MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Can't Run Willow

> that aint moogly...the real one must be kidnapped....Free Moogly! :-)

A polite question demands a polite answer, that's kind of always been my policy.

Also, VHSer, if you happen to read this post as well, it's anyone's guess as to why MAMEUI doesn't display missing ROMs. I seem to recall that it used to, but I'm not sure at what point it stopped. It's a small miracle that Rob has managed to keep MAMEUI going as long as he has despite massive under-the-hood code changes, but sadly some features end up getting disabled or damaged due to a lack of time to engage in a full-scale re-write of the Windows-side GUI code.

I would encourage you to give command-line MAME a shot. The command-line interface is arcane at best to people who aren't used to it, but it's pretty straightforward once you've gotten used to it.

The only command that's really necessary to know is "cd", short for "change directory", with a directory being the old-school name for what Windows now calls a folder. For the following instructions, I'm assuming you have your willow.zip with missing ROMs in your Documents folder, as well as mame0156b_64bit.exe downloaded from here - http://mamedev.org/release.php - in the same location.

1a. Run mame0156b_64bit.exe.
1b. Windows might ask you if you wish to run this program, in this case click "Run".
1c. When it asks you where to extract, type: c:\Emulators\MAME\
1d. Click "Extract".
1e. Let it extract.

2a. Press the Start button on your taskbar or press the Windows key on your keyboard.
2b. In the "Search programs and files" box, type: c:\Emulators\MAME\
2c. Press Enter on your keyboard.
2d. Open the folder called "roms" inside the folder that appears.
2e. Copy willow.zip from your Documents folder to the "roms" folder.

3a. Press the Start button on your taskbar or press the Windows key on your keyboard.
3b. In the "Search programs and files" box, type: cmd.exe
3c. cmd.exe should appear in the list of results, either press Enter on your keyboard or click on it. A black window with grey text should appear.

4a. Type "cd \", without the quotes, and press Enter on your keyboard. The backslash is shorthand for what is called the "root directory" on your hard drive, essentially the parent folder of all other folders on that drive.
4b. Type "cd Emulators\MAME". This will change to the directory that you created in Step 1c when extracting MAME.
4c. Type "mame64 willow". If your ROM set is not up-to-date, it will attempt to load the ROM, then bail out and display which files are missing. In my case, after finding a ROM set that appeared to lack the same files as you, this was the result:

Code:


C:\Emulators\MAME>mame64 willow
buf1 NOT FOUND (tried in willow willow)
ioa1 NOT FOUND (tried in willow willow)
prg1 NOT FOUND (tried in willow willow)
rom1 NOT FOUND (tried in willow willow)
sou1 NOT FOUND (tried in willow willow)
wl24b.1a NOT FOUND (tried in willow willow)
lwio.11e NOT FOUND (tried in willow willow)
FATALERROR: Required files are missing, the game cannot be run.

Note: If your computer is somewhat old or a hand-me-down, it might not be running a 64-bit version of Windows. In that case, you will want to download mame0156b_i686.exe instead, and replace "mame64" with "mamepp" in the invocation as seen in step 4c.

For some strange reason, MAME does not come with a default .ini file which contains user-modifiable settings, so to do that you would run "mame64 -cc" instead of "mame64 willow" first, then tweak the settings to your liking in notepad or a text editor of your choice. The settings should be pretty straightforward, feel free to ask if anything is confusing.

Also, speaking from my own experience, I had to really dig to find a ROM site that didn't have a working Willow (USA) set. The first two results that I happened to get on Google for "mame roms willow.zip", without the quotes, had up-to-date ROM sets. Your mileage may vary, because Google will tweak its search result ordering based on your search history, so my top two sites might not be the same as yours. Just letting you know that they are out there.