MAME for the xbox

emu-addict

is it possible to play MAME on the xbox? is a special version of it required??

CiDeRmAn

Glad you asked that question.
Mame remains one of the best reasons to mod your xbox. A simple chip when installed will permit you to download all sorts of apps on your machine. A bigger harddrive should be your first priority and getting hold of the Mame roms can be tricky but once done a competent computer geek should be able to install Mame no problem, amongst other emus as well, I have 2500 mame titles, every Neo Geo game made, every Snes game released in the US, most megadrive titles, most Nes stuff, I even have every 2600 game you can think of. Not bad for an investment of about €80.

emu-addict

CiDeRmAn wrote:

..... A simple chip when installed will permit you to download all sorts of apps on your machine......

what is it this wonderful chip, then?

D

Sorry but actually telling you were to get this chip or roms would be illegal, and we don't want to get boards in trouble. Not that you would do anything illegal. Are you representing any government or law enforcement agency? You have to tell us if we ask.

emu-addict

D wrote:

......... Not that you would do anything illegal. Are you representing any government or law enforcement agency?....

no, im not :-)
i knew its not allowed to ask about roms, but not chips. sorry.

peterk19

As long as the chips have a cromwell bios (they all do when you buy them) they are totally legal
Check these site
http://www.mrmodchips.com/catalog/
http://www.kanection.co.uk/
and www.xbox-scene.com
for more information
do with an xecuter chip they are great
Pete

Headshot

emu-addict wrote:

is it possible to play MAME on the xbox? is a special version of it required??





QUOTE]
what is MAME?

emu-addict

"what is MAME?"

it is the greatest gift to game-kind.

follow the rabbit down the hole...

emu-addict

what is the speed of game emulation like as the xbox has a 733mhz celeron and only 64M ram? what about large games with chd files, do they run okay?

Giblet

You'll be mostly playing older games. The newest game I got running at full speed is KOF 2003.

CiaranC

You dont even need a chip to run mame, you can softmod your xbox.

emu-addict

what exactly is meant by "soft-modding"? is it ok to even ask?

CiaranC

Sure its ok to ask, its perfectly legal to do whatever you like to hardware you own.

Softmodding is the process of replacing the bios on your xbox with another. It is achieved by using a savegame exploit with the original versions of either Splinter Cell, Mechwarrior or James Bond.

Once the box is modded, it can do anything that a box modded with a chip can.

Check out xbox-scene.org for info.

AdrianII

Yeap - i got mine soft modded too
And now i can play mame games,
i just threw them all the roms into a folder along with a mame application for the x box and burn them to an xiso,
And sweet, working fine all on one dvd, so it doesnt waste any space,

But i appear to get problems loading some games - newish one like king of fighter 2000 and capcom v marel heros

Any one get these problems

niall mc

xbox only has 64megs of RAM so you need to get the RAM upgraded to 128megs to be able to play every rom.

havn't done it myself but i am really thinking about it...

quarryman

the majority of roms will work with the standard RAM.

AdrianII

How do you upgrade to 128MB ??

CiaranC

Its a tricky solder job, not for the faint hearted. Much more difficult than soldering a modchip.

Theres guys in the states who will do it if you post them your motherboard.

Dunno if its worth it though.

KeRbDoG

ok. so i dont mean to break any rules about modding or anything but heres my 2cents:

1. dont softmod an xbox, dont be a cheap ass, get a modchip. you can softmod and then flash your on board bios. the basic way of doing this means you cant go back to the orignal M$ bios. i like to keep the orignal one there so i can switch my xbox back into normal mode. Chips can be got for as little as 10euro btw.

2. 128mb upgrade (just adding 4x16mb memory chips, to give yea a total of 128mb) is worth it if you only play MAME/Arcade games on your xbox. Useful if you wanna use your xbox as a linux box too. Does nothin for games etc. I had it done cheap because i work with people who work on PCBs for a living. Now MAMEoX has a type of virtual memory type management you can play larger roms without upgrading the memory, just take longer to load. Nice thing is that i can play the latest stuff once it can run on the 733 CPU (no 3D stuff)

3. get an X-Arcade arcade stick they ROCK!

4. use Avalaunch as your dashboard

5. dont bother with the HDD IDE cable upgrade

6. Get a XIR kit, do yea dont even have to get outa your seat to turn your xbox on anymore. Great for watching movies or rebooting MAME when your xbox hangs. http://www.xbox-scene.com/hardware/xir.php

7. get your self lots of S-Type controllers

silverlining

Sorry kerbdog I'm not picking on you just adding my two cents

kerbdog wrote:

1. dont softmod an xbox, dont be a cheap ass, get a modchip. you can softmod and then flash your on board bios. the basic way of doing this means you cant go back to the orignal M$ bios. i like to keep the orignal one there so i can switch my xbox back into normal mode. Chips can be got for as little as 10euro btw.

If you dont use Xbox Live! softmods are as good as modchips now and have been for a long time, dont believe all the rumours based on older softmod exploits (a lot of which are perpetuated by modchip manufacturers and installers). In fact the newer softmods dont even use a BIOS file and loader anymore, they patch the kernel in memory and have the advantage of being able to use a virtual C drive (yes that means you can mount xbox iso images too for running those emulator rom discs with long filenames off the HD). The virtual C drive means that when the mod is running any changes made to the virtual C partition will not affect the actual (softmodded) C partition. I'm sure this feature can be installed as a software app that can run on a chipped xbox too but I havent heard of anyone doing it yet...
One 'disadvantage' with a softmod is that if you dont follow the instructions about backing up your eeprom before installing it and then if your harddrive dies you will be left with no option but to buy a modchip to fix the problem. I can think of much worse problems that have NO solution if you screw up soldering in your modchip. Installing a new HD in a softmodded xbox is trickier too becasue you have to lock the HD with the correct code before it will work but installing a softmod takes about 10 minutes and no soldering so you can argue both ways.
Basically both methods have risks so get somebody with experience to do it for you if you cant be bothered doing the research yourself.

kerbdog wrote:

2. 128mb upgrade (just adding 4x16mb memory chips, to give yea a total of 128mb) is worth it if you only play MAME/Arcade games on your xbox. Useful if you wanna use your xbox as a linux box too. Does nothin for games etc. I had it done cheap because i work with people who work on PCBs for a living. Now MAMEoX has a type of virtual memory type management you can play larger roms without upgrading the memory, just take longer to load. Nice thing is that i can play the latest stuff once it can run on the 733 CPU (no 3D stuff)

Yep, there is no need for the 128MB upgrade anymore with versions of mameox since last september so upgrade (Kawa-X which only runs CPS1,CPS2 and NeoGeo games on xbox had this feature for years). Besides the 128MB upgrade is not possible on crystal and newer xboxes as they dont have the holes in the motherboard for it. MAMEoX v0.84.3b is the newest version

kerbdog wrote:

4. use Avalaunch as your dashboard

it depends what you want, evox is basic so it suits most people but I have to say I prefer UnleashX as it has all the features of avalaunch (except VOIP support and IRC client) and more such as a built in text editor. I'm looking forward to avalaunch's promise of including a HD defragmenter in the near future though which I will need badly.

KeRbDoG

silverlining wrote:

Sorry kerbdog I'm not picking on you just adding my two cents
If you dont use Xbox Live! softmods are as good as modchips now and have been for a long time, dont believe all the rumours based on older softmod exploits (a lot of which are perpetuated by modchip manufacturers and installers). In fact the newer softmods dont even use a BIOS file and loader anymore, they patch the kernel in memory and have the advantage of being able to use a virtual C drive (yes that means you can mount xbox iso images too for running those emulator rom discs with long filenames off the HD). The virtual C drive means that when the mod is running any changes made to the virtual C partition will not affect the actual (softmodded) C partition. I'm sure this feature can be installed as a software app that can run on a chipped xbox too but I havent heard of anyone doing it yet...
One 'disadvantage' with a softmod is that if you dont follow the instructions about backing up your eeprom before installing it and then if your harddrive dies you will be left with no option but to buy a modchip to fix the problem. I can think of much worse problems that have NO solution if you screw up soldering in your modchip. Installing a new HD in a softmodded xbox is trickier too becasue you have to lock the HD with the correct code before it will work but installing a softmod takes about 10 minutes and no soldering so you can argue both ways.
Basically both methods have risks so get somebody with experience to do it for you if you cant be bothered doing the research yourself.

I find the modchip the safer option, but i like to hack around with my system and a modchip has saved me many times but i find 10euro for a chip worth it, and it saves on the initial loading time as softmods take a bit longer to boot i found. I was nearly sure that softmods insert a bios into memory btw.

Yep, there is no need for the 128MB upgrade anymore with versions of mameox since last september so upgrade (Kawa-X which only runs CPS1,CPS2 and NeoGeo games on xbox had this feature for years). Besides the 128MB upgrade is not possible on crystal and newer xboxes as they dont have the holes in the motherboard for it. MAMEoX v0.84.3b is the newest version

it depends what you want, evox is basic so it suits most people but I have to say I prefer UnleashX as it has all the features of avalaunch (except VOIP support and IRC client) and more such as a built in text editor. I'm looking forward to avalaunch's promise of including a HD defragmenter in the near future though which I will need badly.

wasnt the HD defragmenter discounted as the HDD was too large to have the drive map in memory (64mb) ? I remeber that Team Avalaunch said it would be impossible. Maybe other groups will use Virtual Memory but that would still leave the 'swap file' area still messed up no?

Interesting 2 cent though always nice to see someone else knows their xbox inside out

silverlining

kerbdog wrote:

I was nearly sure that softmods insert a bios into memory btw.

The older softmods used a BIOS loader to do exactly that (ie load a hacked modchip BIOS from the hardrive rather than from a modchip). The best method uses the same UXE exploit to get unsigned code to work then it runs the kernel patcher which then loads your dash and modifies the kernel. I reckon it might work with a modchip as well for mounting iso images as a virtual DVD drive (see 'driveimageutils' on xbox-scene).

kerbdog wrote:

wasnt the HD defragmenter discounted as the HDD was too large to have the drive map in memory (64mb) ? I remeber that Team Avalaunch said it would be impossible. Maybe other groups will use Virtual Memory but that would still leave the 'swap file' area still messed up no?

You are probably right, I was relying on old info from team avalaunch. Besides it would probably be just as quick (and much safer) to dump everyhting back to a PC, format the xbox HD and ftp everything back considering the RAM limitation.