Sorry for the deveopment downtime everyone.

I have recently begun a major rework of the admin script which requires some additional programs on the backend of the system.  This will necessitate a new ISO to be released.

The design phase is about 30% done at the moment.

Primary focus has been placed on the below listed points.

• The admin script should run in both the X window system and at the text console
  • In theory this will allow the customization of the cabinet while using the arcade monitor (will need testers)
• The admin script should have a backup function to allow any or All of the following:
  • Basic system configuration
    • Machine name
    • Network Configuration
  • Emulators
    • Configuration
    • Application
    • Data files
  • Monitor
    • Configuration
      • Refresh Rates
      • Xorg config
      • Custom Modelines
  • Menu Systems
    • Configuration
    • Application
    • Data Files
• The Current Config should be easily visible from the admin script
• There should be a restore to Defaults setting for each section of the system
• The Import Emulators Should (finally) allow for Internet installation of new Emulators
• A New Import Menu Systems will be created for the possible addition of different Menu programs
• The Import Roms Section will be revamped to try to improve the way Roms are handled
  • This will include the ability of the Imported Emulator to include scripts to process and validate imported ROM files.
• All Configuration data will be stored in an easliy searchable datastore
  • As of this writing, SQLite3 will be used to manage this.

Quite a bit going on I know.  The eventual goal for me in doing this is to support SDLMame in it's most current version.  While still allowing for the use of AdvMAME.

Thank you all for your patience.

John

    The second one gives a bit more detail about the new admin.sh script and what it expects when using some of its functions, specifically the add emulator and add roms menu.  That one can be found here.

    Please use the HOWTO forum to suggest changes to the guides to make them more understandable to users or to request clarification on a specific part of the instructions.

    If you run into any bugs post those in the Bugs forum and make sure to mention the version of lincade that you are running on (most current version as of the 21st of February is v0.40 (you can find the version in the top line of the admin script screen.

    Any and all feature requests should be posted to the Wishlist forum.  Again remember to post the version of Lincade you are using.  I'll see about posting a Sticky with all wishlist items and a comment on them at the top of the forum to help prevent duplication of requests.

JIcemanL

Q: All my changes to the configuration of a game are not stored by advmame. How can I fix this?
A: This is a known bug in Lincade 0.031pre2. The owndership of advmame.rc is wrong. Just type in "su" to became superuser and do a "chown mame /home/mame/.advance/advmame.rc"

Q: I finished the setup without any errors but there is no sound.
A: You need to run "alsacfg" one time to detect your soudcard.

Q: Are NVIDIA Cards support by Lincade.
A: No only ATI Radeon / AVGA and Matrox G100 - G400.

Q: Can I install Lincade into VMWare ?
A: Yes, Lincade works perfectly in VMWare. Notice the question of the graphics driver. The "vmware" one needs to be chosen.

Everbybody who ever tried to use a Linux system connected to his cab, might ask this question. So here is a list of what arcade specific linux stuff you get with Lincade:

• advmenu (multi emulator frontend)
• advmame (special port of mame for arcade usage)
• advmess (many systems are emulated by this: C64, Atari VCS, NES, Apple, Spectrum...)
• zsnes (Super Nintendo emulatoe)
• daphne (laserdisc game emulator)
• lrmc (low resolution modeline calculator)
• xvidtune (modelines that fits perfectly)
• xkeycaps (check your interface what buttos are really pressed)

We have modified the default X drivers of Matrox and ATI Radeon cards a little bit, to get lowest pixelclocks as possible.

Lincade has a CAB and PC mode which corresponds to the videomode which is chossen when booting your system.

All administration can be done by our admin.sh script. Even the calculation of modeline for the advanced users which wants to get pixel exact emulation is possible.

How to add ROMs to Lincade

UPDATE: All this steps are no longer necesseray because the CD-Drive is now detected by the Lincade setup. No need of manual editing of the fstab any longer.

Guess I right? After a successfull installation you burn to put some ROMs onto your CAB PC. But how to manage this with Linux?

Its pretty easy, just watch this screencast. If you like it more detailed, read the tutorial below:

To copy some files on our Lincade Box without networking, we need a working CD odr DVD drive. To have it accessible, a configuration file needs to be changed. The spoke is from fstab which is located in the /etc folder, like all the other linux configuration files.

In the fstab file, we need to tell our linux system, where the CD/DVD drive is connected to the IDE bus. After we changed the corresponding line in fstab, we will be able to access any media inserted in this drive.

There is a simple naming convetion in linux, how any IDE drives will be named, depended where they are on the IDE bus. In the most cases we have two onboard IDE controllers, one is called primary and the other secondary. Drive connected to this two controllers will get the following names:

Primary Master => /dev/hda
Primary Slave  => /dev/hdb
Secondary Master => /dev/hdc
Secondary Slave => /dev/hdd

If your CD drive is connected to the secodary IDE controller as master, the device name would be /dev/hdc.

The IDE device /dev/hda is alreay allocated by your harddrive on any lincade system. Only three choices left hdb,hdc or hdc.

First step:

arcade mame# su
password:

arcade mame# ls /proc/ide
drivers  hda  hdc ide0  ide1

There is a trick which can tell us, where the CD drive is located, without opening the box. The output of this command shows us, two IDE devices. The "hda" device is always the harddrive, so there is just "hdc" left. If we only have to IDE device in our box, this must be the CDROM drive.

Second step:

In the file /etc/fstab you find a line like this:

/dev/cdroms/cdrom0                /media/cdrom    auto            noauto,ro      0 0

which need to be modified to look like the line below:

/dev/hdc                /mnt/cdrom    auto            noauto,ro,user  0 0

Where /dev/hd? depends on your configuration.

I would recommend for a beginner to use midnight commander to modify the fstab. Its an norton commaned style filemanager, with integrater text editor.

arcade mame# mc

Navigate to /etc/fstab with the cursor keys and press F4 to edit it. After you have changed the line, exit mc with F10 key.

To be continued...

Hardware recommendations

What you will need, to run Lincade? Not much is the answer, but if you like it more detailed and like to hear what I recommend:

• Pentium III System with 800 Mhz or faster
• 128 MB of RAM or more
• 4 GB IDE Harddrive or bigger
• Matrox MGA400 or MGA200 graphics adapter
• Soundcard (wide range of soundcards is supported, but avoid to use an exotic one, to be one the "safe side")
• optional a network interface (3Com, D-Link - most PCI NICs should work)

What else will work?

• ATI Radeon based graphics adapter (includes AVGA) but only AVGA will have the console in 15Khz. All others can just expect X an Mame in 15Khz
• Pentium II or Athlon systems

What hardware is NOT supported by Lincade?

• any kind of SATA drives
• any kind of SCSI drives
• NVIDIA graphic  cards (support can expected in future releases)