to start uncompressing the DJGPP files.

Before uncompressing..

After uncompressing..

If you do not see the message "4 archives were successfully processed.", re-download the archives. If you get a "Bad commmand or file name", verify once again that you have unzip.exe in c:\windows\command\

Next we will have to set up the environment variables. To make the changes permanent, we will have to edit AUTOEXEC.BAT, which is a file that always gets run before Windows starts up. Type edit \autoexec.bat and hit enter. There might be a lot of things in there, so do not touch anything else than what you are told to.

Find the line which says something like PATH C:\WIN98;C:\WIN98\COMMAND (there might be some other directories defined after these two). Add ;C:\DJGPP\BIN to the end of that line, so that it will look like PATH C:\WIN98;C:\WIN98\COMMAND;C:\DJGPP\BIN (again, there might be something extra in there, leave them as they are). After that, hit enter to make a new line. Type SET DJGPP=C:\DJGPP\DJGPP.ENV into that line. Now you can save the file (ALT-F then S) and quit (ALT-F then X) (These might differ depending on your language version of Windows). Then you will need to reboot your computer, to make the changes effective.

An example of AUTOEXEC.BAT after editing..

Now DJGPP should be functional. Then you will need several add-on libraries and programs that MAME uses. Download the following files into c:\download\. Note that there may be newer versions of these files, but MAME is not verified to compile with any other versions of the following files.

File name	File size	Description
all3934.zip	1789 kB	Allegro Low Level Game Routines library WIP v3.9.34.
zlib113.zip	214 kB	ZLIB compression library v1.1.3.
mamesealnew.zip	69 kB	SEAL audio library v1.07 (modified - updated!) for DOS.
nasm098.zip	160 kB	Netwide Assembler (NASM) v0.98.
upx107w.zip	117 kB	Ultimate Packer for eXecutables (UPX) v1.07.

The last three are the easiest to install. Open up the command prompt again, and type cd \download. Then type

After uncompressing UPX, NASM and SEAL

Then we will install Allegro. Type unzip all3934.zip -d c:\djgpp\ and hit enter.

After uncompressing Allegro

Allegro is a library, which needs to be compiled. Type cd \djgpp\allegro to go to Allegro's directory, then type make lib and hit enter. This will take a while. After it is done, type make install and hit enter. The compiling went fine if you get the message "The optimised djgpp library has been installed".

After compiling Allegro

Then we will install zlib, the add-on library that enables MAME to read ZIP files. Type unzip zlib113.zip -d zlib\ and hit enter. Go to the directory by typing cd zlib and compile it by typing make -fmsdos\makefile.dj2 and hitting enter.

Before compiling zlib

When it is done, you need to copy three files into DJGPP's directories. Type xcopy libz.a c:\djgpp\lib\ and xcopy zlib.h c:\djgpp\include\ and xcopy zconf.h c:\djgpp\include\

After compiling zlib

Now you can compile MAME. Download the source ZIP into c:\download\

File name	File size	Description
mame056s.zip	5522 kB	This is the source archive of MAME 0.56.

Go to the download directory by typing cd \download and uncompress the MAME sources by typing unzip mame056s.zip -d c:\djgpp\mame\. Usually the MAME sources are compressed twice to squeeze them into an even smaller space. Go to the MAME source directory by typing cd \djgpp\mame and uncompress the second zip by typing unzip *.zip

Before uncompressing MAME's second zip

When the uncompressing is done, you might want to delete the second zip by typing del mame056.zip (This is not necessary if you are sure you have enough space on your drive). Then you can compile MAME. Type make MAMEOS=msdos and hit enter. This will finally compile MAME itself. If you want to compile the CPU optimized versions, type make I686=1 MAMEOS=msdos or make K6=1 MAMEOS=msdos instead of just make MAMEOS=msdos. It will take a lot of time, ranging from 15 minutes to an hour depending on your CPU speed, so go get yourself something to drink.

Starting to compile MAME

If you get an error message like "Error -1" after a line that starts with "nasmw -o", you have not installed nasmw.exe correctly. Read the section "6. install upx & nasm & seal" again.

At some point, the compilation might crash the command prompt or simply stop with a message like "no DPMI selectors". Don't worry, it is normal. Fortunately, the compilation will continue just fine from where it crashed. Open the command prompt again, change to the correct directory and type make MAMEOS=msdos again (or the CPU-specific commands make I686=1 MAMEOS=msdos or make K6=1 MAMEOS=msdos if you are building a CPU-specific compile).

Compilation might crash

When the compilation is done, you can type dir. You should see a brand new DMAME.EXE in there.

Compilation ready

To be able to use MAME, you should make the directories that MAME expects to exist. Type md artwork, md cfg, md hi, md inp, md memcard, md nvram, md roms, md samples and md snap.

Congratulations, you did it!

To successfully compile a new version of MAME, you should NOT uncompress a new set of sources over an old version of MAME. Instead, rename the MAME directory to another name or simply delete it totally (if you are sure that nothing important is there), and then uncompress the new set of sources to an empty directory.

If this happens, you first need to remove the old Allegro files. Go to the main DJGPP directory (cd \djgpp) and delete the whole Allegro directory by typing deltree /y allegro. Then you need to delete the Allegro library by typing del lib\liballeg.a and the Allegro header files by typing cd include, del allegro.h and deltree /y allegro. After that, follow the instructions of section "7. install allegro" again and hope for the best.

Of course, the biggest advantage of building your own binary is the possibility to tinker around with the source files. For example, to try out drivers which are not fully working yet, take a look at the file src\driver.c with a normal text editor (like EDIT). The disabled drivers are marked with the text TESTDRIVER. Simply remove the TEST part from a driver you want to test, save the file and type make MAMEOS=msdos again. Remember, the license forbids you from redistributing binaries that contain games which are disabled in the official versions. Naturally, there should not be any reasons to redistribute such binaries since this page makes it easy for everybody to build their own binaries.

You might notice that the UPX part takes an obscene amount of time. The simplest solution to avoid it is to just rename upx.exe to another name. If you do that, the make utility will give you an error and the file DMAME.EXE is about 12 MB, but it will work fine.

To include the debugger functionality in your MAME executable, edit makefile. Near the top you will see a text like "uncomment next line to include the debugger". Remove the # character from the next line, so that it only has DEBUG = 1 in that particular line. Save the file, type make clean and then make. To actually use the debugger, edit MAME.CFG and find the line that says debug = no. Change it to debug = yes and save the file. In MAME, hit tilde ( ~ ) or key to the left of the key  1  to enter the debugger.