MacMAME on Snow Leopard (MacOSX 10.6)

[macstatic]

I've been using MacMAME on a dual core iMac for a while (MacOS 10.5.8) which worked fine, but recently upgraded to 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and noticed that MacMAME all of a sudden came to a halt (the games themselves play fine, but everything I do in the main window is very delayed with the beachball coming up all the time as well). As I was told to install Rosetta from the Snow Leopard DVD I assume MacMAME is somehow emulated (though I find that strange as it worked find in 10.5 on the same machine).

My MacMAME version is 0.77u2a which I know isn't the latest, but I believe it's the latest one which doesn't force you to keep the ROMs etc. inside the "Documents" folder but instead keeps it inside the MacMAME folder within "Applications" which is what I prefer.

I haven't been keeping up with developments but understand that MacMAME is now unsupported/undeveloped and that there are other emulators which have taken its place. I've tried several of them but they're confusing to set up, don't work with my ROMs or don't work at all. I was quite happy with my current version if it wasn't for the slowdown in Snow Leopard. Suggestions?

 

[Fuzzy14]

My MAME stopped working when I upgraded to Snow Leopard, but then I downloaded the latest version and it started again. You might have to save the ROMs where it wants!

I'm in work just now but I'll check the version numbers when I get home tonight.

 

[macstatic]

The problem seems to have to do with graphics in the main window. In the row of tabs on the right hand side (Info, Video, Audio, Reports, Misc), if I choose "Info" then select anything which has an image attached to it (screenshot, cabinet art, flyer etc.) then I get the beachball and lots of waiting between each time I press the up/down arrow keys (or click with the mouse) on a different game. However, if I select "Hardware info" or something else in the "Info" tab which doesn't display an image there's no problem.

 

[Sedulous]

You could try MAME OS X. I used it with 10.6 and it runs just fine, although if you have many ROMS, the initial audit on first launch can take quite some time.

 

[macstatic]

You could try MAME OS X. I used it with 10.6 and it runs just fine, although if you have many ROMS, the initial audit on first launch can take quite some time.

I've tried it (version 0.135), but my game ROMs don't work with it ("Some files were missing")
I also don't understand why it lists up a huge number of games that I don't even have when auditing ROMs. Is there a way to have it only audit the ROMs I have in the "ROMs" folder instead?

 

[Fuzzy14]

Sorry, forgot to post back the other night. I'm running 0.103u2 and 10.6.6 which I believe is the latest versions of both

Not all the ROMs I've downloaded work on it, but I've not had any evidence that they've worked on previous versions.

 

[macstatic]

Thanks, but I believe I've found the source of my problems.
It turns out that the various image folders (screenshots, artwork, cabinet art, cabinet marquees etc.) were chock full of files (over 1100 images in some of them). Even for games I didn't have.
So I removed the ones I didn't need and now things run smooth as before (I'm running MacOSX 10.6.6 Snow Leopard as you).
Strange that I never had any issues when running it in 10.5 Leopard though

Anyway, this means I can still use version 0.77u2a and keep my files alongside the MAME application (instead of being forced to have them in my Documents folder)