USB-DVG Users support thread

Wish i had a vector cab, I'd be much more help that way. It would be great to create a series of scripts to help ease this install a bit better.

It's not *that* bad, the images are probably 95% of the way there (minus my issue with the Pi 4 not even seeing the DVG; seems to be unique to me so we'll let that pass), but there are enough missing pieces to merit a user hobnob, and as noted above, tips to help others who are just getting these out of the shrink wrap...
 
There were four vector games left out of the vmmenu and images for the USB-DVG:

Boxing Bugs
Space Wars
Demon
QB-3

I've tested all of these games and they work (at least as far as booting, coining up and starting a game; I haven't tested any farther than that), with the exception of sound for Boxing Bugs. Just drop the roms (from MAME 0.106 unmerged) into the "rom" folder and update the vmmenu.ini file to get them to come up in the menus. The syntax should be obvious from the way the other games are listed, i.e. "Cinematronics|Boxing Bugs|boxingb|boxingb" will put that game in the Cinematronics sub-menu.
 
I've about decided that the Pi 5 image is just too buggy to use. Among the issues I've seen:

- MAME crashes a lot, particularly (but not exclusively) in Tac-Scan. It's not a heat issue, I put a heat sink and fan on the Pi and that didn't change anything.
- Still can't get the Tab menu to come up on a secondary screen. It stays in the CLI.
- MESS crashes on start for any Vectrex game, even when the Vectrex ROMs are in the correct directory.

I was able to get my old Pi 4 image working again today by (again) swapping out the USB cable from the Pi to the DVG for the thickest, beefiest USB cable in my bin of spares. So far so good on that one. I think the Pi 4 version has had more users, it's definitely been around much longer, and has had more bugs swatted than the relatively-new Pi 5 image. I'll stick with the 4 for the time being.
 
These are old games and a broad bass spectrum (even in popular music) was not a consideration until much later.
And the speaker in your cabinet is that same era.
I have noticed very poor bass response. Is this from MAME, the pi, or do I have a lousy amplifier.

I'm running it in a Space Duel cab.

Stoked you got that going @alfonzotan
I'm with you on the Pi5 image at this point because I can't get it to behave either.
I've tried to dig into it to alter lines in the .rc files and when it seems I am in the right place the thing won't let me save changes I know I need to make.
:confused:
 
These are old games and a broad bass spectrum (even in popular music) was not a consideration until much later.
And the speaker in your cabinet is that same era.


Stoked you got that going @alfonzotan
I'm with you on the Pi5 image at this point because I can't get it to behave either.
I've tried to dig into it to alter lines in the .rc files and when it seems I am in the right place the thing won't let me save changes I know I need to make.
:confused:
The bass was much better on the original SD hardware. So I have an issue somewhere.
 
The bass was much better on the original SD hardware. So I have an issue somewhere.

Software emulation inherently has limitations and trade-offs. What you're (not) hearing is likely one of them.

The AdvanceMAME version for the DVG is pretty ancient. Mario teased a major update to a more recent MAME early this year, but he's not said anything more since.
 
Going from 0.106 to 0.235 or something really would be remarkable.
The audio bit is apparently a huge challenge in the emulation realm as I think the analog stuff is difficult to do well without a lot of processing power.
 
I'm also having problems with each of the two Pi images. On the Pi 4, the image/Pi does not recognize the USB-DVG, although the card is getting power and displaying the default splash screen (seen above). Here's the CLI readout from an attached standard HDMI panel:

View attachment 750754

The good news on the Pi 4 side, AdvanceMAME appears to be functioning normally in that I can hit Tab and bring up the game configuration pop up on the HDMI panel.

I'm seeing exactly the reverse on the Pi 5: The VMMENU and games launch just fine, but when I hit tab the HDMI screen remains in CLI mode and no MAME configuration pop-up is visible. Very odd, and again, any suggestions would be welcome.

I feel like I'm getting close on the Tab menu issue. Once I got the Vectrex roms in the right directory (/usr/local/bin/advmame/images/vectrex) AdvMESS started working, and it properly has the second (HDMI panel) screen go to GUI when launched, and the settings menu comes up when you press Tab. Gotta be a setting there that's different in AdvMAME, now I just have to find it (also the Tab menu comes up fine in AdvMAME in a working SD image @bobbyb13 sent me, so this is something in either my build or Mario's base image that's not quite right).
 
So: issues.

I'm currently building up a multi-vector project (to be installed in that gutted Space Duel cab you can see above). Like other users I've had trouble getting AdvanceMAME to recognize a spinner or any similar device with a rotary optical reader, i.e. a ball mouse. Thus far the usual fix for this problem, getting the following lines into the advmame.rc file, hasn't worked:

device_mouse raw
device_raw_mousedev[0] /dev/input/mouse0
device_raw_mousedev[1] /dev/input/mouse1
device_raw_mousedev[2] /dev/input/mouse2
device_raw_mousedev[3] /dev/input/mouse3
device_raw_mousetype[0] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[1] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[2] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[3] ps2
input_map[p1_dialx] mouse[0,x] mouse[1,x] mouse[2,x] mouse[3,x]
input_map[p1_dialx] mouse[0,y] mouse[1,y] mouse[2,y] mouse[3,y]
input_map[p1_trackballx] mouse[0,x] mouse[1,x] mouse[2,x] mouse[3,x]
input_map[p1_trackbally] mouse[0,y] mouse[1,y] mouse[2,y] mouse[3,y]

@bobbyb13 is having the same issues, here's his thread with a rundown:


Any suggestions (or better yet, examples of working builds) would be appreciated.

I'm also having problems with each of the two Pi images. On the Pi 4, the image/Pi does not recognize the USB-DVG, although the card is getting power and displaying the default splash screen (seen above). Here's the CLI readout from an attached standard HDMI panel:

View attachment 750754

The good news on the Pi 4 side, AdvanceMAME appears to be functioning normally in that I can hit Tab and bring up the game configuration pop up on the HDMI panel.

I'm seeing exactly the reverse on the Pi 5: The VMMENU and games launch just fine, but when I hit tab the HDMI screen remains in CLI mode and no MAME configuration pop-up is visible. Very odd, and again, any suggestions would be welcome.

Okay, found it. Thanks to @bobbyb13 for sending me a good Pi 4 image a while back, I did a Comparison between the advmame.rc files from the /home/pi/.advance directories in both, and made the following changes to my file:

For device_video, changed "none" to "auto".

Deleted:

display_mode auto
vector_aux_renderer dvg
vector_aux_renderer_dual_display no

... and with those changes, the HDMI second panel properly now goes to GUI (actually a black screen) when a MAME game is launched and I'm able to bring up the Tab settings menu. I would guess (but I haven't tried it yet) that similar changes would also fix the same problem in the Pi 5 build.

NOTE: Making these changes to the advmame.rc file under /usr/local/share/advance will not do anything; in point of fact I wonder whether that file is used at all by AdvanceMAME in this build.
 
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I'm happy to see you have had time to dig into this deeper!
Nice work.
You have given me hope for the Pi5 image and now I think about it this same area is where I have been having trouble with my vstcm build too.
Epiphany officially registered.

I have some work to do yet still with monitor power but hope to be be back at it all soon.
 
I'm happy to see you have had time to dig into this deeper!
Nice work.
You have given me hope for the Pi5 image and now I think about it this same area is where I have been having trouble with my vstcm build too.
Epiphany officially registered.

I have some work to do yet still with monitor power but hope to be be back at it all soon.

I would bet you that the contents of the advmame.rc are interchangeable across Pi builds, just because AdvanceMAME is so old (I may be wrong, save your original versions!)... but the /home/pi directory on a Pi 5 build is a PITA to work with, it's not accessible (even as read-only) on a non-Pi (at least on my Mac, which has been tweaked to be able to read Pi file structures), making it more of a pain to edit and troubleshoot.

UPDATE:

1723597808915.png
 
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UPDATE: These changes do not, in fact, fix the issue in the Pi 5 image. They actually dick everything up.

Here's what does work:

Change device_video from "none" to "auto".

Make the vector lines:

vector_aux_renderer none
vector_aux_renderer_dual_display yes
vector_aux_renderer_port /dev/ttyACM0

… and you'll get the MAME games doubled on the second screen, with the Tab menu enabled.
 
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[Disclaimer: while I don't think this is the case, if you bring up an unaltered image from Mario's repository and the advmame.rc file already has the lines above... I'm blaming gremlins. Or more accurately, lack of configuration control on my part. But I think this is an actual fix, particularly for the Pi 5 build.]
 
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