   MAME with GrIP Support But Not Another Clever Prefix
 --------------------------------------------------------

This isn't really yet another distribution. Rather, it's more of a beta test
for the new GrIP drivers.

*** New: It's now more of a distribution. Seems to work, and it's been a 
while now... Though feedback from people with real GrIP multiport boxes or
Stingers would be wonderful...

The official MAME readmes are included; you should look at them if you never
have. In any case, this is NOT the official MAME, and please do not bug the
official MAME team about issues with it. In accordance with the license,
the sources should be available wherever the binaries are.

Speaking of which, the main addition to the sources is the new Allegro 
driver. Because of the joystick changes in MAME 036b2, further changes to
MAME aren't necessary anymore. The Allegro drivers will hopefully be included
in the next Allegro WIP. I would like to know if there are any issues with
either it or the MAME code, though, as soon as possible -- preferably before
wider release. Thus, this MAME version.

GrIP devices include the Gravis GamepadPro, Xterminator, and Stinger. The
library GRIP.GLL is needed in either the MAME directory or somewhere in the
path. It is included in the standard Gravis drivers, but one version is 
included here as well. Start MAME by using the "-joy grip" option. For
some games, "-joy grip4" might be better; it restricts the digital pad to
tighter four-directional motion. (This is a notorious problem with both
the Xterminator and the GamepadPro in some games).

All controls on the devices should be supported. The names should also be
accurately fetched from the GrIP driver. I have only one GrIP controller
myself, but it should work with several at once.

I would, of course, love to hear any feedback on this. I'm not pasting my
email address in here -- it's very easy to get, and in some ways it is better
to post to the message boards anyway. I just want that little bit of effort
as a barrier to help keep me from getting useless emails a year from now or
so. In any feedback (well, email, at least), it would be nice to include the
grip.out debug file that is generated.


Hope this works for some people. Good luck.


(Building: Unzip allgrip.zip into the allegro\src\dos\ directory. Make the
small modifications described in the gripdiff.txt file there, then compile
the Allegro library. Next, make the modification described in the 
mamegripdiff.txt file. You are now set to compile MAME. The binary here was
compiled with gcc 2.95 using pentium optimization and a bunch of optimization
flags. Note that you do NOT need to do this just to play MAME.)


 - Rob
 August 9, 1999
 