A7800 Emulator & Attract Mode

[Draugr]

Hello.

Does anyone here have the A7800 emulator (was part of MESS/MAME years ago) working in Attract Mode?

I've tried to get the command lines set properly and so far it looks like it starts the emulator as I see the emulator window pop up, but then it closes after 2 or 3 seconds and takes me back to the Attract Mode menu. I've tried everything I can think of, but it's not working.

If I try to use the A7800 emulator directly (aka not in Attract Mode) it works fine.

I'll paste my A7800.cfg file below in case it may help.

Code: [Select]

# Generated by Attract-Mode v2.7.0
#
executable           D:\[Emulation]\A7800\a7800.exe
args                 a7800 -cart1 xm -cart2 "[romfilename]"
rompath              D:\[Emulation]\A7800\roms;d:\[Emulation]\A7800\bios
romext               .zip;.a78;.bin
artwork    flyer           $HOME/Atari 7800/boxart
artwork    marquee         
artwork    snap            D:\[Emulation]\A7800\\artwork\Atari 7800\STANDARD\snap
artwork    wheel           

If anyone sees anything missing or entered incorrectly, please let me know.

Also, I tried creating a batch file to launch the emulator with XM support and a single game (1942). The batch file works fine. Here is the batch info.

@echo off
a7800 a7800 -cart1 xm -cart2 "d:\[Emulation]\a7800\roms\1942 (2022) [Unknown].a78"
pause

Thanks,
John

PS: Here is the link to the emulators webpage, not sure if there is any useful info regarding this issue.

https://7800.8bitdev.org/index.php/A7800_Emulator

[dmmarti]

I don't use that emulator, but look at the last run.log file (it's in the same directory as attract.exe).  See if it has any further info in there that might help.

[Draugr]

Ok.... This is  strange but it is now working.

I tried removing the executable and args lines from the config and then put the path to the batch file I wrote in the executable field. When I tried to run a game in Attract Mode it worked just as the batch file did directly in windows. The problem was I could only load a specific <romfile.a78> file from within the batch. So, I took the batch line out and retyped the original executable and args field info as shown in my initial post. Now everything is working, I don't know what the hell was going on. LOL All I have left to do is figure out how to get the emulator to go into fullscreen mode instead of window mode, but that isn't an Attract Mode issue.

Here is the current A7800.cfg file, I'm pretty sure its the exact same as the one in my initial post, except now it works. LOL

# Generated by Attract-Mode v2.7.0
#
executable           D:\[Emulation]\A7800\a7800.exe
args                 a7800 -cart1 xm -cart2 "[romfilename]"
rompath              D:\[Emulation]\A7800\roms;d:\[Emulation]\A7800\bios
romext               .zip;.a78;.bin
artwork    flyer           $HOME/Atari 7800/boxart
artwork    marquee         
artwork    snap            D:\[Emulation]\A7800\\artwork\Atari 7800\STANDARD\snap
artwork    wheel