rom manager for mac? (Multi system)

[emulover]

Hi all

I am planning to make my old macbook as an arcade; got the cabinet almost done; I will use a standard LCD and a salvage arcade stick for it.

The idea would be to launch OSX and immediately after, run a fronted; so it won't require neither mouse or keyboard, and work as a regular arcade

I am mainly using OSX, so I have found a bunch of emulators that works with it; but I can't find any rom manager, that is able to

- read and recognize roms for various systems (Mame, Nes, Genesis, and so on)
- allow you to delete roms from their interface (so you don't have to do spelunking in your rom directory, trying to figure out the name of a game from his zip file cryptic name)
- launch the correct emulator for each rom.

Is there anything like that for mac? I haven't heard of anything like this even for windows, honestly....not sure if they even exist.

I could just run each file one by one, and keep it or delete it; but would be 100X better to have a front end, that show the game, screenshot, and ideally, allows me to remove it with the push of a button; so I just keep what I like

Thanks in advance for any help!

[emulover]

Looks like not too many mac users here....

Anyway, so far I've found an interesting one, called OpenEmu.

It support the major console, but no support for arcade, Atari console, Neo geo and computers.

It is also able to delete files; a nice app so far !

Maybe I will find more, and will post here, in case that some other poor devil like me, using a mac, can get some info.

[Steve W]

I can't help at all, I never managed to get Mac MAME working properly. I tried it out maybe eight years ago, and it just refused to work right. The only systems that would work were the Atari 2600 and the Emerson Arcadia, and neither were controllable - it wouldn't take any keyboard commands at all. I gave up long ago. I've always meant to check up on its development, see if it's any easier to configure, but I never get around to it.

[wiggyx]

Seems like its be a LOT easier to sell the MacBook and build a cheap-ass PC, not to mention that you'll prolly have a few bucks leftover to help pay for building the cab itself

[emulover]

Thanks for the reply

Steve: Mame nowadays works much better; few years ago was garbage but it seems to be decently good nowadays. They also had a nice fronted for a bunch of emulators (was a rom manager for mac), but it was abandoned, so it never made the transition out of the rosetta; so when Apple moved on, the thing won't work anymore (altho the single emulators still works fine; go figure).

AMwiggyx: The point was to use what I have already Selling my mac means to make probably 100 bucks, which are not even close to buy a new rig (even if I don't need the case after all, it goes in the cabinet).

I could just install windows via bootcamp, but I don't see rom managers for windows either; other than Mame itself (which do not delete roms btw, you can just use it to launch games). Unless I am missing something

[NipRing]

I gave up on using mac for a front end on converted arcades long ago. No one makes anything like that. There are emus for most systems, but no front ends (or at least there weren't a few years ago when i stopped fooling with them). How old is your macbook?

[wiggyx]

Thanks for the reply

Steve: Mame nowadays works much better; few years ago was garbage but it seems to be decently good nowadays. They also had a nice fronted for a bunch of emulators (was a rom manager for mac), but it was abandoned, so it never made the transition out of the rosetta; so when Apple moved on, the thing won't work anymore (altho the single emulators still works fine; go figure).

AMwiggyx: The point was to use what I have already Selling my mac means to make probably 100 bucks, which are not even close to buy a new rig (even if I don't need the case after all, it goes in the cabinet).

I could just install windows via bootcamp, but I don't see rom managers for windows either; other than Mame itself (which do not delete roms btw, you can just use it to launch games). Unless I am missing something

I understand and appreciate that, but what you're trying to do is akin to hammering a nail in with a magic marker. I.e. it's just the wrong tool for the job :/

Like he ^^^ said, what model? Hard to imagine it only being worth $100 bucks. The cheapest working MacBook which was sold on eBay that I could find was $150. Could build a PC that'll handle what you want for half that really or just buy something used for even less.

[emulover]

I gave up on using mac for a front end on converted arcades long ago. No one makes anything like that. There are emus for most systems, but no front ends (or at least there weren't a few years ago when i stopped fooling with them). How old is your macbook?

There are a couple nowadays; they don't cover all the emulators, but the major ones.

To me, I was more interested in having something that globally allows me to manage ALL the various roms...as now I have 3 front end; which is a pain for an arcade machine; but is better than load each emulator

Agree wiggyx, but OSX went a long way since when it was just used to do video and audio editing Most of the games nowadays run on mac, and for anything else, you just run parallels or bootcamp So I thought that someone would make emulators and front end that are native for mac (like the guys at OpenEmu did, but there are others; you just need to build them from source code), and avoid to have the hassle to boot the mac in Windows

My mac is from 2006, is a first model macbook white. The lcd is cracked (thanks to my son :P ), so I just have it in the living room, when I want to surf on the big tv or play some quick game.

You can get a fully functional one on ebay for about 200 bucks; considering that mine has the lcd that is cracked, and the price of the LCD itself is 70 bucks, I would say that nobody would be so crazy to give me more than 120 bucks for it