Posted by retrocactus on 3, 2000 at 11:47 AM:
In Reply to: FINALLY! A way to transfer files to your MAME machine... posted by robert mcelwee on 2, 2000 at 11:39 AM:
You should check out Nick Bourdo's FAQ about setting up a boot menu on an arcade machine.
http://www.geocities.com/nicbourdo/faq.htm#disk
Using this simple to do method, I now have a boot menu upon startup of my cabinet PC which I can select from a list of options with the joystick. Since I'm using the IPAC encoder, I make my selection and press P1 and move the Joystick left to register an "ENTER" and away I go. You can set a timer so that Arcade OS boots automatically after 10 seconds (which is what I've done) or if you move the joystick, you can select from the other options. It's very simple to add more options as I currently have a menu item for a number of different emulators that aren't supported in Arcade OS as well as the last option being booting into win98. I boot into win98 every time there is a new version of MAME or some new screenshots or whatever that need to be installed. I have the MAME folders shared in W98 on that machine and simply use the LAN to transfer everything. My main computer actually has a mirror of all the software installed on it (I've got LOTS of room) and it's usually a matter of testing it first on that PC and then I just drag and drop folders onto the shortcuts I have for the arcade PC.
: I have been using dos 6.0 on my mame machine for some time now. When it was time to transfer files (new versions of mame, roms, etc) I always burned a CD-RW and popped a DOS boot floppy in with cd drivers. Last night I finally sat down and installed Win98 on the machine (with full network support, etc). My cabinet has an arcade monitor so I cannot run Win98 but what I have done is created a boot floppy (Win98) with a msdos.sys file (bootgui=0) included. I wasn't really aware that the msdos.sys file could be on the boot floppy but took a guess and it worked fine. Anyway, I put the boot floppy in when I want to play mame. It loads my "bootgui=0" msdos.sys and my "incabinet=1" arcadeos (meaning it boots up to a command line and runs the arcade monitor version of arcadeos). When I want to upload files to it I just pull the boot floppy out, reboot the computer (using the bootgui=1 from the c:\ drive), and hook up a lan cable to my lan hub. I have PCAnywhere on my MAME machine as well as all of my normal computers so I just log onto the MAME machine with it and use the lan to transfer files. Since I have an ISDN line in my house (with an Ascend ISDN hub) I can surf the web and download stuff directly to my MAME cabinet. Hopefully this information can help get some of you pointed in the right direction. I must have been brain dead because I just hadn't thought of hooking my cab up to the net/lan before (well, I had but I was stuck thinking about how to do with with DOS 6.0).
: BTW, for those of you who don't know, PCAnywhere is a program that lets computer 1 (my normal desktop computer) control computer 2 (my MAME machine). This means that I see computer 2's screen on computer 1's monitor. I can use the mouse, keyboard, hard drives, etc just like I was sitting at the other (#2) computer.