Netbook Experience

In this post I described the process for installing the Linux version of MAME (XMame) on the Acer Aspire One.

There are a couple of settings which can be changed to significantly improve the performance of XMAME and make the games run at full speed.

To make these changes:

1. Load GXMame ( the front end for XMAME) from the advanced menu.
2. Go to the option menu.
3. Choose Default Options.
4. Click the Display tab.
5. In the Resolution section – set Height scale and Width scale to 2

1. Click the Rendering tab.
2. In the Video Mode Menu box select the XVideo option.
3. Make sure the full screen option is turned off.

1. you won’t to able to see the OK button on screen so press the Alt and o keys to save your settings.

When you play your games now they should run at good speed.
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Mame is an Arcade emulator which is cable of running many classic and fairly recent arcade games on home computers.
There is a version called XMame which runs on Linux based computers including the Acer Aspire One, and I’ve been spending some time working out how to install it, I’ve used the information on this post to help me although I’ve done the installs in a slightly different way.

There are a number of different files needed the links to each are below:

• xmame-0.106-1.fc6.src.rpm (The actual XMame application)
• gxmame-0.35-0.4.beta2.fc5.i386.rpm (A front end for XMame which makes using it a great deal easier)
• compat-expat1-1.95.8-3.i386.rpm
• Glide_V3-2.60-17.src.rpm

Method:

1. Download xmame from the link above.
2. Click on open in software installer and click on ok.

1. When the download has completed you may need to enter you Admin password and let the software installer install XMame.
2. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for GXMame, Compat & Glide
3. When all the installs have been completed GXMame will be available in the games section of the Advanced menu

You can now run your favorite Mame roms like Street Fighter 2 on the Acer Aspire One.

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