PIAPARA LiveCD For Linux

PIAPARA LiveCD is an open source project, a DIY (Do It Yourself) kind of operating system designed from the ground up to help you build a unique system for playing old-school arcade games. It is built around the SDLMAME emulator software, using AdvanceMENU as front-end.

Key features include support for arcade and PC monitors, support for USB controllers (joysticks), support for PIAPARA interfaces, support for USB or HDD storage drives, as well as network support.

As mentioned, this is not a regular distribution of Linux. Instead of downloading an ISO image, you will get only a zip archive that contains a tool written in the Java programming language and designed to allow you to generate your very own PIAPARA LiveCD ISO image. Keep in mind that you must install the latest Java Runtime Environment to use this tool.

The PIAPARA LiveCD Generator tool uses a tabbed interface. The first tab, MAME options, will allow you to tune the SDLMAME software for a specific hardware platform (supports a wide range of hardware platforms), as well as to choose a ROM to start with.

From the Video options tab, you will be able to choose a monitor type, a pixel clock level, a video driver, the method to calculate the nearest mode, calculation modes and the stretching option.

You can enable or disable networking support from the Network options tab, as well as to set a hostname, enable automatic network configuration support, and set custom IP address, netmask, default gateway and DNS.

Lastly, the user can enable or disable support for PIAPARA interfaces from the PIAPARA interfaces options tab of the PIAPARA LiveCD Generator tool. Click the “Create” button to generate the ISO image, which can be booted from the BIOS of a PC.