Emulator:MESS
About
MESS stands for Multi Emulator Super System, the goal of the project was simlar to MAME where MAME only emulated arcade systems MESS took the MAME source code and extended it to include support for consoles, computer systems and calculators. That is not to say the scope was limited to only these 3 classes of device, The MESS project was happy to emulate any non-arcade system, leaving the arcade work up to the MAME project.
Being based on the same source code as the MAME project resulted in the project sharing similar goals, that is accuracy and documentation over playability with the byproduct of accurate emulation being the ability to load ROMs and software.
As of MAME 0.167 the MESS source code was integrated into the main MAME source tree and the projects unified.
Note: some examples in this document may refer to the MAME project now. Post the merge MAME and MESS should now be considered interchangeable terms.
The default MAME compilation as of 0.167 will build a unified MAME/MESS project (commonly referred to as UME) although as of MAME 0.217 it is still possible to build MESS alone by passing a SUBPROJECT variable during compilation.
Configuration
| Platform | Version | Device | Exec | Type | commandline_format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | all | all | README | D | <machine> <options> |
Usage
Some general usage notes are listed here, due to the scope of the MESS project these should get you most of the way when using any system that isn't explicitly covered in its own article.
Fundamentals
Let start with some key fundamentals.
Terminology
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Full Emulation | This term does not relate to the status of the emulation of the device nor machine but is instead a runtime state. Full is the default state when you launch a machine/device. When in Full Emulation the MESS UI is no longer accessible using the standard keys and if the machine you are running supports a keyboard all applicable keys (TAB) will be assigned to the emualted machine NOT the emulator when the emulator has focus. |
| Partial Emulation | Just like Full Emulation this is a runtime state for MESS, when in this mode the emulator returns control of the keyboard to the emulator. In this case pressing TAB will open the MESS UI and allow you manage attached devices, disks, tapes, inputs etc. |
| Driver | A driver is the software defined machine configurations, states etc, it may define multiple systems and/or machines |
| System | A system is equivalent in all respects to a machine, although multiple machine versions may be grouped under a System. |
| Machine | A machine is an emulated device (e.g. an Atari 2600 or an MSX). Machines are defined in drivers. They may be as complicated as they need to or just a clone/branding change (e.g. CreatiVision as Dick Smith Electronics Wizzard). You start a machine, that machine may be configured with slotted devices and software. Some machines require software or slotted devices be filled (e.g. Amstrad CPC464) before they will do anything, MESS should warn you of this as you start the machine. |
| Interface | An Interface just like on a real device is somewhere you connect external items, a cartridge interface is a good example of this. This is different from a slot in so far it is externally facing. Interfaces may still show up in the Slot Devices menu. |
| Slot | A slot just like on a real machine is somewhere you connect devices, internal slots are available for expanding a machine. Taking a relatable example on the ct486 machine you can insert additional ISA cards to a slot greatly expanding the base configuration. A slot differs from an interface where an interface is (in most cases) externally facing. |
| Media | Media is the supported formats for software that the machine can use, this is different for every machine, an example of this would be the Nintendo N64 machine with a game cartridge. The media that is supported will be assigned to a type and accept various types of file. So looking at the N64 again, the cartridge media type will support files of .v64, .z64, .rom, .n64, .bin. |
| Software List | A software list is a predefined XML for a system that is able to recognize known good working version of a ROMs, Disk Images, CD-ROM Images etc. These are specific to the machine to which they built for and are built and define compatible software for specific interfaces within that machine definition. |
Information
Obtaining information about a machine is fairly simple once you understand the above. There are 3 major command line options to inquire on a system
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
|
-listslots |
This will show you the available slots for the machine, as per the terminology table these are generally internal slots of the machine (e.g. ISA slots). The output here will also include the items you can configure for the particular slot. The output can look verbose although there are a lot of duplications; if your machine has 3 ISA slots for example all of the available ISA slot items will be output once for each slot. |
|
-listdevices |
Displays all the applicable devices for the machine including vga, cpu, ram, speaker devices etc. This command is useful when configuring a machine from the command line. It can be used to understand how to map an device so the slots are made available |
|
-listmedia |
Displays all compatible media, the device it is compatible with and what filetypes the machine will accept. |
You can call each of the above options without a machine name and MESS will output information for all know systems
Example
Finding the media supported for the ct486 driver
$./mame64 ct486 -listmedia
SYSTEM MEDIA NAME (brief) IMAGE FILE EXTENSIONS SUPPORTED
---------------- --------------------------- -------------------------------
ct486 floppydisk1 (flop1) .dsk .ima .img .ufi .360 .d77 .d88 .1dd .dfi .hfe .imd .ipf .mfi .mfm .td0 .cqm .cqi
floppydisk2 (flop2) .dsk .ima .img .ufi .360 .d77 .d88 .1dd .dfi .hfe .imd .ipf .mfi .mfm .td0 .cqm .cqi
harddisk (hard) .chd .hd .hdv .2mg .hdi
printout (prin) .prn
Emulation Modes
There are two runtime emulation modes for MESS as stated in the Terminology section. The two modes are Full and Partial emulation modes.
The main differences between the modes from a users perspective is already covered in the terminology section of this document so we wont repeat it here. We will cover some items likes switching modes, risks etc.
Switching emulation modes is very simple, by default you toggle modes with the Scroll Lock key on your keyboard, you will be notified that the mode has switched by a popup window on the display.
Make a note to remember what mode you are in because this popup dialog will soon disappear and there is no onscreen indication of the mode you are in thereafter.
WARNING if you are in Partial Emulation mode then the Escape (ESC) key will be mapped to the emulator keys and as per the MAME default will exit the emulator if pressed. It is extremely easy to lose work this way.
Specifying a System
Most systems will have a (brief) means of configuring devices. Genreally only the fixed hardware is scoped into the machine definition thereafter flexibility around what you can do is provided by slots.
- Want to run 64m of ram on a 486DX/25?, go for it MAME RAM is cheap.
- Want to run additional serial ports on the same machine, add an ISA card.
The most basic means of specifying a system is to run it by the machine name only, if it has any specific requirements like a -cart argument (e.g cpc464p) before it can boot it will notify you. Alternatively this information can be found by reading the source code but that is outside the scope of this document.
$ ./mame64 ct486
Simple Systems
The simplest system we can probably start with would be a calculator of some sort, yes MESS emulates calculators. Pretty awesome right.
So lets get a Texas Instruments TI-30 calculator running, it doesn't require anything to run apart from MAME itself.
We need to find out what MAME knows the TI-30 as. Type the following so we can find out the correct MAME machine name.
$ ./mame64 TI-30
If MAME can't match the term you passed it to a machine name, it will return a list of approximate matches.
Unknown system 'TI-30' "TI-30" approximately matches the following supported machines (best match first): ti30 TI-30 (Texas Instruments, 1976) ti83 TI-83 (Texas Instruments, 1996) ti630 TI630 telephone (Intelbras, 1999) ti1270 TI-1270 (Texas Instruments, 1976) tim011 TIM-011 (Mihajlo Pupin Institute, 1987) tim100 TIM-100 (Mihajlo Pupin Institute, 1985) ti73 TI-73 Explorer (Texas Instruments, 1998) pt430 PT-430 (Pine Technology, 199?) ti81 TI-81 (Texas Instruments, 1990) ti82 TI-82 (Texas Instruments, 1993) ti85 TI-85 (Texas Instruments, 1992) ti86 TI-86 (Texas Instruments, 1997) ti89 TI-89 (Texas Instruments, 1998) ti92 TI-92 (Texas Instruments, 1995) ts3000 TS-3000 (Televideo, 198?) ti25503 TI-2550 III (Texas Instruments, 1976)
We can see the TI-30 at the top of the list but we also get to see some of the other machines MAME supports, this can be a handy trick when trying to find something or discovering something new to try out.
If you look in the left most column the machine name is listed. The machine name is what you need to pass to the MAME when it runs, try that now
$ ./mame64 ti30
A representation of a LED display will be on your screen (once you pass any info/warning screens), you can now interact with the machine doing calculations etc.
Congratulations you have used your first (possibly non-arcade system with MAME).
Now lets try another system that has requirements before it will run. The simplest version of this is probably a console so we will look at the the Sega Genesis.
Again lets discover the machine name based on the common name of the console. We'll put the name in quotations this time when we pass it to MAME. This the best chance of matching our phrase to a machine name.
$ ./mame64 "Sega Genesis"
Unknown system 'Sega Genesis' "Sega Genesis" approximately matches the following supported machines (best match first): genesis Genesis (USA, NTSC) (Sega, 1989) sgtetris Sega Tetris (Sega, 1999) getbass Get Bass (Sega, 1997) 32x Genesis with 32X (USA, NTSC) (Sega, 1994) goldcue Golden Cue (Sega, 1998) skisuprg Sega Ski Super G (Sega, 1996) genesis_tmss Genesis (USA, NTSC, with TMSS chip) (Sega, 1990) smarinef Sega Marine Fishing (Sega, 2000) seganinj Sega Ninja (315-5102) (Sega, 1985) segasp Sega System SP (Spider) BIOS (Sega, 2004) segawski Sega Water Ski (Japan, Revision A) (Sega, 1997) fvipers Fighting Vipers (Revision D) (Sega, 1995) fvipersb Fighting Vipers (Revision B) (Sega, 1995) stvbios ST-V Bios (Sega, 1996) arescueu Air Rescue (US) (Sega, 1992) netmerc Sega NetMerc (Sega, 1993)
Again we can see our intended result is the first one in the list, you can try that again without the quotes to see why we quoted it if you like.
Now that we know our MAME machine name we can start the console
$ ./mame64 genesis
You will be notified that a cartridge is a requirement for this driver. From this UI dialog you can select a file to load, we will press Escape and launch the console with the requirement stipulated on the command line.
Let's now take a look at what media the console will accept in the cartridge slot, we do that with the -listmedia flag restricted to the machine name.
$ ./mame64 genesis -listmedia SYSTEM MEDIA NAME (brief) IMAGE FILE EXTENSIONS SUPPORTED ---------------- --------------------------- ------------------------------- genesis cartridge (cart) .smd .bin .md .gen
From here you'll need some kind of ROM dump in one of the listed formats. There are many homebrew/Public Domain (PD) roms out there you can find to test the machine with. Once you have some media to insert into the cartridge interface you will call the emulator with the -cart parameter.
$ ./mame64 genesis -cart <romname.ext>
The emulator will boot and attempt to run the software you have inserted into the cartridge interface, depending on the software you inserted and the state of the emulation you may get varying results.
Let's move on to a more involved system an Amstrad CPC464+ machine
This isn't the simplest system to run but it gives you an example of requirements and adding additional media.
First lets list out the available media for this machine
$ ./mame64 cpc464p -listmedia
SYSTEM MEDIA NAME (brief) IMAGE FILE EXTENSIONS SUPPORTED
---------------- --------------------------- -------------------------------
cpc464p printout (prin) .prn
snapshot (dump) .sna
cassette (cass) .wav .cdt
floppydisk1 (flop1) .d77 .d88 .1dd .dfi .hfe .imd .ipf .mfi .mfm .td0 .cqm .cqi .dsk
floppydisk2 (flop2) .d77 .d88 .1dd .dfi .hfe .imd .ipf .mfi .mfm .td0 .cqm .cqi .dsk
cartridge (cart) .bin .cpr
When you start the machine without a cartridge you will see a warning that the system requires at least the -cart argument.
You can get this machine running something by using a copy of the Amstrad OS cartridge and inserting it into the cart slot.
$ ./mame64 cpc464p -cart <amstrados.bin>
The machine will display the information from the cart on the screen
Next lets see what else it can do.
Looking at the media list we generated earlier we saw it also has 2 floppy drives, lets get some software to load into the first slot.
You will now need a copy of
- Amstrad Basic 1.x (Locomotive Basic)
- A disk image from Homebrew @ AmstradToday
$ ./mame64 cpc464p -cart <amstradbasic.bin> -flop1 <software.dsk>
This will start the machine with Amstrad Basic in the cart slot (booted) and your software already inserted into the first floppy drive.
For more specific commands and/or references for specific systems you will need to visit their dedicated pages on the wiki. Some machines will start the software automatically others like the cpc464 require you to load the software from the disk into the system ram then run it.
Once the machine is running you can switch Emulation Modes as necessary to configure the running machine, remap controls, control tape drives, swap disks etc.
Custom Systems
Lets move back to using the ct486 machine, running a -listmedia on this machine shows it will run a single HDD but default from the command line but if we check the bios on the machine once it starts to boot we can see it will in theory supports a second HDD.
$ ./mame64 ct486 -listmedia
SYSTEM MEDIA NAME (brief) IMAGE FILE EXTENSIONS SUPPORTED
---------------- --------------------------- -------------------------------
ct486 floppydisk1 (flop1) .dsk .ima .img .ufi .360 .d77 .d88 .1dd .dfi .hfe .imd .ipf .mfi .mfm .td0 .cqm .cqi
floppydisk2 (flop2) .dsk .ima .img .ufi .360 .d77 .d88 .1dd .dfi .hfe .imd .ipf .mfi .mfm .td0 .cqm .cqi
harddisk (hard) .chd .hd .hdv .2mg .hdi
printout (prin) .prn
We can start this machine with a single hard disk image using the following command line.
The hard disk image will be a pre-existing CHD file, you will need to have already obtained one or created your own.
$ ./mame64 ct486 -hard <harddisk.chd>
The machine will be started with the hard disk image attached, you can confirm this by changing to Partial Emulation mode and browsing the File Manager in the menu. Providing the hard disk was bootable and configured correctly in the bios the machine will boot from the attached CHD.
You can enter the bios by pressing the DEL key on your keyboard when prompted while the machine is POSTing. When in the bios under STANDARD CMOS SETUP you will notice there support for a second hdd as drive D: we will now look at attaching a second CHD an alternate slot.
For this we will need to take a look at the devices and/or slots the machine supports as opposed to just using the listmedia view which showed us what media works with what interface. We will use -listslots and truncate the output for use in this document.
$ ./mame64 ct486 -listslots
SYSTEM SLOT NAME SLOT OPTIONS SLOT DEVICE NAME
---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------------------
ct486 board3:ide:ide:0 cdrom ATAPI CD-ROM
hdd IDE Hard Disk
px320a PleXCombo PX-320A CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive
board3:ide:ide:1 cdrom ATAPI CD-ROM
hdd IDE Hard Disk
px320a PleXCombo PX-320A CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive
So we do have 2 ide slots which can support a number of options one of those being hdd. It is reasonable to assume in most cases the second slot would be taken by a cdrom which in turn would allow you to just call -cdrom with an iso file defined on the command line when launching the machine but that's boring so lets add another hdd instead which is not so straight forward.
Firstly lets try calling -hard2 without enabling the slot
$ ./mame64 ct486 -hard <harddisk.chd> -hard2 <harddisk2.chd>
Error: unknown option: -hard2
We need to enable the slot before we can pass a chd to it as -hard2 so lets do that this time. Remembering the output from -listslots we can take that output and translate that into a command line argument.
$ ./mame64 ct486 -hard <harddisk.chd> -board3:ide:ide:1 hdd -hard2 <harddisk2.chd>
On first boot with the new HDD you will need to configure it in the BIOS for the machine to understand its CHS layout, but again this is outside the scope of this document.
Taking this approach you may be able to see that it is possible to define some complex machine configurations from the command line.
Something like this machine I use, it has been configured with
- 2x HDD
- 1x ISA VGA
- 1x Sound Card
- 2x ISA Serial port cards
- 1x ISA IDE controller (CD-Rom drive)
Note: Serial Ports have their own section
./mame64 ct486 \
-board3:ide:ide:0 hdd \
-hard1 "${HARD1}" \
-board3:ide:ide:1 hdd \
-hard2 "${HARD2}" \
-ramsize $RAMSIZE \
-isa1 ${VGA} \
-isa2 ${SND} \
-board2:comat:serport0 null_modem \
-bitb socket.${MODEM}:25231 \
-board2:comat:serport1 null_modem \
-bitb1 socket.${MODEM}:25232 \
-board2:comat:serport1 null_modem \
-bitb2 socket.${MODEM}:25233 \
-isa3 comat \
-isa3:comat:serport0 null_modem \
-bitb3 socket.${MODEM}:25234 \
-isa3:comat:serport1 null_modem \
-bitb4 socket.${MODEM}:25235 \
-isa4 ide \
-isa4:ide:ide:0 cdrom \
-cdrom "${CDROM}"
Serial Ports
Some MAME machines support serial ports. You can configure these ports to be connected in various ways as though they were connected to a hardware device. A bitbanger device is used to allow for bidirectional traffic through the serial port.
The bitbanger device in its simpliest form opens a socket allowing communication. This opens up some interesting opportunities now that you can get serial data in and out of the machine.
Some experimental test cases I conducted
- 2 instances of MAME on a single machine playing a DOOM Deathmatch over a null_modem serial connection.
- Dialing BBS's using TERMINATE 5 running on DOS 6.22 from inside MAME.
- A multi-node BBS running on DOS 6.22 with 2 MAME instances and 2 bitbanger devices.
There are multiple types you can assign to a serial port the most useful of which is probably the null_modem type.
To assign a null_modem type to a serial port on the ct486 machine start up MAME with the following argument
-board2:comat:serport0 null_modem
This will set a null_modem as connected to serial port 0 (COM1) which can be confirmed through either the Machine Configuration UI page and/or the Slot Devices menu. It wont actually do much currently as there is no means for getting data in and out without a bitbanger device attached to it.
A bitbanger device allows communication via a socket over tcp to a MAME defined serial port.
To attach a bitbanger device to a slot modify the previous argument
-board2:comat:serport0 null_modem -bitb socket.127.0.0.1:25231
The serial port must be defined first or the bitb object has nothing to attach to.
In the above example
- 127.0.0.1 is the listening host
- 25231 is the listening port for the device
you may customize these as you wish.
From this you should be able to communicate with your running MAME emulated machine, connect in before dismissing the machine information window
$ telnet 127.0.0.1 25231 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is '^]'.
References
Useful references for working with Serial ports in MAME