was released, CD-RW drives were so prohibitevly expensives and the media cost $40+ a disc that Sega assumed no one would bother.
    • Back in the day.. in GamePro and the like, I kept seeing ads for a device for a genesis or SNES, that you would plug into the cartridge slot of your console, stick a floppy in to, and stick a cartridge into, and it would copy the cartridge to the floppy, and you could play it on the console, with the copier. IIRC (which I may not) several games spanned a couple floppies.. don't remember how you knew when to change, but I knew it worked. One of my friends came back from Japan with one for his SNES and it roc
      • I had one of these when I was young.

        It's actually not a shady machine that pirates Nintendo gamez. Nintendo actually made a machine that runs 3.5" floppies (they're not exactly 3.5" computer floppies, but close), and also licensed them to be manufactured by other companies (or at least I think it was a proper license). Anyway, these machines were only sold in Asia, AFAIK.

        To answer your earlier question, somehow, the OS will tell you to flip the disk to the other side (or insert a 2nd disk) when it gets to
        • i'm pretty sure what you are describing is nintendo's fds [atarihq.com], which is different than the 'console' that allowed you to pirate snes games to real 3.5" floppy disks. the fds was released in japan only, but many gamers and collectors have them in the usa today.

          the snes copier is obviously much more illegal.
          • Illegal depending on what you were using it for.

            Backing up your own cartridges for your own personal use? Fair use.

            Backing up rentals/your friends games? Piracy.

            It's a fine line and hardware/software manufacturers have walked it for decades. Especially those designing stuff that lets you copy what you otherwise couldn't.
      • IRC (which I may not) several games spanned a couple floppies.. don't remember how you knew when to change

        I have one of these copiers for the snes, called the wildcardDX2. For it at least you'd simply load all the floppies into memory before the game started. While expensive, I found the device quite worth the money I paid for it. Having imported a number of rpgs from Japan, there was just something very cool about being able to dump, apply a translation patch, and then play it on a real snes. Especially
      • I have one of these called a Multi Game Hunter. Amazingly enough, it works on both Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It has a 2.0MO (2 megabyte unformatted capacity - what we call 1.44MB in PC-land) floppy drive in it, which I actually had to replace, unfortunately breaking the little tabs that hold the floppy module together in the process. The floppy module unplugs from the unit itself, so I guess they were planning either to be able to replace them when they broke, or to be able to upgrade to some other f
    • I remember reading schematics for a nes copier. Basically, you would rip apart a nes console, solder a bit to make a parallell port connection, and use a program to store the roms in nes format. Tragically I can't find the page now, sorry.
    • All of the pins on the cartridge have a purpose. Some are for addressing and some are for data. There's probably a grounding pin and a power pin. Anyhow, go to a website like www.gamesx.com or google.com :P and look for the pinouts online.

      You'd need the know how to write a program to use a parallel port to drive the important pins (basically start addressing from the base address of the cartridge and save the data that comes back over the data bus. Keep going until it fails.) and you can build yourself
    • for cartridge games, you can find a rom dumper do do that. no need to desolder chips or anything. every cartridge system has a dumper made for it. a company named BUNG tends to make a lot of them. I have one of their N64 dumpers, and it works almost flawlessly.. except for needing a few bios flashes due to new protection schemes. note: rom dumpers are apparently semi-legal, but being I was only using it for my personal collection, i'd love to see someone bust me. :)

      for CD-based systems (TG-CD, Sega CD, Pla

  • Where's the source code? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Matt Ownby ( 158633 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:11PM (#6248714) Homepage Journal
    Maybe I am missing something but I don't see source code for this available to be downloaded. I'd be interested in using what he has done for another certain emulator [daphne-emu.com]. A bootable linux CD that has support for most modern hardware is something I've longed for but haven't bothered putting together.

    • Re:Where's the source code? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fireboy1919 ( 257783 ) <(rustyp) (at) (freeshell.org)> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:25PM (#6248843) Homepage Journal
      Source code would be nice. Knoppix seems to be doing a good job in hardware autoconfiguration, and like most other good projects, Gentoo is stealing it (in fact, there are three different hardware detection libraries available in Gentoo right now). :)

      Seriously, when one project manages to get something Right, shouldn't everybody benefit from it? I'm quite sure that any improvements they've made in either MAME or hardware detection can benefit the entire OS community - or at least the part of it that has a flexible enough distribution to absorb it.

      With every new Linux innovation I'm always thinking, "GREAT! Gimmie source! I want that it my distro!"

  • Not quite yet. (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcgroarty ( 633843 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {ytraorgcm.nairb}> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:11PM (#6248717) Homepage
    To save people some frustrated hunting, it's not available just quite yet [freshmeat.net], but will be soon.

    Be patient, unlike certain slash editors, who should have made sure the file was actually in the directory they were pointing to. :-)

  • Anti-whore Article Text in case of slashdotting: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:11PM (#6248720)
    About: KnoppixMAME is a bootable arcade machine emulator with hardware detection and autoconfiguration. It works automatically on all modern and not-so-modern hardware, including gameports, CowboyNeal and joysticks. It is powered by Knoppix Debian GNU/Linux, X-MAME, and gxmame.

    Changes: ROMs can now be put on the CD ISO without having to remaster/recompress Knoppix. /ramdisk/home can also be copied to the root of the ISO to make configuration changes persistent. Networking support is now enabled and supported with xmame and gxmame. XMAME has been updated to 0.69 and gxmame to 0.33. Xv is now the default display mode; it can be changed by using the "dga" option on the boot commandline. The ISO is now 100MB smaller, at 200MB.

  • well (Score:2, Funny)

    by freedommatters ( 664657 )
    looking for the download was a great waste of 5 minutes of my life. can i have a refund please? john

  • nice, how about one for Apache? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by imag0 ( 605684 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:17PM (#6248772) Homepage
    I was thinking a while back how cool it would be for a bootable Apache on cd... Boot the target box up, loads and runs Apache.

    You can change the /htdocs to an nfs mount elsewhere on the network or have it on a local drive (in case for dynamic sites, like using a Wiki, that need to write stuff to disk), configuration changes can be saved and loaded from a floppy as well.

    Would make a nice secure apache install and easy to setup as well.

    All I got. Run with it. Thanks Knoppix guys!

    • Hmmmm, I could maybe use a copy for my coffeemaker... I always did want to http:// to it.
    • Don't forget to announce it on Slashdot as soon as you have a first working alpha version. If you need any security-related help, I might be able to contribute my expertise to your project, provided it will be based entirely on free software. I wish you good luck.
    • I had thought of using Knoppix as an "appliance" distribution - I hadn't considered Apache, I was thinking for things like Squid [squid-cache.org], NTOP [ntop.org], Nagios [nagios.org], etc. Config information could be held on a floppy or flash drive.

      Matt
    • Already on the knoppix CD's... but it's not enabled by default. All you have to do is "su - ; apachectl restart", and you're good to go. Play fun games with mount, and make sure you understand what you're doing so you don't get haxored.

      --Robert
      • All you have to do is "su - ; apachectl restart", and you're good to go.

        Assuming you're at the $ prompt in X you'll need to do this:

        sudo su -

        And since it's Debian-based you can use Debian's:

        /etc/init.d/apache start

        from the # prompt. Or you shortcut it with:


        sudo /etc/init.d/apache start

        FTP

        While we're on the subject, ftp is a bit trickier. This is one way:


        knoppix$ sudo su -
        knoppix# rm /etc/hosts.allow
        knoppix# rm /etc/hosts.deny
        knoppix# passwd knoppix
        knoppix# /etc/init.d/inetd restart

  • Nah... I'll stick with gamebase (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acid_zebra ( 552109 ) <acidzebra.gmail@com> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:20PM (#6248799) Journal
    While I'll probably get shot in the head for this, I don't like this overspecialization.
    Why run just mame when with gamebase (http://www.gamebase64.com/gb64v2.htm) I have a frontend that will happily organize ALL my emu collections, including N64, SNES, atari c64 and god knows what else. (yes, arcade roms too).
    It provides screenshots, categories, favorites, alternate configs and god knows what else. It runs on windows 98/2000 but it might run under wine or whatnot.
    Now to finish building that arcade cabinet I started 3 years ago... *sigh*

  • KnoppixRTCW??? ET is free ya know... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Since Enemy Territory is free is there any reason a knoppix build wouldn't work?

    Anyone done this already?

    Just curious.

  • Linux MAME vs DOS Mame vs Windows MAME (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:32PM (#6248892)
    Is there anyone who publishes a good general speed comparison between these? There are some games that I'd like to play, but they're just too slow to be bearable with my hardware. I'm wondering if the Linux version is, generally, any faster?
    • Not that I know of (I haven't looked). Why not try it yourself... it's free after all.
    • Well, on my laptop dos/windows mame is a lot faster than the linux version. Its a celeron 433 and I can play neo-geo games at full speed under dos or windows but can only manage 15fps using the xview video driver under linux. Of course its probably just the unoptimised trident cyberblade xfree drivers holding performance back. Haven't had time to other methods. Also I have a nice big powerful (at least in comparison!) Athlon desktop system with Radeon 9000 pro. Linux mame rocks in that :-)
    • A lot of it has to do with how well your video card is supported, of course, but in general so long as you have plenty of RAM they should all perform approximately the same.

      The processor emulators in MAME are pretty much the only bottleneck if you're not swapping to disk, and they are OS independant.

      if you're really lacking in RAM, you'll probably have the best luck with the DOS version... but then, if you're lacking in RAM Knoppix is the LAST thing you should be looking at.

  • ROMs (Score:2)

    by byrd77 ( 171150 )
    16 vs 200 Mb ISOs? Room for ROMs? It would seem you could fit most ever ROM ever issued into (700 - 16) || (700 - 200).

    What are you dl'ing?
    • uh, the complete mame romset is around 14GB.

    • Re:ROMs (Score:2, Informative)

      by Ryan Amos ( 16972 )
      Actually some of the neo-geo roms are huge.. 64 and 128 megs each. MAME also supports a lot of newer games, which are significantly larger than Ms. Pac-Man. MAME also supports some 5000 or so games, so even if they were all less than 256k, that's still much larger than the size of a CD.
    • I have a tiny slice of the ROMs supported by MAME; I don't have any cabinet images (that I'm aware of) or very many sound packs. My collection, with the files zipped as is recommended, takes up three CDROMs.
    • Mames current supported rom catalog if you collected it is over 5 gigs, last I looked and that was a while ago.

  • Can I buy ROMs? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by akvalentine ( 560139 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:42PM (#6248961)
    Is there any one out there that sells ROM collections? I would be interested in buying some, but I can't find any.

    If nobody does sell them, why do the copyright holders care if they are traded, since they aren't losing any revenue?

    • Because they rerelease the games later. Look at Sega Smash Pack for Dreamcast (and PC, if memory serves me correct) -- a bunch of Genesis games emulated. Or the various Namco Arcade Packs. Just because it isn't sold NOW, it doesn't mean that it's theirs.
      • Look at Sega Smash Pack for Dreamcast

        You forgot to put the word badly after that. That thing was such a disapointment, especially given what a big fan of the mega drive I was back in the day. Finally, a console company seemed to really get it, and realise that their old games still had value. Instead anyone who bought it was tortured by the single worst sound emulation ever seen on a comercial emulator.
    • If you have USENET access, you'll be able to find quite a few people willing to burn you an entire set of ROMs for a nominal fee to cover the materials and the postage. Look around alt.games.mame, and check for threads beginning with "[BURN]".
    • http://eggmansworld.com/

    • Re:Can I buy ROMs? (Score:2, Informative)

      by tmasman ( 604942 )
      Mame Rom Burners [usburners.com]
      But you didn't hear that from me...

      ~ tmasman

    • Re:Can I buy ROMs? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Eil ( 82413 )

      Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT buy any rom collections. Almost without exception, anyone that you might find selling emulator roms is doing so illegally. Especially the dimwits on eBay. Full and complete MAME romsets are available on the net if you look hard enough. There are several highly active newsgroups where complete romsets are posted regularly for almost every system imaginable. I know of at least one IRC channel where a few weeks' worth of downloading can get you just about every game released for every

  • Windows users. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anyone have instructions on how to set up either of these (KnoppiXMAME and AdvanceCD) with Windows?

    How do you add ROMS, how do you burn (what settings, etc) to make it bootable.

  • Yeah (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:48PM (#6248986)
    I sure hope you have the original games for all those ROMs you play.

    Oh, and this purple shit hurts my eyes.
  • Nice, but not quite as cool as your own Jubei [cmdrtaco.net].
  • I see the words 'bootable CD' and the words 'linux distro'....

    I know nothing about Linux.

    Is running this thing as simple as booting the CD?
    • Gentoo games also makes games that boot from a CD..

      http://www.gentoogames.com

      They're usually a 600meg download but the upside is that they require virtually no hard drive space.
    • Yes, it is that simple. And if you want to install it on your HD, it is quite easy. Especially compared to getting MAME to work on my Linux box (ARGH). The only downside to Knoppix is that you don't know any more once you are using Linux than before you started. Then again, that could be a plus.
  • With all these projects being based off Knoppix, is there any thing that would be considered a knoppix lite? ( aside from dealing with the trouble of 'remastering'... )

  • How to get KnoppiXMAME 1.0 (Score:5, Informative)

    by drfreak ( 303147 ) <dtarsky@gmail. c o m> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @09:34PM (#6250082)
    Hi everyone, I'm the author of KnoppiXMAME. The file wasn't available yet on ibiblio when I updated the project status on freshmeat. I didn't think it would generate an announcement on the main page, and I certainly didn't think it would be slashdotted!

    I've mailed the ibiblio maintainers and am waiting for a response on the status of the ISO file I uploaded about three days ago. In the meantime you can grab the ISO directly from me by opening an ftp session to yummy.dyndns.org. It's only 128K up, so whoever gets it first please put some mirrors up!

    - Daniel R. Tarsky

  • Don't feed the scammers (Score:5, Informative)

    by dq5 studios ( 682179 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @12:54AM (#6251195) Homepage
    There are many many sites out there charging US$100 or more for MAME sets. It is in direct response to their actions that the Tombstone [tombstones.org.uk] Group was formed. Due to some provider problems they were shutdown for a time. To keep the scammers from taking over during their absence, Lazarus [usburners.com] and FreeMAMERoms [freemameroms.com] took over.
    There maybe other burning groups, these are just the ones I am aware of.
    If you want to know what I mean by scammers do a Google for "Emu on CD" for a Brazillian site. (Please don't give them any money)

  • I've been thinking recently, that a really good way to get people into linux would be to have a couple of really decent games for the platform.

    The trouble being that we're in a chicken-egg senario right now (the chicken did btw...) - no killer linux only games exist, and because mostly only geeks are using linux at home right now, no (killer) games are written for linux.

    So how about using knoppix as the answer - basically, if you want to play our game, you have to put the disk in and reboot.... a kno

    • > (the chicken did btw...)

      Why do you reckon that, it was the egg. It was laid by some bird that wasnt quite a chicken.
    • no killer linux only games exist,

      sheesh, what moron moderated this as insightful?

      To set things straight, this has nothing to do with Linux games. This is about running MAME under Linux from a completely bootable CD, and just happens to run under Linux (you can't run Windows right from CD, or so Microsoft wants you to believe, and even if you know you can, you cannot freely distribute the Microsoft code to do so). MAME is an arcahe game emulation project. Running MAME (regardless of the OS choice) let

  • "..also a bootable ISO image of a minimal Linux distribution containing MAME, but weighing in at 16 MB rather than 200 MB so there is more room for ROMs."

    if the file is an ISO, which is a CDimage, how do you add files to it? I use EasyCDCreator on Windows (no cdrw in gnu/linux box..) - how can I open the iso to be burnt, then *add* files to it?
  • I don't know if anyone will see this now that it's off the main screeen, but I've got a .torrent for 1.0 available here:

    http://torrentreactor.com/download.php?file=Knoppi XMAME-1.0.iso.torrent [torrentreactor.com]

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