I'm trying to load MAMEoX for the first time... I unrar'd the compiled version, put my 3900 roms into the roms/ dir.. and when I try and load it, it just sits at
"Loading. Please wait..."
There is no audiable hard drive activity going on, and I can not reboot (L+R+B+BCK)--it crashes. I tried renaming roms/ to roms_/ and creating and empty roms/ folder but it still does the same thing.
Has anyone else had this problem or know of a solution?
This is version 67b.
Thanks,
Dan
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I've tried loading .63b... and that seems to work.. at least it doesn't hang at the 'Loading. Please wait....' screen. But right after that screen it goes back to EvoX dash.
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Odd... It sort of sounds like the launcher is unable to find the MAMEoX.xbe file.
Is it possible that MAMEoX.xbe is missing or renamed? It should be placed in the same directory as default.xbe. Also, default.xbe must not be renamed.
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It's probably nearly as frustrating for me, as it's notoriously difficult to debug these types of problems w/out direct access to the box :)
I'll still give it a shot though.
A few other things to check:
1) Is there a folder called TDATA/4d414d5/ROMS? If so, does it contain a DRIVERS.list and a ROMS.list file?
2) Is there a folder called UDATA/4d414d45/INI? If so, does it contain a MAMEoX.ini file?
3) Are your ROM files zipped? If not, zip them, MAMEoX doesn't recognize unzipped files.
4) Are the XBE files properly patched to Retail? I assume that they are, but it's something that should be checked anyway. You can test (and patch) them with DeXBE.
From your previous information, my guess is that there is no DRIVERS.list file (or it's empty/corrupted), but there probably is a MAMEoX.ini file. As a test, try deleting the INI, and any .LIST files that happen to exist. I doubt it'll help, but it's something to try.
It has recently been reported (and verified, and even fixed for the next release) that running MAMEoX w/ an empty ROMs directory will cause it to crash. If your ROMs are not zipped up, MAMEoX will act as though the directory is empty, and likely crap out.
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If there was an INI file, it'd be in UDATA, not TDATA. I hope that you have an INI, as my thought now is that the MAMEoX.XBE file is somehow invalid, so the launcher gets to the point where it needs to ask MAMEoX.XBE to generate the drivers.list file, and then it dies (for whatever reason).
The INI file is written just before this happens, so if there's no INI at all, something even worse is happening...
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I'm really stumped on this one. If you could respond to the "Poll for info about user's xbox's" post (https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=2020107) we can at least find out if anybody else has the same setup w/ MAMEoX working.
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If I run MAMEoX.XBE I get an error stating that it should not be run, and that the program should be called from the launcher.
After that you end up at the same...
Loading. Please wait...
Screen.
Older versions of MAME worked fine.
For the .INI file in the UDATA directory...are the paths supposed to point to the location on your hard-drive where the directories are actually located? For example, f:\somedir\Mameox\roms?? The default one that is created appeared to point to the CD-ROM drive?
Any other suggestions?
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OK, I'm assuming if you run default.xbe, that actually runs, then gets to a "loading. Please wait" screen as well. This would indicate that each XBE file is correct, but the code to launch the new XBE fails for some reason...
Which older versions worked fine? I don't believe that anything has changed in this part of the code since the split into two XBE's (which was way back in 0.63, I think). If I can do a diff between the two releases, I might be able to find it.
Re the INI file: D:\ is actually _not_ the CD/DVD drive. All of the letter paths on the XBOX are symbolic links to various \Device\xxx\yyy paths. In the case of "D", it's just a link to wherever default.xbe (or whichever XBE you've run) happens to reside. So if you put MAMEoX on a DVD, "D:" links to some directory on the DVD. Put in on the harddrive, it links to that directory on the harddrive. It's nice, as it allows the program to find all of its resource files without having to go searching for them.
The thing that really has me stumped here is the fact that I put in handling (in 0.70.2b) for failures when trying to launch the other XBE image. It should bomb out, print a message and reboot. This leads me to believe that it's actually loading the XBE that it's looking for, but then the new XBE crashes immediately. No clue why this should be though.
What is the exact layout of your MAMEoX directory? i.e. where is it on your HDD, what files are in the root directory, what files are in the Media directory, and what other directories are there?
Do you have any zipped ROM files in your ROMs directory?
How many controllers do you have plugged in, and how many memory units, if any?
I really have no idea as to why this is happening, I can't think of anything that would cause it to crash like this...
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Once I updated the EVOX xbe to the latest version, everything worked fine. I still have my .INI file pointing to my F: drive (where MAMEoX is installed). I also put the launcher program back as the default.xbe file.
I will try filling out the POLL information.
Thanks for the help.
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"I also put the launcher program back as the default.xbe file."
That just hit me. What was it set to before? It's a known (and documented in the readme) issue that if you rename either one of the XBE files, the program will no longer work.
This is because there's no way for MAMEoX to know that you've changed its sister XBE, so it still tries to launch it with the old name.
The Launcher (default.xbe) contains the ROM Listing, and MAMEoX.xbe contains the MAME core code. So everytime you start playing a game, default.xbe tries to run MAMEoX.xbe. Everytime you quit a game, MAMEoX.xbe tries to run default.xbe.
The same thing happens if you try to start MAMEoX.xbe from the dashboard (it realizes that you ran it directly, so it has no idea what ROM to play, and dumps back out to the ROM list (default.xbe)).
So if either file is renamed, the program breaks. I put in some code to print out the reason that it broke and then reboot to the dashboard, but it's quite possible that it doesn't work.
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MAMEoX did not work with EVOX 3285 on my version 1.0 XBOX.
Maybe I mis-understood one of your earlier posts. I thought you wanted to test what would happen if MAMEoX.xbe was launched from dash.
Outside of the error message displayed on the screen, the results were the same as if I was launching default.xbe from the EVOX 3285 dash (you would get the Loading, Please Wait... screen, and the system would hang). The program did not reset to the dash.
Thanks for your help.
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Ahh, no you understood me correctly, I just didn't want you to rename it :) I doubt that it would have make any difference if you hadn't changed the name, seems like it's something with that particular verson of evox that was screwing it up.
Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can reproduce the problem.
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Hi,
I'm trying to load MAMEoX for the first time... I unrar'd the compiled version, put my 3900 roms into the roms/ dir.. and when I try and load it, it just sits at
"Loading. Please wait..."
There is no audiable hard drive activity going on, and I can not reboot (L+R+B+BCK)--it crashes. I tried renaming roms/ to roms_/ and creating and empty roms/ folder but it still does the same thing.
Has anyone else had this problem or know of a solution?
This is version 67b.
Thanks,
Dan
I've tried loading .63b... and that seems to work.. at least it doesn't hang at the 'Loading. Please wait....' screen. But right after that screen it goes back to EvoX dash.
Odd... It sort of sounds like the launcher is unable to find the MAMEoX.xbe file.
Is it possible that MAMEoX.xbe is missing or renamed? It should be placed in the same directory as default.xbe. Also, default.xbe must not be renamed.
MAMEoX.xbe file is in the same directory as default.xbe and none are renamed.... I have them in a dir inn F:\emulators\
Not sure what the problem is but its really frustrating =\
It's probably nearly as frustrating for me, as it's notoriously difficult to debug these types of problems w/out direct access to the box :)
I'll still give it a shot though.
A few other things to check:
1) Is there a folder called TDATA/4d414d5/ROMS? If so, does it contain a DRIVERS.list and a ROMS.list file?
2) Is there a folder called UDATA/4d414d45/INI? If so, does it contain a MAMEoX.ini file?
3) Are your ROM files zipped? If not, zip them, MAMEoX doesn't recognize unzipped files.
4) Are the XBE files properly patched to Retail? I assume that they are, but it's something that should be checked anyway. You can test (and patch) them with DeXBE.
From your previous information, my guess is that there is no DRIVERS.list file (or it's empty/corrupted), but there probably is a MAMEoX.ini file. As a test, try deleting the INI, and any .LIST files that happen to exist. I doubt it'll help, but it's something to try.
It has recently been reported (and verified, and even fixed for the next release) that running MAMEoX w/ an empty ROMs directory will cause it to crash. If your ROMs are not zipped up, MAMEoX will act as though the directory is empty, and likely crap out.
there is a dir called
E:\TDATA\4d414d45\ROMS
Which is empty, and so is the parent dir. there is no INI directory.
The rom files are all zipped and are in F:\emulators\mameox\roms
Tried copying them to the TDATA\4d414d45\ROMS directory as well but still the same thing.
There are no DRIVERS.list or MAMEoX.ini
Tried renaming TDATA dir to '~4d414d45' and loading it again.. but still stops at 'Loading. Please wait...'
Any other help you could provide would be greatly appreciated
If there was an INI file, it'd be in UDATA, not TDATA. I hope that you have an INI, as my thought now is that the MAMEoX.XBE file is somehow invalid, so the launcher gets to the point where it needs to ask MAMEoX.XBE to generate the drivers.list file, and then it dies (for whatever reason).
The INI file is written just before this happens, so if there's no INI at all, something even worse is happening...
In e:\UDATA\4d414d45\ There is:
TitleMeta.xbx = 56 bytes
INI\MAMEoX.ini = 1,649 bytes
I renamed the folder temprarily and tried to run it again, and it recreated these exact same files.. (but still does not work =\ )
I'm really stumped on this one. If you could respond to the "Poll for info about user's xbox's" post (https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=2020107) we can at least find out if anybody else has the same setup w/ MAMEoX working.
Actually, one more thing to try. What happens if you try to run the MAMEoX.XBE file directly (instead of running default.xbe)?
I have the exact same problem.
If I run MAMEoX.XBE I get an error stating that it should not be run, and that the program should be called from the launcher.
After that you end up at the same...
Loading. Please wait...
Screen.
Older versions of MAME worked fine.
For the .INI file in the UDATA directory...are the paths supposed to point to the location on your hard-drive where the directories are actually located? For example, f:\somedir\Mameox\roms?? The default one that is created appeared to point to the CD-ROM drive?
Any other suggestions?
OK, I'm assuming if you run default.xbe, that actually runs, then gets to a "loading. Please wait" screen as well. This would indicate that each XBE file is correct, but the code to launch the new XBE fails for some reason...
Which older versions worked fine? I don't believe that anything has changed in this part of the code since the split into two XBE's (which was way back in 0.63, I think). If I can do a diff between the two releases, I might be able to find it.
Re the INI file: D:\ is actually _not_ the CD/DVD drive. All of the letter paths on the XBOX are symbolic links to various \Device\xxx\yyy paths. In the case of "D", it's just a link to wherever default.xbe (or whichever XBE you've run) happens to reside. So if you put MAMEoX on a DVD, "D:" links to some directory on the DVD. Put in on the harddrive, it links to that directory on the harddrive. It's nice, as it allows the program to find all of its resource files without having to go searching for them.
The thing that really has me stumped here is the fact that I put in handling (in 0.70.2b) for failures when trying to launch the other XBE image. It should bomb out, print a message and reboot. This leads me to believe that it's actually loading the XBE that it's looking for, but then the new XBE crashes immediately. No clue why this should be though.
If you could give me all possible information about your XBOX, that might help. All the answers to the Poll:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=868353&forum_id=268685
Also the following information:
What is the exact layout of your MAMEoX directory? i.e. where is it on your HDD, what files are in the root directory, what files are in the Media directory, and what other directories are there?
Do you have any zipped ROM files in your ROMs directory?
How many controllers do you have plugged in, and how many memory units, if any?
I really have no idea as to why this is happening, I can't think of anything that would cause it to crash like this...
Once I updated the EVOX xbe to the latest version, everything worked fine. I still have my .INI file pointing to my F: drive (where MAMEoX is installed). I also put the launcher program back as the default.xbe file.
I will try filling out the POLL information.
Thanks for the help.
Excellent, I was hoping that it was a problem with the dashboard.
What version of Evox did you use previously? I'd like to test it and see if it can be fixed.
To anybody else having this problem, try updating your dashboard and see if it also fixes it for you.
"I also put the launcher program back as the default.xbe file."
That just hit me. What was it set to before? It's a known (and documented in the readme) issue that if you rename either one of the XBE files, the program will no longer work.
This is because there's no way for MAMEoX to know that you've changed its sister XBE, so it still tries to launch it with the old name.
The Launcher (default.xbe) contains the ROM Listing, and MAMEoX.xbe contains the MAME core code. So everytime you start playing a game, default.xbe tries to run MAMEoX.xbe. Everytime you quit a game, MAMEoX.xbe tries to run default.xbe.
The same thing happens if you try to start MAMEoX.xbe from the dashboard (it realizes that you ran it directly, so it has no idea what ROM to play, and dumps back out to the ROM list (default.xbe)).
So if either file is renamed, the program breaks. I put in some code to print out the reason that it broke and then reboot to the dashboard, but it's quite possible that it doesn't work.
MAMEoX did not work with EVOX 3285 on my version 1.0 XBOX.
Maybe I mis-understood one of your earlier posts. I thought you wanted to test what would happen if MAMEoX.xbe was launched from dash.
Outside of the error message displayed on the screen, the results were the same as if I was launching default.xbe from the EVOX 3285 dash (you would get the Loading, Please Wait... screen, and the system would hang). The program did not reset to the dash.
Thanks for your help.
Ahh, no you understood me correctly, I just didn't want you to rename it :) I doubt that it would have make any difference if you hadn't changed the name, seems like it's something with that particular verson of evox that was screwing it up.
Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can reproduce the problem.