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Play MAME on a virtual Raspberry Pi

fustini

I just came across this intriguing post on Hackaday:

     http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/mame.png

The first Raspberry Pi build is a MAME machine

http://hackaday.com/2012/03/22/the-first-raspberry-pi-build-is-a-mame-machine/

[Nick] figured he should hit the ground running, so he emulated a Raspberry Pi to get everything ready for the MAME machine he’ll build when his new toy arrives.

 

The full details are in this blog post:

 

Compiling xmame .106 on the Rasberry Pi

http://1337technophile.blogspot.com/2012/03/compiling-xmame-106-on-rasberry-pi.html

 

I had played around with the Raspberry Pi Developer VM that Russell Davis created a couple weeks ago which made it easy to cross-compile for the Pi.  This looks like a step beyond as it appears to allow you to run Pi executables in an emulator (QEMU I think).

 

I think I'll be giving this a try soon.  Anyone else?

 

 

Cheers,

Drew

  • in reply to fustini

    I was curious, too, so I modified the launch script for QEMU to allocate just 224MB:

    rpi@RaspberryPi:~/debian$ cat launchDebian_224mb

    #!/bin/bash

    sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -cpu arm1176 -m 224 -hda debian.qcow2 -kernel zImageDeb -append "root=/dev/sda" -usbdevice tablet

     

    xmame still did run ok:

    image

     

    However, I'm not sure how accurate all of this really is - I am emulating the ARM device on an extremely powerful (in comparison) dual core Core i5 laptop.  Well, at least it doesn't seem to be running out of memory.

  • in reply to fustini

    Nice to hear MAME runs on a desktop with just 224MB of RAM!

    That means it should run okay, don't worry about running it with a 700MHz ARM, If the compiler it is compiled with is any good, it should run most games well enough. For a slight speed and memory boost you could still choose to create a dedicated MAME machine, not just running MAME on top of a desktop. For comparison, look at the open pandora console, which is an ARM based handheld gaming device with similar specs (for 2D graphics that is, for 3D the RPI is way better).

  • Looks interesting, I have been following the Raspberry Pi tutorials on Youtube for VM Box and Debian.

     

    This is all new to me and I was having a few problems installing guest packages from the instructions that were given.

     

    Its also a bit nostalgic, starting to feel like I did with the old ZX Spectrum.

     

    Going to give this a try today!