Fujitsu FM Series for RetroArch (MAME)

[floatingyeti]

I just finished making Themes/Setups for most of the Fujitsu FM series of PCs/Console.  I wanted to collect it all in one post for future reference

GUIDE FOR SETTING UP FILES IN RETROARCH(MAME):

 

I ran into some issues I couldn't solve and I wonder if they are limitations of MAME or if anyone could offer a solution.

1. I could not assign Port Devices (Machine Configuration) per game. 

For example: Marty is setup with 2 button joysticks in Joystick port 1 and 2.  Any game requiring a mouse in port 2 had to be placed in the Towns UX setup.  Any game that required an uncommon or unique device port configuration was not included.

2. I could only create one universal (input this machine) cfg file per setup. I could have included many more games if I wasn't limited to choosing only the most commonly used keys limited to the amount of available xinput buttons. I was able to double map some xinput buttons to multiple keyboard keys without conflict but it was not ideal.

3. I couldn't include games that can't be booted directly. For example "Doujin/Homebrew Discs" in fmtowns_flop_misc software list set, Require TownOS to be booted from Flopply drive then game to be loaded into cdrom and finally an EXP file to be selected. That is all possible step by step within MAME but I don't see how to achieve that with module/hash instruction.

4. I couldn't include any of the FM7 cassette games because it requires using the tape controls in MAME.  Do the tape controls have hotkeys?

5. I had to make alterations to the hash files for every setup. I updated MAME core within RetroArch many times without the hash files being overwritten but at some point "Update Core" or "Update Content" may overwrite the files. I don't know that to be true but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

 

I'm sorry if any of the above does not make sense.  I'm not an expert at any of this. I couldn't find any info that clearly described the process of loading software list roms in MAME or altering hash files but somehow, I figured out this much.