Romcenter on linux with wine

[R.Y.U]

Hi,

I no more use MS Windows since three years when I installed Knoppix (Linux Debian). Mame working very good on this platform, but to clean the roms, it is not as easy. So I'm trying to use romcenter with the wine program

http://ldsol.com/doc/dupoux/wine/index.htm
http://www.winehq.org/

But for the moment I meet two problems and I think it's code relative problems.
Romcenter installs is OK, I could launch it, I could have the internet list, but I couldn't load dat files. I think the progam could not find local dats or dautil.exe paths. I think it misses just a little piece of code to have romcenter rocks! on Linux. Could you try to see if you could do something in this direction?

To illustrate my tests, you could have a look at the screenshots on this web site:

http://r.y.u.ifrance.com/romcenter_on_linux/

Thanks

R.Y.U.

[SlippJigg]

I have tried using romcenter on linux via wine - with the sma eresults. it installs ok, runs fine, but will not load any DAT files. Weird.

Is Romcenter going to be released for linux also? If not, could you make a version compiled with with winelib? It might be that simple to make romcenter work with linux.

I may start a new post about this.

[batleth92]

For using RC under Wine, don't ask me why , you must change some RC prefs : point somewhere else the temp dir (As u can c on the cap, I'm using C:\Program Files\Romcenter\temp).
Close RC, re-start it and hopefully u can select a dat without an error.

But remember : U will still have the closing error, but I think it is harmless.


KaPla'

[RomCenter]

It's not that simple to compile rc under linux.
I use some components which are not available for linux.

Anyway, wait for the rc3 alpha release to test and post the results.
If needed, I could try to fix the wine problems.

[batleth92]

I can't wait
But IMHO current 2.71 version of RC is usable under wine 0.9.26 and up : I'm using it.
You just need to spend some time and search what to change in the prefs the chalenge is worth the pain

[Wanderer]

You just need to spend some time and search what to change in the prefs the chalenge is worth the pain

I've seen a lot of people asking around about RC in Linux the past few years. I know i'd be interested. If you know how it can be done, perhaps you could create a quick-and-easy HOW-TO. It would be helpful for several users and perhaps it could be hosted somewhere in this site, with credit to you of course.

[SlippJigg]

Hi Eric (Romcenter),

I was no suggesting that it would be quick or easy to compile Romcenter under Linux. Maybe it would be much easier to compile with WineLib then fix "the wine-romcenter problem". I dunno.

Here is the link,
http://www.winehq.com/site/winelib

Here is the link to Winemaker...check it out
http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/winelib ... ng-started


I already prefer Romcenter to CLRMAMEPro, but Romcenter running good on Linux (or Wine) - would attract a lot of new users to RC.


Batleth32:
Thanks for the tip, i will try to change the prefs, i will let you know my results.

[RomCenter]

AFAIK, winelib is only for C/C++, not for Pascal Object.

[Wanderer]

Hi Eric.

AFAIK, there are interesting development tools/libs that are OS-independent. Have you thought of perhaps trying one of them? For instance:

MonoDevelop (Linux development IDE)
#Develop (SharpDevelop) (Windows development IDE)
Mono (.NET-compatible libraries working under both Linux and Windows)

I understand it would be a major project to transfer RC to those tools but perhaps you can consider it. There will probably be issues like "what OS-independent component can be used for the tree" and similar stuff but it might be a good solution to all people interested in RC under Linux.

PS: Delphi/Pascal is not supported by any of them AFAIK.

[RomCenter]

The choice if I move to another dev tool will probably be vs.net / c#.

If I stay with Delphi, I could move to delphi 2006 or 2007 and adapt rc to be able to compile a linux version with kylix.

Until then, wine seems the best solution.

[Wanderer]

The choice if I move to another dev tool will probably be vs.net / c#.

Well, in any case if you are thinking of using .NET framework you could perhaps consider trying Mono which is actually a free/OSS .NET 1.1 framework substitute. It seems that it also provides a C# compiler so it's probably possible to create C#-Mono projects and execute them under Linux and Windows without much fuss. It seems the whole thing is compatible with Microsoft's C# and .NET 1.1 (so far). .NET 2.0 support is under way (Q2 2007) and i assume they will then move to .NET 3.0.

[SlippJigg]

batleth92: Thanks for the Tip,!

I changed my Temp directory and it loads my DAT files now. I Got RomCenter running great under wine, but i do get an error while closing RC. The error is:

Access violation at address 00000000 in module 'romcenter.exe'. Read of address 00000000

Maybe that will help you Eric, if you want to fix it. Just the fact the RC looks right and works sweet under Wine on PCLinuxOS..is enough for me!

A How to Run RC under wine tutorial page on the Romcenter website would be great for the rest of us linux users. If i can be of help on this Eric, let me know!

[Guest]

As I said in my 1st reply, the closing error still remains... And as u can still use RC, or no rom gets corrupt, I think it is armless. I try to find the cause when running with wine on debug, but no luck to find something...

[batleth92]

The previous msg was from me : I forgot to log in

@Wanderer : The How-To would be very, very, very small... coz' the only thing to do is to change the TEMP dir in the prefs...

[Wanderer]

The How-To would be very, very, very small... coz' the only thing to do is to change the TEMP dir in the prefs...

Wow. It's that difficult, eh? Still, if you could post such a step-by-step procedure here with those simple instructions on how to configure wine and what problems might one face (i.e. something like what SlippJigg has posted), we could make it a "sticky post" and redirect everyone who asks about RC and Linux to that post. After all, there may be some newbies not very familiar with wine. If you feel like it, please make such a post here.

[batleth92]

Euh...
There's nothing special to configure in wine (thru winecfg) to get RC up and running...
So, sorry if u find me lame again, but one only need, as I stated, to change the RC prefs.

[Wanderer]

2batleth92

Ok then, nice to hear the whole procedure is that simple.

[R.Y.U]

Hello,

happy to see I have some answers after all this time. Since my first post, I still didn't find a rom cleaner as good as romcenter on linux, but I don't know all of them.

Now, I'm using Wine 0.9.30 and I changed the directory in the preferences.
So now I could load dat files, but only local dat, not from the internet. If I try to load one from the internet I obtain this:




and when I exit from the appplication, I have this window again:



and if I don't have it I have to kill all the wine process.

Someone tried the 3 beta version with wine?

[Wanderer]

happy to see I have some answers after all this time.

Better late than never, eh?

and when I exit from the appplication, I have this window again

As batleth92 said in a previous post, this is an issue. I don't think Eric is going to work on RC2 any more though so it might be better to wait for RC3 to evolve and see how it behaves under Linux.

[star]

Just to warm up the topic: Borland offers it's Kylix compiler. Its produces Linux executables from O.Pascal source. For example the Teamspeak linux client was made using it.

In theory your program should just compile for linux with it as under windows. In reality i think borland offers a guide how to make a program platform independant - so a few? changes have to be made.

[RomCenter]

Yes, I know about kylix, but you also need all your components to be compatible under linux to compile, and some components used are not.

[quattro]

Hi,

Regarding porting the romcenter application to linux--

There is a project called lazarus which is an object pascal (compatible with delphi) compiler & rad gui for linux.
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_%28software%29

I'm not sure about this, but it might be able to compile your delphi code... with a few modifications. This is depending on which version of delphi you are using.

I'm not sure about which versions of delphi lazarus will support up to. I am guessing Delphi 2 no problem. Here is a guy saying up to version 6/7 with modifications...

Yeah, Delphi, one of the most popular RAD development environments for Windows uses Object Pascal as its language (well, it's called Delphi now Wink). The Delphi Language (Object Pascal) implements true OO. FreePascal 1.9.x. supports most of the Delphi up to Delphi 6/7.

source: http://linuxagora.com/libranet/viewtopi ... 8ab027fcf8

Can I use my existing Delphi code?

Some of it yes. If the code is standard Delphi pascal and it uses the standard components found in Delphi then the answer is yes. If it uses some specific database, OCX, or DCU then the answer would be no. These items are specific to Windows and would only work on and within Windows. However, if you are only looking to create a Windows product using Free Pascal and Lazarus then the answer would be yes. This hasn't been added to the LCL yet but it should be possible in the future.

source: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/modul ... sURL=about

Under Linux, Delphi source code can be compiled with Lazarus with a little adaptation

source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_%28software%29

[RomCenter]

Thank you for these infos.
I think I will need a lot of effort to make rc compatable with linux. Actually, if I find enough time to change something, it will be the conversion to .net.

So the fastest way to run rc on linux will be under wine.
some problems have been fixed to make this possible. If someone can try and post a report, it will be great.

[RomCenter]

Fyi, I installed a virtual image of ubuntu 7.10 with wine. Rc 3 still doesn't work. It crashs when creating a nez database.
I will now try to fix these problems. It is not very easy because I can't trace things under wine the way I do under windows...