I Need Help Setting Up Retroarch With MESS: Atari5200

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hi there so I have spent like the past 2 hours trying to setup retroarch with the MESS core. I am specifically trying to configure the core to launch Atari 5200 roms [.bin or .zip or .7z or .a52 extensions… whichever will work]. I currently have a zipped 5200.rom file [the Atari 5200 bios] and I have placed it in a mess folder I created in the retroarch\system directory. I also have placed MESS’s hash folder [found in the mame0165s.zipfile downloaded from here http://www.mamedev.org/release.html] under retroarch\system\mess . When i try and load a game file retroarch just crashes… I get an error about “Retroarch: video_monitor_compute_fps_statistics: Does not have enough samples for monitor refresh rate estimation. Requires to run at least 4096 frames.”

I am really at my wit’s end for this. MESS seems like it is very hard to configure with retroarch and so some help would be very much appreciated. Any idea what I am doing wrong or at least could someone provide me a quick tutorial on how to configure MESS to work with retroarch? Or provide me with information on how to fix this error [whichever fixes my problem]?

#2

For some reason for a5200 roms need to be in an a5200 subfolder and the bios in another a5200 subfolder inside that

#3

Okay so in my retroarch roms directory I created a folder called mess and inside that I created a folder called a5200. Now in my retroarch\system\mess folder I created a folder called a5200 and inside that I put my 5200.zip file. When I launch retroarch I get the same error as above “Retroarch: video_monitor_compute_fps_statistics: Does not have enough samples for monitor refresh rate estimation. Requires to run at least 4096 frames.” I think you may have tackled an issue I haven’t come across yet [which saves me time hopefully]… BUT I’m still not sure what to do about this issue though.

Also to note under retroarch’s MESS core information it tells me to place the bios file in the rom directory not the system\mess directory for some reason.

Oh yeah I went into retroarch’s video settings and there is an option called Estimated monitor Refresh rate which it shows it is collecting samples but it won;t go any higher than 2048 samples not 4096 as needed…

#4

MESS treats everything as a ROM, that’s why the BIOS goes there.

I just tried and it works here. The error you’re mentioning is not the error, it’s just the last line of the log.

You need to unzip the bios for some reason, so MESS/a5200/a5200/5200.rom

#5

I am assuming you mean unzip the bios to retroarch\system\mess\a5200\5200.rom ? If so that didn’t work either… Let me try to get a log real quick.

#6

[QUOTE=Radius;27878]MESS treats everything as a ROM, that’s why the BIOS goes there.

I just tried and it works here. The error you’re mentioning is not the error, it’s just the last line of the log.

You need to unzip the bios for some reason, so MESS/a5200/a5200/5200.rom[/QUOTE]

Okay so I made a log and read through it and from what I could find this is the major source of my issue: “5200.rom NOT FOUND (tried in a5200 a5200)”… Essentially it isn’t finding the bios file for some reason… I just tried placing 5200.rom it in my roms\mess\a5200 folder and I also tried placing it under system\mess\a5200 and mess\a5200\a5200 AND system… every time same error. What should the directory be again to be exact? and should I zip the file or leave it unzipped?

EDIT: I finally got it to work!!! Okay so what you do is under your default retroarch roms directory create a folder called a5200. Within the folder put a zipped 5200.rom file named a5200.zip. Now you just zip your game rom and put it in the roms\a5200 folder… ALSO make sure the name of your rom is the EXACT name found in the system\mess\hash\a5200.xml file. So for The Activison Decathlon game I needed to name the .bin file decathln.bin AND then zip it and make sure the zip was the same name. After all that it works!!! I am going to be making a video shortly to help others avoid this headache. Thanks for all the help. Without your support I wouldn’t have been able to even attempt a solution on my own.

#7

For me it works with my instructions, and for Reznatte too but glad it works now

#8

Yeah I think your suggestion did work after realizing it… I just misunderstood what you meant the first time until I re-read it… Anyways here is the video I made for others to use when needing to setup retroarch with MESS. https://youtu.be/SYac7qWzCGw