4-16-09 Downloads and first attempts

I downloaded the Ultimate Disto of Atomic FE off the web page, and HyperSpin off of its web page. I installed both on the C: Drive in default dir's.

First Up AtomicFE Ult: The install took awhile, pretty easy, most defaults are simple, has a language selection but otherwise is like most any installer. At the end there is a warning that you will have to configure a couple emulators manually. You click exit and a dos box will come up and will in Dos Txt explain what you will need to do. LEAVE the dos window open and follow its instructions. Pretty easy again. I was confused in the Rom path on 2nd emulator you manually set up, but it seems it was already set to the correct path. Once you do this you should have the Bare bones setup. I then proceeded to fire it up.

First Hicup It did not install in english even thouhg I selected english (or so I assumed). I then uninstalled, painless, but for a large program it does take some time, and there is one dialog (maybe just for me as I installed from a thumb drive) about removing read only files. I then reinstalled making sure I selected ENGLISH. Once again the text in the Front end was french (I think?). I uninstalled and retried one last time. Same result. SO for now I'm stuck there. I have a help request in on the Official boards, and some un offical ones. I have had a reply from AtomicFE's programmer (he has been nothing but helpful from what I have seen and is one reason why I chose Atomic FE as a new FE to try). But as of right now I'm just waiting on answers. Its very possible its not an ENGLISH release, but it did ask for ENGLISH as an install option. So for right now Atomic FE is in a holding pattern.

HyperSpin: Once again a very easy to understand install, and all went very smooth, I chose the HyperSpin 0.8.0.0 release. Firing up Hyperspin shows its configured for most emulators (wheel graphics) and is very pretty. I then fired up HyperHQ, a very slick looking configuration tool for Hyperspin. Pretty easy to understand. I pointed it to Mame.EXE and the roms folder and made sure the ZIP extension was listed. I then Fired up Hyperspin and tried Mame, games all showed up, possibly the game list is built into HyperSpin , so I'm not sure if names wuld be there reguardless or not. But when a game was selected i just got a blank black screen. Some arranging of settings still showed nothing but a blank Black screen. So a question was asked (and an answer suggested) and I have yet to try the solution.

SO overall, not a very good start, all the emu's and roms did work in GameEX, so its not a problem with the parts, but the FE are currently not working. This could very well be due to my settings (and most likely is). As I have read nothing on setting them up. PLEASE READ THAT!!! I have skipped the most basic step of any installation, READ THE MANUAL/HELP file. So please don't take this as a Knock on either FE, its not. I said I was going to go through exactly what happened when I set these up. And that is what has happened so far.... More to come.