You can boot it in any PC and play the contained games without any installation. The default distribution contains the arcade games Gridlee, Poly Play and Robby Roto and it uses only 20 Mbyte leaving the whole disk for your roms.
Horizontal Clock: 30 to 60 kHz
Vertical Clock: 55 to 110 Hz |
Ensure to use it with a PC MultiSync monitor compatible with these clocks. Generally all the recent monitors are ok.
To make it working with Arcade Monitors or TVs you must customize it manually.
After the detection of your hardware the AdvanceMENU interface automatically starts.
When the menu is started, browse the available games and start them pressing ENTER.
To shutdown select "PowerOff" in the menu, or simply power-off the PC.
F1 | Show the keys used in the game. | |
ESC | Exit and return at the menu. | |
F3 | Reset the game. | |
P | Pause. | |
PAD * | Turbo mode until pressed. |
For player 1 generally the keys are:
5 | Insert coin. | |
1 | Play. | |
ARROWS | Move. | |
LCTRL, LSHIFT | First button. | |
LALT, LWIN, \ | Second button. | |
SPACE, z | Third button. | |
x | Fourth button. | |
c | Fifth button. | |
v | Sixth button. |
Generally you need only to add roms in the image/arcade/rom directory and snapshots in the image/arcade/snap directory.
Eventually you can also add other files in the following directories:
For AdvanceMAME:
image/arcade/rom | The .zip roms. | |
image/arcade/image | The .chd harddisk images. | |
image/arcade/diff | The .dif harddisk differential images. | |
image/arcade/sample | The .zip samples. | |
image/arcade/artwork | The .zip artworks. | |
image/arcade/bezel | The .zip bezels. |
For AdvanceMESS:
image/arcade/bios | The .zip bios. | |
image/arcade/software | The .zip software. |
For AdvanceMENU:
image/arcade/snap | The .png, .mp3, .mng snaps. | |
image/arcade/flyer | The .png flyers. | |
image/arcade/marquee | The .png marquees. | |
image/arcade/cabinet | The .png cabinets. | |
image/arcade/icon | The .ico icons. | |
image/arcade/music | The background .mp3 music. |
Please note that AdvanceMENU lists only games that don't have the MAME driver in `preliminary' state.
If you want to improve the AdvanceMENU performance, instead of putting tons of images and sounds in the directories you can use only a single big .zip containing all the .png, .mp3 and .mng files. To improve performance is better to store the files in the zip and don't compress them.
If you prefer, before creating the disk image, you can delete the image/free directory containing the free games.
This can be done running the included `checkrom' script.
In Linux you need to first install the AdvanceSCAN program and run the script:
./checkrom.sh |
The AdvanceSCAN program is present in the support/advancescan-1.8.tar.gz package.
In Windows you need only to run the batch file:
checkrom.bat |
The script will show at screen a short text report on incomplete rom files, and on missing roms required by other present roms.
In Linux you need to run the script:
./makecd.sh |
and in Window the script:
makecd.bat |
These scripts create in the current directory the file `advcd.iso' containing the CD/DVD ISO image.
You can burn it with your favorite CD/DVD burning program.
In Linux you need to first install the `makebootfat' program and run the script:
./makeusb.sh |
The makebootfat program is present in the support/makebootfat-1.4.tar.gz package.
In Windows you need only to run the batch file:
makeusb.bat |
These scripts format the connected USB disk, and copy on it the whole image/ directory. The disk is formatted with the FAT filesystem.
Please note that the content of the USB disk is completely deleted without asking.
In Linux you need to first install the `makebootfat' program and run the script:
./makepart.sh DEVICE |
where DEVICE is generally something like /dev/hdaN, for example:
./makepart.sh /dev/hda8 |
to install in the eighth partition of the first harddisk.
The makebootfat program is present in the support/makebootfat-1.4.tar.gz package.
In Windows you need only to run the batch file:
makepart.bat DEVICE |
where DEVICE is generally something like \\.\X:, for example:
makepart.bat \\.\D: |
to install on the partition D:.
These scripts format the partition, and copy on it the whole image/ directory. The partition is formatted with the FAT filesystem.
Please note that the content of the partition is completely deleted without asking. The program prevent you to delete the whole hard disk, but it's better TO BE SURE OF THAT YOU ARE DOING.
Note also that the script only operates on an exiting partition. You must use other tools to create the partition, mark it as active/bootable, and eventually install a boot manager.
ejectcd | Eject the CD before the shutdown. | |
waitbeforeshutdown | Wait some time before the shutdown. | |
run COMMAND ARGS... | Run the specified command instead of AdvanceMENU. For example to run directly the game "polyplay" simply put the string "run advmame polyplay" in the advcd.rc file. |
You can customize the behavior of the AdvanceMAME, AdvanceMESS and AdvanceMENU programs adding in the image/arcade/ directory the configuration files advmame.rc, advmess.rc and advmenu.rc containing your custom options.
You can customize the system behavior adding in the image/arcade/ a shell script called advcd.sh. The script is executed at the end of the system startup just before running AdvanceMENU. Instead, the script advcd0.sh is executed before the shutdown.
To customize AdvanceMAME you must create a file named advmame.rc with the following options:
device_video_format 15750 0.737421 0.0754717 0.0738994 0.113208 0.916168 0.011976 0.011976 0.0598802 device_video_pclock 12-50 device_video_hclock 15.75 device_video_vclock 60 display_magnify 1 display_adjust generate_yclock
To customize AdvanceMENU create a file named advmenu.rc with the following option:
device_video_pclock 12-50 device_video_hclock 15.75 device_video_vclock 60 display_size 640 device_video_modeline standard_640x240 13.5821 640 704 768 864 240 243 246 262 -hsync -vsync mode list mode_skip full_mixed list_mixed tile_big tile_enormous tile_giant tile_icon tile_marquee
You can force the text console to use an arcade like video mode using the command:
fbset -n arcade |
The complete list of video modes for the console is available in the file /etc/fb.modes.
To ensure maximum compatibility you must use a high quality CD/DVD, burn it at low speed and finalize it.
Some motherboards have problems booting the specific El-torito format used by AdvanceCD. In this case generally the boot process aborts with the message "BOOT FAILURE" or similar. You can workaround this problem booting with a floppy. Use the rawwritewin.exe program to write the sbm36.raw image to a just formatted 1.44M disk. Both these files are in the support directory.
With AMI BIOS and a Via chipset, including Epia-m and Shuttle mv42n you might have to enable USB Keyboard Support in your BIOS.
On some broken boards, like my Epia-M, you need to plug the memory stick in without any power (remove your power plug), otherwise the BIOS might not recognize the memory stick.
advancemame-0.92.1
advancemess-0.92.0.0 advancemenu-2.4.6 makebootfat-1.4 linux-2.4.26 (with some patches) alsa-1.0.8 busybox-1.00 syslinux-3.08-pre4 (with some patches) FreeDOS-beta9rc5 loadlin-1.6c glibc-2.3.3 zlib-1.2.2 isapnpmodules-0.3 pciutils-2.1.11 (with some patches) usbutils-0.11 |
The disk structure is:
boot | Boot support. | |
arcade | Arcade Roms and images. | |
free | Free Arcade Roms and images. |