What the deal with the pocket PC emulation site not being updated for sometime since last year?
Seems like vitually nothing has happened on the whole pocket pc emulation scene, has everyone become uninspired?
Is Mame for pocket PC dead cause there has been nothing new since last year? There was rave reviews then nothing. They must of thought it was the start of something big, I guess they were wrong. After seeing the impressive gnuboy gameboy emulator.
The pocket pc is a great machine, to bad that no one is interested anymore.
This must be the end until some new more powerful hardware comes out till then it must be dead even tho popularity and sales of the small gadget are growing rapidly.

signed
confused about the future of handheld emu.

> What the deal with the pocket PC emulation site not being updated for sometime
> since last year?
> Seems like vitually nothing has happened on the whole pocket pc emulation scene,
> has everyone become uninspired?
> Is Mame for pocket PC dead cause there has been nothing new since last year?
> There was rave reviews then nothing. They must of thought it was the start of
> something big, I guess they were wrong. After seeing the impressive gnuboy
> gameboy emulator.
> The pocket pc is a great machine, to bad that no one is interested anymore.
> This must be the end until some new more powerful hardware comes out till then
> it must be dead even tho popularity and sales of the small gadget are growing
> rapidly.
>
> signed
> confused about the future of handheld emu.
>
Actually the PocketPC Site is not done by Me the author of MAMECE3. It was started by Prophet, who may or may not have lost interest in the scene. He may also have lost the spare time he was planning on spending on that project.

MameCE3 however, is not dead, in fact I released a minor update about a month or so ago. The problem is that this is done in my spare time, and that tends to be sketchy at times.
I am still working on MameCE3, in fact I have started a new port using the current source code. However many things have changed since version .36 so it is almost a total rewrite. This takes time. Hang in there and new releases should be seen in the near future.
You are right in that it will take newer hardware for any grand changes to take effect. Emulating 3000 Arcade machines is a tall order for the current hardware. Emulating only a few of those machines seems to be an easier task.
If you want such things, feel free to buy those indvidual games and be content, if however you wish to have many of the games, then you will be content with the current release, wait for future releases, or download the source and start contributing something back as others have done.
Those are your choices good or bad.

Patience is usually golden in such matters.


Cheers,
-Techmaster

Sorry about losing the plot and becoming impatience. Your work is very good and many thanks go out to you, also I would like to point out that im not putting you down in anyway what so ever.
I can only dream of being able to program but I dont think I have the brains to be able to, Im just your aveage guy(joe bloggs) that got aveage marks when I was at school.
I have made feeble attemps to program on todays PC's but I dint even get of the start line, it seem so complicated. The only thing I ever programed was on a commodore 64 - 10 print"hello"; 20 goto 10 Run , then a few small programs that were already written in a magazine that you just copy out.
Do you have to be a genious to program or can someone like be be able to it? Is there any hope?
Believe me I would take that source code right now and have a go. But all I can do with a computer is slap a few hardware peices together with some oversized heatsinks and tweak/overclock them to the limit.
If it is easier than I think it is then please point me in the right direction so I can contribute.

signed
Dreaming of programing.

> Sorry about losing the plot and becoming impatience. Your work is very good and
> many thanks go out to you, also I would like to point out that im not putting
> you down in anyway what so ever.
> I can only dream of being able to program but I dont think I have the brains to
> be able to, Im just your aveage guy(joe bloggs) that got aveage marks when I was
> at school.
> I have made feeble attemps to program on todays PC's but I dint even get of the
> start line, it seem so complicated. The only thing I ever programed was on a
> commodore 64 - 10 print"hello"; 20 goto 10 Run , then a few small programs that
> were already written in a magazine that you just copy out.
> Do you have to be a genious to program or can someone like be be able to it? Is
> there any hope?
> Believe me I would take that source code right now and have a go. But all I can
> do with a computer is slap a few hardware peices together with some oversized
> heatsinks and tweak/overclock them to the limit.
> If it is easier than I think it is then please point me in the right direction
> so I can contribute.
>
> signed
> Dreaming of programing.
>

Thank you.
Programming does take a special interest as well as a 'knack'. I program (had a VIC 20 to start on:) but I stopped for a few years and only just recently picked it back up. I have interest and some skill with it but I doubt I will ever have the 'knack' like The dedicated MAME Guys such as Nicola Salmoria. He truly has a Gift.

If you are not a programmer you will have to wait with patience for each new release. Sometimes its better that way, the tension and stress related to getting a 'next release' can be a bit overwhelming :\
especially when its done for free.
The 5 minutes of fame after each release is nice but only goes so far :)



Cheers,
-Techmaster

> Actually the PocketPC Site is not done by Me the author of MAMECE3. It was
> started by Prophet, who may or may not have lost interest in the scene. He may
> also have lost the spare time he was planning on spending on that project.
>

Correct on both counts actually. I'm mostly into my GBA as far as games go these days, but I think my enthusiasm for PPC will re-emerge when the Xscale units show p with 400Mhz CPU's. Then emulation on PPC's should enjoy a new level of possibilities.

But honestly, I mostly use my EM-500 for ebooks these days (reading lotsa Anne Rice lately), and my GBA for games. You just can't beat the quality of the GBA games on the road. Really good stuff, plus PocketNES is better than any PPC NES emu I ever saw. I'm gonna install an internal iPaq style frontlight soon too, so it'll be even better (www.tritonlabs.com).

Time is very much the main issue for me tho, as I'm not home much now, which is why I usually just do news once a week lately, and also why the GBA is my current favorite game device - it's awesome for long train rides! This is Memorial Day weekend here in the USA now so I'm able to spend time at RG this weekend. :)

-Prophet-
www.retrogames.com

...
> I can only dream of being able to program but I dont think I have the brains to
> be able to, Im just your aveage guy(joe bloggs) that got aveage marks when I was
> at school.
> I have made feeble attemps to program on todays PC's but I dint even get of the
> start line, it seem so complicated. The only thing I ever programed was on a
> commodore 64 - 10 print"hello"; 20 goto 10 Run , then a

Ah, the good ol' days! How many of us started with the C-64 and other such machines? At least in those days, it didn't take long to make a useful program. Now, it's a pain to construct a gui, even if you just want to do something simple.

...
> Do you have to be a genious to program or can someone like be be able to it? Is
> there any hope?

I don't think you have to be a genius to program, at least as long as you're not trying to do the most incredible state-of-the-art stuff. But, it does take a bit of effort to get jump-started into it (where do you begin?), and you do have to like to stare at the computer screen and curse at it when things don't work. :-) You have to be good at logical thinking, with a lot of patience to mess with it until it really works when your thinking wasn't good enough. If you're willing to dig in and make it happen, then I say, go for it.

If at all possible, I'd recommend taking a course, preferably working toward a degree, at your local university. Failing that, you might be able to teach yourself some things with some books.

You need some basic knowledge before working on something on the order of MAME, but some of the things you can do with MAME aren't too hard. For example, I was able to enable some of the drivers that were commented-out, so that I could play things that weren't in the standard download. It's easy, once you see how the program works; if you don't know much about programming, it's going to be real hard to do anything! (I did some things that were a bit harder -- figured out keymaps for my device, and some other minor issues.)

Anyway, I guess my thought is that if you are interested, it might be worth a shot. Besides, it might open up a lot of job opportunities down the road. :-)

> Believe me I would take that source code right now and have a go. But all I can
> do with a computer is slap a few hardware peices together with some oversized
> heatsinks and tweak/overclock them to the limit.
> If it is easier than I think it is then please point me in the right direction
> so I can contribute.

You can download a compiler for free from Microsoft -- the eMbedded systems compiler, I think they call it. It will take you a while to see how it is set up, so I would recommend reading as much of the help files as you can stand. Often, compilers include sample programs which are helpful to experiment with.

Hope this helps.
--
G.