Getting started

[1983parrothead]

On my PC, I mainly use MAMEXT32. Is PanMAME the best MAME available for Pandora?

Anyway, the SD card is working again, but now I'm trying to make the Pandora remember my Wi-Fi password.

 

[Phelsumania]

I don't play mame games a huge deal I've only tried mame4all and mame EX ive not had any issues with either once I had the correct mame ROM sets. Never had an issue either getting WiFi to remember passwords. Whenever I've enabled WiFi and the input my password the Pandora has always automatically remembered it.  Could be worth opening up VPN Connections and deleting any saved wireless connections and setting up again, to see if it helps.

 

[Asmo]

On my PC, I mainly use MAMEXT32. Is PanMAME the best MAME available for Pandora?

Anyway, the SD card is working again, but now I'm trying to make the Pandora remember my Wi-Fi password.

Mame4all & PanMame each have their own advantages, most of us I think use both, for different roms.

For maximum compatibility though, as said, you need to use a 'rom set' of the right type. As Mame itself gets updated frequently, the Roms also get changed - Mame4all expects Roms belonging to the 037b5 set, PanMame expects Roms from the 106 set.

If you put roms from an earlier or later set in your Mame roms folder, some may not work.

As Phelsumania said, there are tools that let you upgrade or downgrade your existing Rom set to any version, you don't need to find a whole new set - you just need the tool and a 'Dat' file that corresponds to the version you want to change them to.

Re: your SD card becoming unreadable - be careful ejecting cards, if anything is still accessing data or an application on the card, ejecting could cause corruption. Power down first if in any doubt

I noticed on mine that after using the same wifi ID a few times it prompts you to create a 'keyring' (storing the ID for convenience).

 

[1983parrothead]

What MAME tools do any of you recommend most?

Now my Internet connection through the Pandora is sluggish compared to the faster Nintendo 3DS and especially PC.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Now the .PND files are working, but I can't seem to make the emulators find the ROMs.

Please don't take this the wrong way but here is some advice on how to ask for help :

Try to be specific i.e. say exactly which emulator i.e. Name / Version / Link to file in repo you are talking about + also explain what you have done to try and find the ROMs.

You'll find people here very willing to help but we're not mind readers. 

 

[1983parrothead]

The ROMs are found. But everytime an error occurs in any MAME emulator, the Pandora will make my SD card undetectable.

 

[Asmo]

Never heard of that as an error before - if a game fails, you should be able to just quit back to the Mame menu (usually with ESC - on a Pandora that's by holding FN and Q together). When you say an error occurs, what do you mean - the emulator crashes? Are you exiting the program as normal, and not doing a reset or something?

The best known tool for updating/downgrading Mame roms is 'clrMamepro'

http://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/

Note: This is a PC tool, not a Pandora program - you'll see the links to 'dat' files there too. Make sure you read their guide or check some tutorials on using it first, don't accidentally change the version of the Roms you're using on your PC or you may find they don't work in that version of Mame anymore! You want to make an 037b5 set for Mame4all and a 106 set for PanMame.

 

[1983parrothead]

The SD Card is now impossible to even format it. I believe it's my laptop's SD Card port to blame on.

And now more errors occurred:

* In the PicoDrive emulator, when I save state, then continue game, the emulator shuts down a few seconds later.

* There might be an error with the SNES9x's save state system.

I hate to say this, but, these problems and the weak Internet connection are making me dissatisfied with my Pandora. I haven't experienced with Linux much.

 

[Neelix]

Where did you get the SD card and what size does it claim to be?

It sounds like the SD card itself may be causing you problems, and I'm wondering if its a fake.

(see http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/478-some-quick-tips-to-help-avoid-fake-sd-cardsflash-media/)

- Neelix

 

[1983parrothead]

PNY Optima 8 GB.

 

[Neelix]

*nods* do you remember where you bought it? eg did you get it off ebay?

- Neelix

 

[1983parrothead]

I think I bought it at Wal*Mart.

 

[thatgui]

* In the PicoDrive emulator, when I save state, then continue game, the emulator shuts down a few seconds later.

* There might be an error with the SNES9x's save state system.

Played through some games with both emulators and never experienced any problems with savestates during that.

Do you have an alternative SD-Card to eliminate the SD-Card as a possible source of failure

 

[Asmo]

I'd definitely give a better card a go, it doesn't sound like the Problem is anything Pandora related.

Go for a known quality card like SanDisk from a (very) reputable supplier.

Poor cards (and many, many fakes) are a source of lots of problems, especially when there are a lot of small write operations.

Can be a good idea to use the Panasonic SD formatter to prep or refresh a card too -

http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/sd/download/index.html

As you can see from this thread, stickied in General Talk since 2010 -

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/478-some-quick-tips-to-help-avoid-fake-sd-cardsflash-media/

Fake or substandard cards are very common.

I personally stick with SanDisk cards from Amazon (not from one of their 3rd party sellers, only ones supplied by Amazon), and never have any problems. I did have a ByteStor card once, and once in a while small files would turn up corrupt (like Firefox bookmarks, text files etc) - stopped using that card for anything but Video files and have not had a single problem with my other cards since.

 

[1983parrothead]

Usually when I use the Micro SD card to USB adapter, no problems occur. But the largest available Micro SD card is probably 16 GB.

 

[Wally]

Usually when I use the Micro SD card to USB adapter, no problems occur. But the largest available Micro SD card is probably 16 GB.

Um. No. Google

SanDisk Micro SD Card 64GB Class 10 Ultra

 

[Asmo]

You probably don't want to be using a USB device for your regular needs anyway, having USB enabled will run down the battery faster.

 

[1983parrothead]

Well 16 GB was the largest I've seen until now. And I'm using the SD to USB only for my PC, not for the Pandora. For the error in PicoDrive, I was playing a 32X game Knuckles' Chaotix when the emulator shut down.

Now my control nubs no longer move the mouse cursor, but the touch screen is okay.  And it seems that PanMAME emulates more of my arcade games than MAME4all beta.

 

[Phelsumania]

Might not help once in a blue moon my nubs stop. If u go to the nubs configurator using the touch screen and reset them its always brought them back to life on my Pandora.

 

[TrashyMG]

Might not help once in a blue moon my nubs stop. If u go to the nubs configurator using the touch screen and reset them its always brought them back to life on my Pandora.

This generally happens when you crash out or abruptly quit out of a program that changes the Nubs to joystick mode via a start up script and doesn't get to run the closing part of the script that sets the Nubs back to their original setting.


Like Phelsumania mentioned it's an easy fix to just go to the NUB configuration and set it back to Mouse mode.