Home Page Forums MAME Non-Windows MAME Support Question about portability on Mac

Sounds like anything built on an Intel Mac will work with the new M1 macs bases on what I've been hearing.

The question is if the reverse is true or not: If I build MAME on an M1 mac and distribute the executable, will it be playable on older macs?

I don't yet own an M1 mac but planning on replacing my Mac Mini with the latest model this spring. I've been building MAME for years and distributing the Windows and Mac 64-bit builds on Usenet newsgroups still and wondering how portable that code is, or if I need to keep building it on my 8-year-old machine that takes over 3 hours to build.

Thanks.

My understanding is that you can build both architectures on both architectures, but I don't have first-hand experience. I don't think MAME's build system would allow building a universal binary but you could probably glue together the architectures manually with the command line tools.

Usenet is still a thing?

Yup. I post ROM and CHD updates along with updated binaries every month and others send fill requests that myself and others will assist in filling. Most of the usenet areas got flooded with spam and became worthless but alt.binaries.emulators.mame is still alive and kicking.

I guess we'll find out once I buy one and have a chance to do builds with it. Thanks.

I picked up the new Mac Mini last week and ran some tests. As I guessed, the executable built on the old intel Mac Mini runs fine on both systems but the build on the new Mac Mini will not run on the older one.

Does anyone know the command-lines needed in the make process to build it so it can work both ways? Or is this just something no one has attempted yet?

Thanks.

You can't build MAME universally, but if you follow the standard build instructions on an M1 machine you will get an M1 native binary.

Alternatively, MacPorts now offers both Intel and ARM binaries of MAME.