Proper workflow for installing an old atari emulator?

[LinNoob]

Operating System: OpenMandriva ROME 25.01
KDE Plasma Version: 6.2.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.10.0
Qt Version: 6.8.1
Kernel Version: 6.12.9-desktop-1omv2490 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 12 × Intel® Core™ i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz
Memory: 31.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

I want to install a7800 which is an emulator for the atari 7800. I already failed trying to do a bottles version so time to do it the right way. I figured I better ask If the syntax is al good before I go dicking around with my system and probably screw it up.

The directions state to

Linux download

A 64-bit binary has been provided, which should be compatible with recent versions of the OS. You will need SDL2 runtime libraries installed. If the provided binary doesn’t work on your platform, you can try building your own from source code.

To install A7800, download one of the packages, and from a terminal execute the commands that follow.

Unpack the zip file…

# tar -xvzf a7800-linux-v5.2.tgz

Ensure that the /usr/local/bin common binary directory exists. This can be skipped if it does exist, or performed without harm if you’re not sure…

# sudo mkdir /usr/local/bin

Copy the executable to /usr/local/bin, ensuring all can execute it…

# sudo cp a7800-linux/a7800 /usr/local/bin/a7800 # sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/a7800

If you haven’t run A7800 or MAME before, create a directory for the configuration, and generate a default configuration…

# mkdir ~/.a7800 # a7800 -cc # mv a7800.ini ~/.a7800

(Optional) Create a directory to hold your a7800.zip (NTSC) or a7800p.zip (PAL) BIOS ROMs…

# sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/a7800/roms

Create a directory to hold your A78 game ROMs…

# sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/a7800/software/a7800

Edit your configuration file to tell A7800 where you’ve put BIOS ROMS. You may also wish to change “mouse 0” to “mouse 1” under “CORE INPUT OPTIONS”, to enable using the mouse with paddle, trackball, driving controller, and mouse emulation…

# nano ~/.a7800/a7800.ini

Be sure to put your A7800 BIOS zip file(s) in your ROMS directory, A78 game files in your SOFTWARE directory, and don’t forget to make sure your ROMS directory is listed in your a7800.ini file.

Did this all sound about right?

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Code you please edit your post and post code as code?

How to post code as code in OpenMandriva forum posts

User Information: To post code as code in the window where one writes their reply or post use the </> icon. Highlight the part that is code and click on that icon. Any output in a terminal or Konsole is considered code. Contents of system files and any configuration files are code. This shows the code or preformatted text icon: [Screenshot_20210113_152912] Why this is important? It makes the code a lot easier for someone to read and understand as code. It helps people trying to help users wit…

[LinNoob]

Hey thanks you taught me something. Im not looking for to tell me that its gonna work. A “ya, why not” works for me.

I got the first two steps.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

I am not weighing in on the original topic because I do not know enough about that. You might be the person to write the manual or “How to” for OMLx on this. Or you can ask OM developers at OM-Chat.

[LinNoob]

Roger that. Ill give it the weekend before I start that endevour.

[richp (rich)]

Looking at the commands, there isn’t anything that should break your system most of it is just moving the downloaded files to the right directories on your system. The first command tar is just extracting a tar file like zip in windows. When you see a -(some random letters) after a command these are arguments that tell the command more precisely what to do, you can run
command --help eg

tar --help

to see what the arguments do this works for most commands and is good practice if you understand what the command does. The mkdir commands are just for making the requiered directories the -p argument creates the parent directories if they dont already exist so no real danger there. Probably the /usr/local/bin directory already exists you can check this with

ls /usr/local

ls lists what is in the specified derectory, check to see if bin is in the output, it won’t hurt to run the comand if the directory exists already you will just get a warning to that effect.

I cant tell you if it will work but the code looks good ensure to install the dependecies first

sudo dnf in lib64SDL2_2.0_1

I think this is what is requiered but if you have any problems there are some old school gamers here who can help you more than me.
Good luck with the install.