KnoppiXMAME 1.0 Released

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."

Comments

always wondered how to suck the roms off....

[Kaitiff]

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....

[selfabuse]

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 rocked.. so I grabbed my copy of gamepro, flipped through to the ad for the device, and saw the price tag.... nearly $300, which was a fortune for me at the age of 12 (and still is now, at the age of 21) Anyway, the floppies that these things wrote could be read in a PC. I recall that on some boards that had upload/download ratios, we always used to toss a couple SNES roms up for credits. Not sure if anyone else had the hardware to play them back, but it was fantastic.... until my friend took the gizmo back.

Re:always wondered how to suck the roms off....

[HungWeiLo]

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 the point in the code where it ends abruptly (or maybe the copying program would be smart enough to insert some disk-swapping notify bit to do that). Anyway, I ended up selling mine (around the time SNES/Genesis was big) with 150 "questionable" games for $50 to a mom-n-pop's video game store (before there were Software Etc's and Babbage's)

Where's the source code?

[Matt Ownby]

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. 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?

[fireboy1919]

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!"

Re:Where's the source code?

[Mortice]

Erm, well according to the freshmeat page, it's licenced under the GPL. So presumably the source code is available somewhere.

Perhaps they haven't modified the source code for any of the software they're using, in which case the source code can be found in the appropriate place for each piece of software.

nice, how about one for Apache?

[imag0]

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!

Re:nice, how about one for Apache?

[sexecutioner]

Have you looked at ADIOS??

These guys are doing some amazing stuff far and beyond what I was after, but their current release for a bootable Linux system is tops! I can walk up to the "secure" DELL WINNT machines at my university and do something useful with them (write and test PHP code on a local apache server).

Here

Re:Anti-whore Article Text in case of slashdotting

[mcgroarty]

I'd lurve to see it support DVD media so you can actually put a reasonable collection of ROMs on the disc. Does anyone know if this is doable with the current version?

KnoppixRTCW??? ET is free ya know...

[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

[AtariDatacenter]

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?

Windows users.

[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.

That's a great idea!

[Mensa Babe]

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.

Re:Where to get teh ROMs from?

[Anonymous Coward]

I purchased every single MAME ROM on CD-ROM from this company. It's called "Emu-On-CD".

I did this ages ago

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not new. I did it a few years back and posted on /. but the story was bounced

here

Re:Look to the past, the future holds nothing

[Hanno]

Check out some of those ancient Mame Roms. Back then, there were lots and lots and lots of pretty lackluster arcade games. We all just remember the good ones, but there were countless 1:1 space invader and pac man clones out there.