Launch game on MiSTer from AMMiSTer

[city41]

I think this is possible, but I'm not totally sure. If it is possible, add this in.

If it is possible and feasible, this might be better than the MAME idea.

[exolon]

It is possible for other systems, not sure about MAME. There's an Android app that does it and it does list mame ROMs but I don't have my MiSTer with me to test it

[birdybro]

Definitely possible. Just have to inject the right command over ssh.

echo load_core /media/fat/_Arcade/arcadegame.mra >/dev/MiSTer_cmd

I think that will work, maybe.

[city41]

It looks like that only works with cores, not mras, sadly. My googling around so far has not found a way to launch an mra programmatically.

[birdybro]

Actually, it needs the the mra name but I think the directory is relative to /media/fat by default, so maybe just _Arcade/

https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/blob/main/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh#L1550-L1551

[city41]

Ah ha, it does work! What was tripping me up was I was escaping the spaces in the file name, which /dev/MiSTer_cmd doesn't seem to want.

This works

echo "load_core /media/fat/_Arcade/_foo/foo bar.mra" > /dev/MiSTer_cmd

This doesn't:

echo "load_core /media/fat/_Arcade/_foo/foo\ bar.mra" > /dev/MiSTer_cmd

Relative paths also work:

echo "load_core _Arcade/_foo/foo bar.mra" > /dev/MiSTer_cmd

Nice, this should be doable by AMMiSTer. Sadly it means adding SSH to the app, which doesn't work on MacOS :( but that is surmountable, just need to figure out a workaround for that.

[birdybro]

Maybe some clues in here for SSH.

https://github.com/electerm/electerm

Electron based like your app, MIT licensed, there might be some clues, supposedly works on Mac as well.

I would be highly suspicious if Macs didn't have some kind of SSH client capability, that's unusual, it's a basic system administration tool, how would anyone do their job on it? :P

EDIT: Hrm... looking around, Mac does indeed have the normal ssh username@hostname/ipaddress like windows and linux.

[city41]

Oh I meant the node ssh package causes an issue with macos and electron. I'll get macos and ssh working, especially now since this feature would be really cool.

btw, exporting to mister is done with ftp instead of ssh, as it's over twice as fast. ssh requires encryption, making the mister's lil cpu a bottleneck.

[city41]

v0.33.0 now includes short play videos thanks to Arcade Italia. So at least for now, I don't plan to implement this as I think the videos solve this need better.