iMame Help

iMame Help

How to
Installing
Uninstalling
Playing
Options
Button Assignments
Trouble

Introduction

If you are not familiar with the Mame (Muliple Arcade Machine Emulator) program, you have been living under a rock. I am only kidding! What I mean is, welcome to Mame! I have been running Mame on Linux, Windoze, and DOS since Nicola founded the project in 1997. Mame grew more in 5 months than many commercial software efforts grow in 5 years. Remarkable I say. Anyway, you are here to enjoy the preserved workings of many classic Arcade machines.

I (Gandalf) am very pleased to bring this great gaming experience to you to enjoy on your Ipaq Pocket PC. I hope you find that it is a high quality work of software.

Let's get busy!
Installing
Playing

Installing

To install iMame, run the iMame Setup package from your desktop PC. iMame will install itself on your PC in the ActiveSync directory along with your other Pocket PC applications. iMame Setup will then launch the Pocket PC Application Manager.
Once iMame is installed on your Pocket PC, configure your Rom and Sample directories using the options under the Directories menu. By default, iMame will look for Roms under the directory /Roms/ and Samples under the Directory /Samples/.
Within the Roms and Samples directory(s), the Rom and Sample files should be unpacked into sub-directories named for the game driver. For example, unpack rom files for "dkong" under the directory "/roms/dkong/" and sample files for "dkong" under "/samples/dkong/".
You could also set your Roms and Samples into the same directory. For instance, unpack all Roms and Samples for "dkong" into the directory "/mamebin/dkong/".

Ininstalling

Why would you want to do that?

To uninstall iMame, run the Pocket PC Application Manager from the Tools > Add/Remove Programs... menu of ActiveSync. Choose iMame in the application List Box, then click the Remove button.

See Also
Installing iMame

Playing

To start iMame, tap > Programs > Games > iMame.
To start a game, double-tap it's name in the listbox, or scroll to select and press Go!.
If problems are encountered, double check the game configuration by choosing a game, and hitting Game Info. Missing files will be indicated with a "-" (minus) in front of them.
Only 1 Player game is currently supported.
The 4-way control pad will correspond to Up, Down, Right and Left.
Exit the game by hitting Contacts button.
Exit the iMame UI by tapping iMame > Quit.

See Also
Buttons
Change Options

Change Options

Game options are accessible from iMame's main dialog screen.

Display the game's framerate by checking Show FPS.
If a game seems to run slow, use Frame Skip to drop 1, 2, or 3 frames from the framerate.
The default audio rate is 11025. If the game runs OK, the higher rates will usually add quality to the playing experience!
If the Boss is around, un-check the Sound option to leave off the sound!
Show iMame where to search for your game Roms by choosing Directories > Roms!
Show iMame where to search for your game Samples by choosing Directories > Samples!

See Also
Buttons
Playing

Buttons

Functions are assigned to device buttons as follows:

Compaq iPaq

Joypad	Duh!
Action	Action 1
Calendar	Action 2
Contacts	Exit Game
QMenu	1 Player Start
QStart	Coin-up

See Also
Change Options

Trouble

iMame is a low budget production and may be released with outstanding issues or problem reports, but with known workarounds.

The "Cannot find .....or one of it's components" message is encountered. Indicates a missing file, such as the gx.dll. This is unlikely though, because the iMame install should put a gx.dll in the iMame application directory for you (although you may not be able to see it because the Pocket PC Explorer hides system files from you).

Playing a first game...a "Fatal Application Error" is encountered: restart iMame. After restarting, choose a different game then you chose before. Exit this game immediately, (or play it, it's your dime) then go ahead and try the game you first wanted. It should work now.

Playing a second game...sound or graphics are hosed: restart iMame.

Played the game for a long time, now iMame is slow: restart iMame (you need to get back to work now! You are not going to relive your days of glory as the Galaxian all-time hi-scorer on the iPaq, sorry).

iMame is still slow: SOFT reset the iPaq.

"Mame core error" is encountered. Use the Game Info feature to diagnose the problem. iMame will show the name of the directory it expects to find the files in. Unzipped files must be in a subdirectory named by the game driver name. ZIP files don't need to be in a subdirectory, but "Game Info" will tell you the subdirectory name anyway. If any of the named ROM files are listed with a "-", it is not found. Missing entries in ZIP files will be reported as well. iMame will run without Samples. Use the "Directories" configuration menu to patch things up. If that doesn't work, then, who knows what, you are probably foobar'd.

See Also
Playing