I'd like to pass FCE Ultra some arguments to establish which device is plugged into which port. Specifically, I'd like to tell it to plug the zapper into port 2 for light gun games, and the gamepad for regular games. According to the documentation, this format should do the trick:

fceu -input2 zapper romname.nes
fceu -input2 gamepad romname.nes

Unfortunately, the documentation for the version I use (Windows port 0.98.12) also says:

"Please note that most of these arguments are currently not recognized on the Win32-native port."

All my tests with these arguments have failed, probably for the reason above. Questions:

1) Should I even bother messing around with the DOS version? (I use the screenshotarchive.com hacked version of FCE Ultra 0.98 in an arcade cabinet, so if I can't exit on the ESC key, etc., I can't use it.)

2) I can't find any reference to a DOS version later than 0.81. Was this the last release before work on the DOS version was discontinued?

3) I know this is a long shot, because the FCE Ultra homepage is down and the project appears defunct, but are there any rumblings about someone picking up this project and patching some holes like this? (Don't look at me, I can't code to save my life .. :) )

4) I hate to do this, because I've invested a lot of time getting FCE Ultra up and running on my cab, but is there another emulator I should consider? I need something that can work from the command line and have its keys mapped to cabinet controls (ESC for exit, P for pause, etc.); ideally, I'd also like to use an emulator that's still a working project.

Thanks all ...

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not using DOS ... it's just that the Win32 version of FCE Ultra won't recognize the -inputx argument, so I thought I'd give the DOS version a try. (However, I may be getting Windows command line and DOS confused.) However, I think that ultimately I'm going to have to just switch emulators.

SOLVED! (at least in my setup)

Turns out the new beta version of the MAMEWAH front end, which I use on my cabinet, allows you to specify a completely different emulator on a per-list (lightgun list, for example) or even per-game (Baby Boomer (U).zip) basis.

So what I did was make another folder called 'fce ultra lightgun', like this:

c:/games/emulators/fce ultra/
c:/games/emulators/fce ultra lightgun/

Then I copied all the files from my original FCE Ultra folder into the new one, effectively creating two copies of FCE Ultra. I then configured each one separately:

Lightgun Version:
Port 1: Gamepad
Port 2: Zapper
Famicom Port: <none>

Non-Lightgun Version:
Port 1: Gamepad
Port 2: Gamepad
Famicom Port: <none>

Then, using the new beta version of MAMEWAH (1.61b1 --available only on the MAMEWAH bulletin board, not on the MAMEWAH site yet -- to get to the BBS, go to http://www.mameworld.net and click on the Arcade OS BBS link), I set up my .ini files as follows:

FCE Ultra.ini
emulator_commandline c:\games\emulators\FCE Ultra\fceu.exe {8.3[rompath]\[name].[romext]}{nosafelaunch}

FCE Ultra/Baby Boomer (U).ini
emulator_commandline c\games\emulators\FCE Ultra lightgun\fceu.exe {8.3[rompath]\[name].[romext]}{nosafelaunch}

This way, when Baby Boomer is played (from ANY game list), it launches using the lightgun-configured version of FCE Ultra; all other games are played using the standard-configured version.

Works like a charm. Whoopee!

I'm still working on the marquee, bezel and side art -- will post pictures when they're done. :)