MiSTer FPGA Forum

I have been working with my MiSTer and loving its capabilities. It is currently sitting in a Ms. Pacman cabinet and serving as the frontend for that cabinet. I want to be able to boot directly to Ms. Pacman as default. I am aware that the Mister.ini settings can get this to work. I am confused on how the format is supposed to be laid out. I can get this to work if I pick lastcore, but I cant figure out the format for any of the other options. The ini talks about rbf files, but we now use MRA files to launch games/cores.
The part of the ini file is as follows:
The setting I think I need is: this would seem to require that I also place Ms. Pacman.mra (Pacman.rbf?) in the root of the drive (renamed to corename.mra (corename.rbf?). Doesn't seem to work no matter what I try.

What I want to do is something like this When I try this, the Mister boots to the menu screen. Any help, guidance or formatting would be greatly appreciated.

Please refer to the notes below which I put together some time ago:

1. Open the mister.ini file in the main SD folder.

2. Look for the line ;bootcore=lastcore.

3. Uncomment it and replace ‘lastcore’ with the .mra file corresponding to the rom you want to start with. For istance if you want to start Galaga, just use bootcore=Galaga.mra.

4. You can speed up the the timeout with the line bootcore_timeout=1. It should be possible to disable the timeout completely with the option bootcore_timeout=-1, but it didn’t work at least for me.

5. Please note that if the arcade name is composed of two or more words like ‘Black Tiger’, I would recommend to rename the .mra file to something like ‘Black_Tiger’ and then you can edit the usual line with bootcore=Black_Tiger.mra

Maybe there is a better/different way to do it, but these procedures worked for me

There's no need to rename mra files with spaces in the name, bootcore works fine with them.

Thank you for the guidance. I have changed my Mister.ini file to the following and it works 100% as expected. Spaces in the name are no problem and I did not have to change the location of the mra file for it to work.:
Commenting out the bootcore_timeout allows the machine to boot directly into the game as expected!

Morfious wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 2:50 pm Thank you for the guidance. I have changed my Mister.ini file to the following and it works 100% as expected. Spaces in the name are no problem and I did not have to change the location of the mra file for it to work.:

Code: Select all

; lastcore - Autoboot the last loaded core (corename autosaved in CONFIG/lastcore.dat) first found on the SD/USB
; lastexactcore - Autoboot the last loaded exact core (corename_yyyymmdd.rbf autosaved in CONFIG/lastcore.dat) first found on the SD/USB
; corename - Autoboot first corename_*.rbf found on the SD/USB
; corename_yyyymmdd.rbf - Autoboot first corename_yyyymmdd.rbf found on the SD/USB
bootcore=Ms. Pacman.mra    ; uncomment to autoboot a core, as the last loaded core.
;bootcore_timeout=10  ; 10-30 timeout before autoboot, comment for autoboot without timeout.

Commenting out the bootcore_timeout allows the machine to boot directly into the game as expected!

Great, I am glad to be of help.

Morfious wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 2:50 pm

Thank you for the guidance. I have changed my Mister.ini file to the following and it works 100% as expected. Spaces in the name are no problem and I did not have to change the location of the mra file for it to work.:

Code: Select all

; lastcore - Autoboot the last loaded core (corename autosaved in CONFIG/lastcore.dat) first found on the SD/USB
; lastexactcore - Autoboot the last loaded exact core (corename_yyyymmdd.rbf autosaved in CONFIG/lastcore.dat) first found on the SD/USB
; corename - Autoboot first corename_*.rbf found on the SD/USB
; corename_yyyymmdd.rbf - Autoboot first corename_yyyymmdd.rbf found on the SD/USB
bootcore=Ms. Pacman.mra    ; uncomment to autoboot a core, as the last loaded core.
;bootcore_timeout=10  ; 10-30 timeout before autoboot, comment for autoboot without timeout.

Commenting out the bootcore_timeout allows the machine to boot directly into the game as expected!

It hadn't occurred to me! It's perfect now it turns on and my favorite game appears directly... Thanks