# PCem, no ROMS present!



## Vladimir1922 (Dec 18, 2021)

Hi there. I am interested on some help using PCem. This is a piece of software that emulates multiple PC systems, and it is quite awesome. I use it a lot on Linux, and was happy to see it ported into FreeBSD. (even if quite outdated).

But there is no way of making it see the ROMS. The documentation on the project page says that in BSD, like Linux, the program looks for ~/.pcem/roms. Copied it from my Linux install into BSD, and no dice. Tough it might be because the version I got on Linux is v.17, when the in freeBSD you'll get v.14, so hunted down a romset for that version... and still nothing. Sadly there is no proper documentation anywhere, no man pages and no -h handles,  so I am a bit lost.

Did anyone managed to have this software working in FreeBSD?

Thanks in advance


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## covacat (Dec 18, 2021)

try truss, see why open fails


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## tingo (Dec 18, 2021)

I tried setting it up, but no - I can't make it see the ROM files. I tried adding some more subdirectories to the ~/.pcem directory, and even an empty pcem.cfg config file. It looks like this now

```
tingo@kg-core2$ ls -l ~/.pcem/
total 24
drwxr-xr-x    2 tingo  tingo   512 Dec 18 15:59 configs
drwxr-xr-x    2 tingo  tingo   512 Dec 18 16:24 hdd
drwxr-xr-x    2 tingo  tingo   512 Dec 18 16:36 logs
drwxr-xr-x    2 tingo  tingo   512 Dec 18 16:36 nvr
-rw-r--r--    1 tingo  tingo     0 Dec 18 16:37 pcem.cfg
drwxr-xr-x  114 tingo  tingo  4096 Dec 18 15:54 roms
drwxr-xr-x    2 tingo  tingo   512 Dec 18 16:37 screenshots
```
no joy.


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## Vladimir1922 (Dec 18, 2021)

ok, so as sugested, tried truss. The log is so stupidly long that can't even be pasted in pastebin. However, found something interesting:

fstatat(AT_FDCWD,"/usr/local/bin/roms",0x7fffffffddb0,0x0) ERR#2 'No such file or directory'

So, tried to copy the roms folder into /usr/local/bin, and bingo, it opened!


This seems like a bug: It is not looking at all for the home config file. Installing a data folder directly in /usr/local/bin doesn't seem right, and of course, it only makes PCem to be usable as root, as a normal user doesn't have permission to write in there.

tried to compile the newer version, but wouldn't compile because wxWidgets. installed from ports, and same error (no config file).

I might try to compile later, but sadly I did an portmaster -a and now it is updating $##!! rust. It can take well over 8 hours on my poor CoreDuo. I' ll report when I can.


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## covacat (Dec 18, 2021)

the location is definitely wrong but as a quick and dirty hack you can create a symlink


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## Vladimir1922 (Dec 18, 2021)

You are quite right about the symlink. Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out later and put a solved if it works.

I'll like to patch it tho, but that is a different horse to catch.


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