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106-416: MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator ) is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade games , video game consoles , old computers and other systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve gaming history by preventing vintage video games from being lost or forgotten. It does this by emulating

212-590: A cease and desist notice to the MAME developers over those games being included in the emulator. MAME complied with the request a day later, making both unplayable on the emulator outside of command line, as of version 0.240. The MAME core coordinates the emulation of several elements at the same time. These elements replicate the behavior of the hardware present in the original machines. MAME can emulate many different central processing units (CPUs) and associated hardware. These elements are virtualized so that MAME acts as

318-428: A numeronym . For example, "i18n" abbreviates " internationalization ", a computer-science term for adapting software for worldwide use; the "18" represents the 18 letters that come between the first and the last in "internationalization". Similarly, "localization" can be abbreviated "l10n"; " multilingualization " "m17n"; and " accessibility " "a11y". In addition to the use of a specific number replacing that many letters,

424-645: A single word ("television" or "transvestite", for instance), and is in general spelled without punctuation (except in the plural). Although "PS" stands for the single English word " postscript " or the Latin postscriptum , it is often spelled with periods ("P.S.") as if parsed as Latin post scriptum instead. The slash ('/', or solidus ) is sometimes used to separate the letters in an acronym, as in "N/A" ("not applicable, not available") and "c/o" ("care of"). Inconveniently long words used frequently in related contexts can be represented according to their letter count as

530-507: A 1940 translation of a novel by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger . It is an unsettled question in English lexicography and style guides whether it is legitimate to use the word acronym to describe forms that use initials but are not pronounced as a word. While there is plenty of evidence that acronym is used widely in this way, some sources do not acknowledge this usage, reserving

636-429: A 2 GHz processor is enough to run almost all 2D games, more recent systems and particularly systems with 3D graphics can be unplayably slow, even on the fastest computers. MAME does not currently take advantage of hardware acceleration to speed up the rendering of 3D graphics, in part because of the lack of a stable cross-platform 3D API, and in part because software rendering can, in theory, be an exact reproduction of

742-462: A continuously swept image. This device was utilized by early radio engineers, but was not practical until John Bertrand Johnson implemented the hot cathode to drastically reduce the voltage requirements for the device. The Cathode Ray Oscillograph was subsequently commercialized and became the basis for the modern oscilloscope. Oscilloscopes were used by electrical engineers to map out physical forces, as well as by recording engineers to understand

848-625: A different meaning. Medical literature has been struggling to control the proliferation of acronyms, including efforts by the American Academy of Dermatology. Acronyms are often taught as mnemonic devices: for example the colors of the rainbow are ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). They are also used as mental checklists: in aviation GUMPS stands for gas-undercarriage-mixture-propeller-seat belts. Other mnemonic acronyms include CAN SLIM in finance, PAVPANIC in English grammar, and PEMDAS in mathematics. It

954-781: A medial decimal point . Particularly in British and Commonwealth English , all such punctuation marking acronyms and other capitalized abbreviations is now uncommon and considered either unnecessary or incorrect. The presence of all-capital letters is now thought sufficient to indicate the nature of the UK , the EU , and the UN . Forms such as the U.S.A. for "the United States of America " are now considered to indicate American or North American English . Even within those dialects, such punctuation

1060-442: A month. Windows executables in both 32-bit and 64-bit fashion are released on the development team's official website , along with the complete source code. Smaller, incremental "u" (for update) releases were released weekly (until version 0.149u1) as source diffs against the most recent major version, to keep code in synchronization among developers. MAME's source code is developed on a public GitHub repository, allowing those with

1166-407: A period when the letters are pronounced individually, as in " K.G.B. ", but not when pronounced as a word, as in " NATO ". The logic of this style is that the pronunciation is reflected graphically by the punctuation scheme. When a multiple-letter abbreviation is formed from a single word, periods are in general not used, although they may be common in informal usage. "TV", for example, may stand for

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1272-550: A process called "dumping". The resulting files are often generically called ROM images or ROMs regardless of the kind of storage they came from. A game usually consists of multiple ROM and PAL images; these are collectively stored inside a single ZIP file , constituting a "ROM set". In addition to the "parent" ROM set (usually chosen as the most recent "World" version of the game), games may have "clone" ROM sets with different program code, different language text intended for different markets etc. For example, Street Fighter II Turbo

1378-418: A rudimentary user interface, the use of MAME in arcade game cabinets and home theaters necessitates special launcher applications called front ends with more advanced features. They provide varying degrees of customization, allowing one to see images of games' cabinets, histories, playing tips, specialized logo artwork for games, and video of the game's play or attract mode . The information within MAME

1484-467: A series of large-screen X-Y (vector) displays, the first of which was the 20 MHz 8x10-inch model 1300. The CRT had an internal, specially contoured, very fine mesh operating at low potential, which was placed after the deflection plates at the gun exit. The 17KV electrostatic field between this mesh and the separate, conductive coating charged to final accelerating potential inside the CRT funnel, accelerated

1590-436: A single word, such as NATO (as distinct from B-B-C )" but adds later "In everyday use, acronym is often applied to abbreviations that are technically initialisms, since they are pronounced as separate letters." The Chicago Manual of Style acknowledges the complexity ("Furthermore, an acronym and initialism are occasionally combined (JPEG), and the line between initialism and acronym is not always clear") but still defines

1696-481: A software layer between the original program of the game, and the platform MAME runs on. MAME supports arbitrary screen resolutions, refresh rates and display configurations. Multiple emulated monitors, as required by, for example, Darius , are supported as well. Individual systems are specified by drivers which take the form of C preprocessor macros . These drivers specify the individual components to be emulated and how they communicate with each other. While MAME

1802-435: A special type of display screen, more complicated in principle than a simple phosphor.) But that permanent image cannot be easily changed. Like an Etch-a-Sketch , any deletion or movement requires erasing the entire screen with a bright green flash, and then slowly redrawing the entire image. Animation with this type of monitor is not practical. Vector displays were used for head-up displays in fighter aircraft because of

1908-515: A twentieth-century phenomenon. Linguist David Wilton in Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends claims that "forming words from acronyms is a distinctly twentieth- (and now twenty-first-) century phenomenon. There is only one known pre-twentieth-century [English] word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is colinderies or colinda , an acronym for

2014-426: A vector monitor to display wireframe images of 3D models. This time the display was head mounted . The obviously heavy system was held up by a support arm structure called The Sword of Damocles . The system is widely considered to be the first computer-based virtual reality . Ivan Sutherland later co-founded the company Evans & Sutherland , which made high-end vector displays and flight simulators. In 1970, at

2120-471: A word, an abbreviation is not an acronym." In contrast, some style guides do support it, whether explicitly or implicitly. The 1994 edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage defends the usage on the basis of a claim that dictionaries do not make a distinction. The BuzzFeed style guide describes CBS and PBS as "acronyms ending in S". Acronymy, like retronymy , is a linguistic process that has existed throughout history but for which there

2226-677: A word. American English dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster , Dictionary.com's Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary as well as the British Oxford English Dictionary and the Australian Macquarie Dictionary all include a sense in their entries for acronym equating it with initialism , although The American Heritage Dictionary criticizes it with

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2332-572: Is a subset with a narrower definition: an initialism pronounced as a word rather than as a sequence of letters. In this sense, NASA / ˈ n æ s ə / is an acronym but USA / j uː ɛ s ˈ eɪ / is not. The broader sense of acronym , ignoring pronunciation, is its original meaning and in common use. Dictionary and style-guide editors dispute whether the term acronym can be legitimately applied to abbreviations which are not pronounced as words, and they do not agree on acronym spacing , casing , and punctuation . The phrase that

2438-488: Is a question about how to pluralize acronyms. Often a writer will add an 's' following an apostrophe, as in "PC's". However, Kate L. Turabian 's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations , writing about style in academic writings, allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms "only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and lowercase letters". Turabian would therefore prefer "DVDs" and "URLs" but "Ph.D.'s". The style guides of

2544-721: Is becoming increasingly uncommon. Some style guides , such as that of the BBC , no longer require punctuation to show ellipsis ; some even proscribe it. Larry Trask , American author of The Penguin Guide to Punctuation , states categorically that, in British English , "this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete." Nevertheless, some influential style guides , many of them American , still require periods in certain instances. For example, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends following each segment with

2650-411: Is common for grammatical contractions (e.g. don't , y'all , and ain't ) and for contractions marking unusual pronunciations (e.g. a'ight , cap'n , and fo'c'sle for "all right", "captain", and "forecastle"). By the early twentieth century, it was standard to use a full stop/period/point , especially in the cases of initialisms and acronyms. Previously, especially for Latin abbreviations , this

2756-454: Is completely undocumented and cannot be reverse-engineered in detail. Signal level emulation is used to emulate audio circuitry that consists of analog components. We want to document the hardware. Now a lot of people will say; "Where's your document? You just write a bunch of source code." And yes, that's true. One thing I've learned is that keeping documentation synced with source code is nearly impossible. The best proof that your documentation

2862-747: Is considered a variant of Street Fighter II Champion Edition . System boards like the Neo Geo that have ROMs shared between multiple games require the ROMs to be stored in "BIOS" ROM sets and named appropriately. MAME ROMs come in three forms, split , non-merged , and merged : Hard disks, compact discs and laserdiscs are stored in a MAME-specific format called CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data). Some machines use analog hardware, such as laserdiscs, to store and play back audio/video data such as soundtracks and cinematics. This data must be captured and encoded into digital files that can be read by MAME. MAME does not support

2968-631: Is especially important for paper media, where no search utility is available to find the first use.) It also gives students a convenient review list to memorize the important acronyms introduced in a textbook chapter. Expansion at first use and abbreviation keys originated in the print era, but they are equally useful for electronic text . While acronyms provide convenience and succinctness for specialists, they often degenerate into confusing jargon . This may be intentional, to exclude readers without domain-specific knowledge. New acronyms may also confuse when they coincide with an already existing acronym having

3074-460: Is free for reuse, and companies have been known to utilize MAME when recreating their old classics on modern systems. Some have even hired MAME developers to create emulators for their old properties. An example is the Taito Legends pack, with ROMs readable on select versions of MAME. On 27 May 2015 (0.162), the games console and computer system emulator MESS was integrated with MAME (so

3180-464: Is generally said as two letters, but IPsec for Internet Protocol Security is usually pronounced as / ˌ aɪ ˈ p iː s ɛ k / or / ˈ ɪ p s ɛ k / , along with variant capitalization like "IPSEC" and "Ipsec". Pronunciation may even vary within a single speaker's vocabulary, depending on narrow contexts. As an example, the database programming language SQL is usually said as three letters, but in reference to Microsoft's implementation

3286-454: Is not considered an open source , or free software license, respectively. The non-commercial clause was designed to prevent arcade operators from installing MAME cabinets and profiting from the works of the original manufacturers of the games. The ambiguity of the definition "commercial" led to legal problems with the license. Since March 2016 with version 0.172, MAME itself switched , by dual licensing , to common free software licenses ,

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3392-459: Is not uncommon for acronyms to be cited in a kind of false etymology , called a folk etymology , for a word. Such etymologies persist in popular culture but have no factual basis in historical linguistics , and are examples of language-related urban legends . For example, " cop " is commonly cited as being derived, it is presumed, from "constable on patrol", and " posh " from " port outward, starboard home ". With some of these specious expansions,

3498-400: Is right is "does this code work". MAME emulates well over a thousand different arcade system boards , a majority of which are completely undocumented and custom designed to run either a single game or a very small number of them. The approach MAME takes with regards to accuracy is an incremental one; systems are emulated as accurately as they reasonably can be. Bootleg copies of games are often

3604-402: Is slower than steady beam motion of raster displays. Beam deflections are typically driven by magnetic coils , and those coils resist rapid changes to their current . The vector display was first invented by Jonathan Zenneck via use of a Braun cathode-ray tube. His solution was able to produce fundamental waveforms using two deflection cowls a high-powered cathode inside of the tube to create

3710-415: Is traditionally pronounced like the word sequel . In writing for a broad audience, the words of an acronym are typically written out in full at its first occurrence within a given text. Expansion At First Use (EAFU) benefits readers unfamiliar with the acronym. Another text aid is an abbreviation key which lists and expands all acronyms used, a reference for readers who skipped past the first use. (This

3816-629: The BSD-3-Clause license, and the GPL-2.0-or-later license. However, old versions remain licensed under the original license. Acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps with no punctuation . For some, an initialism or alphabetism , connotes this general meaning, and an acronym

3922-511: The BSD-3-Clause license, and the complete project is under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. On 24 February 2016 (0.171), MAME embedded the MEWUI front-end (and its developer joined the team), providing MAME with a flexible and more full-featured UI. On 30 December 2021, exA-Arcadia , the Western copyright holders of the games Akai Katana and DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou had their lawyers file

4028-516: The Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London in that year." However, although acronymic words seem not to have been employed in general vocabulary before the twentieth century (as Wilton points out), the concept of their formation is treated as effortlessly understood (and evidently not novel) in an Edgar Allan Poe story of the 1830s, " How to Write a Blackwood Article ", which includes

4134-623: The Modern Language Association and American Psychological Association prohibit apostrophes from being used to pluralize acronyms regardless of periods (so "compact discs" would be "CDs" or "C.D.s"), whereas The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage requires an apostrophe when pluralizing all abbreviations regardless of periods (preferring "PC's, TV's and VCR's"). Possessive plurals that also include apostrophes for mere pluralization and periods appear especially complex: for example, "the C.D.'s' labels" (the labels of

4240-539: The Restoration witticism arranging the names of some members of Charles II 's Committee for Foreign Affairs to produce the "CABAL" ministry . OK , a term of disputed origin, dates back at least to the early nineteenth century and is now used around the world. Acronyms are used most often to abbreviate names of organizations and long or frequently referenced terms. The armed forces and government agencies frequently employ acronyms; some well-known examples from

4346-473: The original MAME license . MAME developer Miodrag Milanovic explained that the change was to draw more developer interest, allow game manufacturers to distribute MAME to emulate their own games, and to make the software "a learning tool for developers working on development boards". The transition of MAME's licensing to BSD/GPL was completed in March 2016. Most of MAME's source code (90%+) is now available under

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4452-513: The "MAME license" or the "MAME-like license", which was adopted also by other projects, e.g. Visual Pinball . This license ensures the availability of the licensed program's source code , whilst the redistribution of the program in commercial activities is prohibited. Due to this clause, the license is incompatible with the OSI 's Open Source Definition and the FSF 's Free Software Definition , and as such

4558-480: The "belief" that the etymology is acronymic has clearly been tongue-in-cheek among many citers, as with "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden" for " golf ", although many other (more credulous ) people have uncritically taken it for fact. Taboo words in particular commonly have such false etymologies: " shit " from "ship/store high in transit" or "special high-intensity training" and " fuck " from "for unlawful carnal knowledge", or "fornication under consent/command of

4664-463: The 160-character SMS limit, and to save time, acronyms such as "GF" ("girlfriend"), "LOL" ("laughing out loud"), and "DL" ("download" or "down low") have become popular. Some prescriptivists disdain texting acronyms and abbreviations as decreasing clarity, or as failure to use "pure" or "proper" English. Others point out that languages have always continually changed , and argue that acronyms should be embraced as inevitable, or as innovation that adapts

4770-461: The 18 letters between the initial "i" and the final "n"). Authors of expository writing will sometimes capitalize or otherwise distinctively format the initials of the expansion for pedagogical emphasis (for example, writing: "the onset of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)" or "the onset of c ongestive h eart f ailure (CHF)"). Capitalization like this, however, conflicts with the convention of English orthography, which generally reserves capitals in

4876-466: The British press may render it "Nato"), but uses lower case in " Unicef " (from "United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund") because it is more than four letters, and to style it in caps might look ungainly (flirting with the appearance of "shouting capitals"). While abbreviations typically exclude the initials of short function words (such as "and", "or", "of", or "to"), this is not always

4982-432: The MAME core, was integrated into MAME in 2015. With OTVDM (WineVDM) a version of MAME is available to emulate 16-Bit DOS and Windows applications on x64 and AArch64 versions of Windows. The NTVDM from Microsoft is only supported for the 32-bit versions of Windows. The MAME project was started by Italian programmer Nicola Salmoria . It began as a project called Multi-Pac, intended to preserve video games in

5088-506: The MESS User Manual is still the most important usage instruction for the non-arcade parts of MAME). This also led to the removal of the acronym, as MAME can now emulate more than arcade machines. Since 2012, MAME has been maintained by former MESS project leader Miodrag Milanović. In May 2015, it was announced that MAME's developers planned to re-license the software under a more common free and open-source license , away from

5194-456: The Pac-Man family, but the name was changed as more games were added to its framework. The first MAME version was released in 1996. In April 1997, Salmoria stepped down for his national service commitments, handing stewardship of the project to fellow Italian Mirko Buffoni for half a year. In May 2003, David Haywood took over as project coordinator; and from April 2005 to April 2011, the project

5300-564: The U.S. Navy, is "COMCRUDESPAC", which stands for "commander, cruisers destroyers Pacific"; it is also seen as "ComCruDesPac". Inventors are encouraged to anticipate the formation of acronyms by making new terms "YABA-compatible" ("yet another bloody acronym"), meaning the term's acronym can be pronounced and is not an offensive word: "When choosing a new name, be sure it is 'YABA-compatible'." Acronym use has been further popularized by text messaging on mobile phones with short message service (SMS), and instant messenger (IM). To fit messages into

5406-514: The UK Farnborough Airshow , Sperry Gyroscope ( Bracknell , England) exhibited the first ever vector graphic video display from a UK company. It featured an analogue monochrome display with special electronics, designed by Sperry's John Atkins, that allowed it to draw vectors on screen between two pairs of coordinates. At Farnborough the display was used to demonstrate the capabilities of the new Sperry 1412 military computer - it

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5512-560: The United States are among the " alphabet agencies " (jokingly referred to as " alphabet soup ") created under the New Deal by Franklin D. Roosevelt (himself known as "FDR"). Business and industry also coin acronyms prolifically. The rapid advance of science and technology also drives the usage, as new inventions and concepts with multiword names create a demand for shorter, more pronounceable names. One representative example, from

5618-559: The Whirlwind displays could produce complex readings of airborne trajectory, as well as played host to the first graphical demo, Bouncing Ball (1951). In 1956, the first light pen was implemented on the Whirlwind system. These technologies then became the basis for the advanced US SAGE air defense system which was fully active in 1958. In 1963, Ivan Sutherland at MIT first used a vector graphic display for Sketchpad , his pioneering CAD program. In 1968, he and his team again used

5724-538: The Windows platform, and most other platforms are supported through the SDLMAME project, which was integrated into the main development source tree in 2006. MAME has also been ported to other computers, game consoles, mobile phones and PDAs and, at one point, even to digital cameras. In 2012, Google ported MAME to Native Client , which allows MAME to run inside Chrome . Major releases of MAME occur approximately once

5830-411: The acronym may use normal case rules, e.g. it would appear generally in lower case, but with an initial capital when starting a sentence or when in a title. Once knowledge of the words underlying such an acronym has faded from common recall, the acronym may be termed an anacronym . Examples of anacronyms are the words " scuba ", " radar ", and " laser ". The word "an acro nym" should not be confused with

5936-545: The acronym stands for is called its expansion . The meaning of an acronym includes both its expansion and the meaning of its expansion. The word acronym is formed from the Greek roots akro- , meaning 'height, summit, or tip', and -nym , 'name'. This neoclassical compound appears to have originated in German , with attestations for the German form Akronym appearing as early as 1921. Citations in English date to

6042-590: The adoption of acronyms was modern warfare, with its many highly technical terms. While there is no recorded use of military acronyms dating from the American Civil War (acronyms such as "ANV" for " Army of Northern Virginia " post-date the war itself), they became somewhat common in World War I , and by World War II they were widespread even in the slang of soldiers, who referred to themselves as G.I.s . The widespread, frequent use of acronyms across

6148-506: The apostrophe should be reserved for the possessive ("the TV's antenna"). In some languages, the convention of doubling the letters in the acronym is used to indicate plural words: for example, the Spanish EE.UU. , for Estados Unidos ('United States'). This old convention is still sometimes followed for a limited number of English abbreviations, such as SS. for Saints , pp. for

6254-502: The brighter displays that can be achieved by moving the electron beam more slowly across the phosphors. Brightness was critical because the display needed to be clearly visible to the pilot in direct sunlight. Vector monitors were also used by some late-1970s to mid-1980s arcade games such as Armor Attack , Asteroids , Omega Race , Tempest , and Star Wars , and in the Vectrex home videogame console. Hewlett-Packard made

6360-1163: The case. Sometimes function words are included to make a pronounceable acronym, such as CORE ( Congress of Racial Equality ). Sometimes the letters representing these words are written in lower case, such as in the cases of "TfL" (" Transport for London ") and LotR ( The Lord of the Rings ); this usually occurs when the acronym represents a multi-word proper noun. Numbers (both cardinal and ordinal ) in names are often represented by digits rather than initial letters, as in "4GL" (" fourth generation language ") or "G77" (" Group of 77 "). Large numbers may use metric prefixes , as with " Y2K " for "Year 2000". Exceptions using initials for numbers include " TLA " ("three-letter acronym/abbreviation") and "GoF" (" Gang of Four "). Abbreviations using numbers for other purposes include repetitions, such as " A2DP " ("Advanced Audio Distribution Profile"), " W3C " ("World Wide Web Consortium"), and T3 ( Trends, Tips & Tools for Everyday Living ); pronunciation, such as " B2B " ("business to business"); and numeronyms , such as "i18n" ("internationalization"; "18" represents

6466-413: The compact discs). In some instances, however, an apostrophe may increase clarity: for example, if the final letter of an abbreviation is "S", as in "SOS's" (although abbreviations ending with S can also take "-es", e.g. "SOSes"), or when pluralizing an abbreviation that has periods. A particularly rich source of options arises when the plural of an acronym would normally be indicated in a word other than

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6572-564: The contrived acronym "P.R.E.T.T.Y.B.L.U.E.B.A.T.C.H." The use of Latin and Neo-Latin terms in vernaculars has been pan-European and pre-dates modern English. Some examples of acronyms in this class are: The earliest example of a word derived from an acronym listed by the OED is "abjud" (now " abjad "), formed from the original first four letters of the Arabic alphabet in the late eighteenth century. Some acrostics pre-date this, however, such as

6678-438: The dictionary entries and style guide recommendations regarding the term acronym through the twentieth century did not explicitly acknowledge or support the expansive sense. The Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage from 1994 is one of the earliest publications to advocate for the expansive sense, and all the major dictionary editions that include a sense of acronym equating it with initialism were first published in

6784-462: The display artifacts of aliasing and pixelation —especially black and white displays; color displays keep some artifacts due to their discrete nature—but they are limited to displaying only a shape's outline (although advanced vector systems can provide a limited amount of shading). Text is crudely drawn from short strokes. Refresh vector displays are limited in how many lines or how much text can be shown without refresh flicker. Irregular beam motion

6890-433: The electron beam axially as well as radially, expanding the possible image size to cover the 8x10" screen of the 17.75-inch long CRT. Without the mesh, the 8x10-inch CRT would have had to be almost three times as long. Expansion mesh technology was developed in the early 1960s by the need to drive deflection plates at high frequencies in compact high-brightness CRTs operating at high acceleration voltages, to take advantage of

6996-589: The emulation speed. Back-end targets supported are x86 and x64. A C back end is also available to further aid verification of the correctness. CPUs emulated in this manner are SH-2, MIPS R3000 and PowerPC. The original program code, graphics and sound data need to be present so that the system can be emulated. In most machines, the data is stored in read-only memory chips (ROMs), although other devices such as cassette tapes , floppy disks , hard disks , laserdiscs , and compact discs are also used. The contents of most of these devices can be copied to computer files, in

7102-664: The exclusive sense for acronym and its earliest citation was from 1943. In early December 2010, Duke University researcher Stephen Goranson published a citation for acronym to the American Dialect Society e-mail discussion list which refers to PGN being pronounced "pee-gee-enn", antedating English language usage of the word to 1940. Linguist Ben Zimmer then mentioned this citation in his December 16, 2010 " On Language " column about acronyms in The New York Times Magazine . By 2011,

7208-763: The final word if spelled out in full. A classic example is "Member of Parliament", which in plural is "Members of Parliament". It is possible then to abbreviate this as "M's P", which was fairly common in mid-twentieth-century Australian news writing (or similar ), and used by former Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley . This usage is less common than forms with "s" at the end, such as "MPs", and may appear dated or pedantic. In common usage, therefore, "weapons of mass destruction" becomes "WMDs", "prisoners of war" becomes "POWs", and "runs batted in" becomes "RBIs". Abbreviations that come from single, rather than multiple, words – such as "TV" ("television") – are usually pluralized without apostrophes ("two TVs"); most writers feel that

7314-464: The first letter of acronyms, reserving all-caps styling for initialisms, writing the pronounced acronyms "Nato" and "Aids" in mixed case, but the initialisms "USA" and "FBI" in all caps. For example, this is the style used in The Guardian , and BBC News typically edits to this style (though its official style guide, dating from 2003, still recommends all-caps ). The logic of this style is that

7420-491: The first to be emulated, with proper (and copy protected) versions emulated later. Besides encryption, arcade games were usually protected with custom microcontroller units (MCUs) that implemented a part of the game logic or some other important functions. Emulation of these chips is preferred even when they have little or no immediately visible effect on the game itself. For example, the monster behavior in Bubble Bobble

7526-405: The games. The stated aim of the project is to document hardware, and so MAME takes a somewhat purist view of emulation, prohibiting programming hacks that might make a game easier to run at the expense of emulation accuracy. Components such as CPUs are emulated at a low level (meaning individual instructions are emulated) whenever possible, and high-level emulation (HLE) is only used when a chip

7632-498: The inner workings of the emulated machines; the ability to actually play the video games is considered "a nice side effect". Joystiq has listed MAME as an application that every Windows and Mac gamer should have. The first public MAME release was by Nicola Salmoria on 5 February 1997. It now supports over 7,000 unique games and 10,000 actual ROM image sets, though not all of the games are playable. MESS , an emulator for many video game consoles and computer systems, based on

7738-435: The king". In English, abbreviations have previously been marked by a wide variety of punctuation . Obsolete forms include using an overbar or colon to show the ellipsis of letters following the initial part. The forward slash is still common in many dialects for some fixed expressions—such as in w/ for "with" or A/C for " air conditioning "—while only infrequently being used to abbreviate new terms. The apostrophe

7844-500: The label "usage problem". However, many English language dictionaries, such as the Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary , Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary , Macmillan Dictionary , Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English , New Oxford American Dictionary , Webster's New World Dictionary , and Lexico from Oxford University Press do not acknowledge such a sense. Most of

7950-836: The language to changing circumstances. In this view, the modern practice is just the "proper" English of the current generation of speakers, much like the earlier abbreviation of corporation names on ticker tape or newspapers. Exact pronunciation of "word acronyms" (those pronounced as words rather than sounded out as individual letters) often vary by speaker population. These may be regional, occupational, or generational differences, or simply personal preference. For instance, there have been decades of online debate about how to pronounce GIF ( / ɡ ɪ f / or / dʒ ɪ f / ) and BIOS ( / ˈ b aɪ oʊ s / , / ˈ b aɪ oʊ z / , or / ˈ b aɪ ɒ s / ). Similarly, some letter-by-letter initialisms may become word acronyms over time, especially in combining forms: IP for Internet Protocol

8056-544: The middle of sentences for proper nouns; when following the AMA Manual of Style , this would instead be rendered as "the onset of congestive heart failure (CHF)". Vector display Some refresh vector displays use a normal phosphor that fades rapidly and needs constant refreshing 30-40 times per second to show a stable image. These displays, such as the Imlac PDS-1 , require some local refresh memory to hold

8162-466: The more general "x" can be used to replace an unspecified number of letters. Examples include "Crxn" for "crystallization" and the series familiar to physicians for history , diagnosis , and treatment ("hx", "dx", "tx"). Terms relating to a command structure may also sometimes use this formatting, for example gold, silver, and bronze levels of command in UK policing being referred to as Gx, Sx, and Bx. There

8268-544: The nature of human voices. The displays also became a frequent add-on to advanced electronic analog computers to visualize complex forces. The first RADAR systems utilized vector graphic oscilloscopes to map aircraft positions. Vector graphics in computers first emerged with the Whirlwind system built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 's Lincoln Laboratory . Utilizing oscilloscope tubes,

8374-452: The numerous releases in the 0.37 beta cycle (these version numbers have since been marked next to their equivalent 0.37 beta releases on the official MAMEdev website). MAME's architecture has been extensively improved over the years. Support for both raster and vector displays , multiple CPUs, and sound chips were added in the project's first six months. A flexible timer system to coordinate synchronization between multiple emulated CPU cores

8480-729: The plural of 'pages', or mss. for manuscripts . The most common capitalization scheme seen with acronyms is all-uppercase ( all caps ). Small caps are sometimes used to make the run of capital letters seem less jarring to the reader. For example, the style of some American publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and USA Today , is to use small caps for acronyms longer than three letters; thus "U.S." and " FDR " in normal caps, but " nato " in small caps. The acronyms " AD " and " BC " are often smallcapped as well, as in: "From 4004 bc to ad 525 ". Where an acronym has linguistically taken on an identity as regular word,

8586-486: The project by potentially bringing it into disrepute. Despite this, illegal distributions of ROMs are widespread on the Internet, and many "Full Sets" also exist which contains a full collection of a specific version's ROMs. In addition, many bootleg game systems, such as arcade multi carts, often use versions of MAME to run their games. MAME was formerly distributed under a custom self-written copyleft license , called

8692-483: The pronunciation is reflected graphically by the capitalization scheme. However, it conflicts with conventional English usage of first-letter upper-casing as a marker of proper names in many cases; e.g. AIDS stands for acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome which is not a proper name, while Aids is in the style of one. Some style manuals also base the letters' case on their number. The New York Times , for example, keeps "NATO" in all capitals (while several guides in

8798-521: The public through licensing. For example, in 2003 Atari made MAME-compatible ROMs for 27 of its arcade games available on the Internet site Star ROMs . However, by 2006 the ROMs were no longer being sold there. At one point, various Capcom games were sold with the HotRod arcade joystick manufactured by Hanaho , but this arrangement was discontinued as well. Other copyright holders have released games which are no longer commercially viable free of charge to

8904-439: The public under licenses that prohibit commercial use of the games. Many of these games may be downloaded legally from the official MAME web site. The Spanish arcade game developer Gaelco has also released World Rally for non-commercial use on their website. The MAME community has distanced itself from other groups redistributing ROMs via the Internet or physical media, claiming they are blatantly infringing copyright and harm

9010-685: The publication of the 3rd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary added the expansive sense to its entry for acronym and included the 1940 citation. As the Oxford English Dictionary structures the senses in order of chronological development, it now gives the "initialism" sense first. English language usage and style guides which have entries for acronym generally criticize the usage that refers to forms that are not pronounceable words. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage says that acronym "denotes abbreviations formed from initial letters of other words and pronounced as

9116-476: The required expertise and tools to build the most up-to-date version and contribute enhancements as pull requests . Historical version numbers 0.32, and 0.38 through 0.52 inclusively, do not exist; the former was skipped due to similar naming of the GUI-equipped MAME32 variant (which itself has since been renamed MAMEUI due to the move to 64-bit builds), while the latter numbers were skipped due to

9222-470: The sides of railroad cars (e.g., "Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad" → "RF&P"); on the sides of barrels and crates; and on ticker tape and newspaper stock listings (e.g. American Telephone and Telegraph Company → AT&T). Some well-known commercial examples dating from the 1890s through 1920s include " Nabisco " ("National Biscuit Company"), " Esso " (from "S.O.", from " Standard Oil "), and " Sunoco " ("Sun Oil Company"). Another field for

9328-484: The subject of any court cases. Most games are still covered by copyright. Downloading or distributing copyrighted ROMs without permission from copyright holders is almost always a violation of copyright laws. However, some countries (including the US) allow the owner of a board to transfer data contained in its ROM chips to a personal computer or other device they own. Some copyright holders have explored making ROMs available to

9434-476: The term acronym only for forms pronounced as a word, and using initialism or abbreviation for those that are not. Some sources acknowledge the usage, but vary in whether they criticize or forbid it, allow it without comment, or explicitly advocate it. Some mainstream English dictionaries from across the English-speaking world affirm a sense of acronym which does not require being pronounced as

9540-410: The term color quadrascan to describe the shadow-mask version used in their video arcade games. In the penetration tubes, by controlling the strength of the electron beam, electrons can be made to reach (and illuminate) either or both phosphor layers, typically producing a choice of green, orange, or red. Tektronix made color oscilloscopes for a few years using penetration CRTs, but demand for these

9646-502: The terms as mutually exclusive. Other guides outright deny any legitimacy to the usage: Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words says "Abbreviations that are not pronounced as words (IBM, ABC, NFL) are not acronyms; they are just abbreviations." Garner's Modern American Usage says "An acronym is made from the first letters or parts of a compound term. It's read or spoken as a single word, not letter by letter." The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage says "Unless pronounced as

9752-429: The then-new transistor technology which was limited to only low voltages. The much bulkier and less efficient vacuum-tube electrostatic deflection amplifiers were able to operate at hundreds of volts. The Digistar planetarium projection system, made by Evans & Sutherland , was originally a vector display that could render both stars and wire-frame graphics. Later versions use high resolution raster projection, but

9858-570: The twenty-first century. The trend among dictionary editors appears to be towards including a sense defining acronym as initialism : the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added such a sense in its 11th edition in 2003, and both the Oxford English Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary added such senses in their 2011 editions. The 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary only included

9964-689: The use of external analog devices, which (along with identical speaker and speaker enclosures) would be required for a 100% faithful reproduction of the experience. An ever decreasing number of games with unemulated audio circuits require sound samples in WAV file format for sound emulation. MAME additionally supports artwork files in PNG format for bezel and overlay graphics. Furthermore, emulation of games with liquid-crystal displays such as Game & Watch or extra physical aspects such as slot machines usually require extra image files for backgrounds or other aspects of

10070-405: The various custom 3D rendering approaches that were used in the arcade games. Owning and distributing MAME itself is legal in most countries, as it is merely an emulator. Companies such as Sony have attempted in court to prevent other software such as Virtual Game Station , a Sony PlayStation emulator from being sold, but they have been ultimately unsuccessful. MAME itself has thus far not been

10176-486: The vector endpoint data. Other storage tube displays, such as the popular Tektronix 4010 , use a special phosphor that continues glowing for many minutes. Storage displays do not require any local memory. In the 1970s, both types of vector displays were much more affordable than bitmap raster graphics displays when megapixel computer memory was still very expensive. Today, raster displays have replaced nearly all uses of vector displays. Vector displays do not suffer from

10282-568: The vector-based Digistar and Digistar II were installed in many planetariums, and a few may still be in operation. A Digistar prototype was used for rendering 3D star fields for the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . Another E&S vector display, the Picture System II, was possibly also used for the film. Some vector monitors are capable of displaying multiple colors, using either a typical shadow mask RGB CRT or two phosphor layers (so-called " penetration color "). Atari used

10388-536: The whole range of linguistic registers is relatively new in most languages, becoming increasingly evident since the mid-twentieth century. As literacy spread and technology produced a constant stream of new and complex terms, abbreviations became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common. In English, acronyms pronounced as words may be

10494-425: The word " an achro nym ", which is a type of misnomer. Words derived from an acronym by affixing are typically expressed in mixed case, so the root acronym is clear. For example, "pre-WWII politics", "post-NATO world", " DNase ". In some cases a derived acronym may also be expressed in mixed case. For example, " messenger RNA " and " transfer RNA " become "mRNA" and "tRNA". Some publications choose to capitalize only

10600-486: Was coordinated by Aaron Giles; then Angelo Salese stepped in as the coordinator; and in 2012, Miodrag Milanovic took over. The project is supported by hundreds of developers around the world and thousands of outside contributors. At first, MAME was developed exclusively for MS-DOS , but it was soon ported to Unix-like systems (X/MAME), Macintosh (MacMAME and later MAME OS X) and Windows (MAME32). Since 24 May 2001, with version 0.37b15, MAME's main development has occurred on

10706-511: Was done with a full space between every full word (e.g. A. D. , i. e. , and e. g. for " Anno Domini ", " id est ", and " exempli gratia "). This even included punctuation after both Roman and Arabic numerals to indicate their use in place of the full names of each number (e.g. LII. or 52. in place of "fifty-two" and "1/4." or "1./4." to indicate "one-fourth"). Both conventions have fallen out of common use in all dialects of English, except in places where an Arabic decimal includes

10812-1086: Was implemented, and ROM images started to be loaded according to their CRC32 hash in the ZIP files they were stored in. MAME has pioneered the reverse engineering of many undocumented system architectures, various CPUs (such as the M6809 -derivative custom Konami CPU with new instructions) and sound chips (for example, Yamaha FM sound chips ). MAME developers have been instrumental in reverse engineering many proprietary encryption algorithms utilized in arcade games, including Neo Geo , CP System II and CP System III . MAME's popularity has gone mainstream, with enthusiasts building their own arcade game cabinets to replay old games and even some companies producing illegal MAME derivatives to be installed in arcades . Cabinets are built either from scratch or by taking apart and modifying an original arcade game cabinet. Cabinets inspired by classic games can also be purchased and assembled (with MAME optionally preinstalled). Although MAME contains

10918-449: Was little to no naming , conscious attention, or systematic analysis until relatively recent times. Like retronymy, it became much more common in the twentieth century than it had formerly been. Ancient examples of acronymy (before the term "acronym" was invented) include the following: During the mid- to late nineteenth century, acronyms became a trend among American and European businessmen: abbreviating corporation names, such as on

11024-530: Was not perfected until the code and data contained with the custom MCU was dumped through the decapping of the chip. This results in the ROM set requirements changing as the games are emulated to a more and more accurate degree, causing older versions of the ROM set becoming unusable in newer versions of MAME. Portability and generality are also important to MAME. Combined with the uncompromising stance on accuracy, this often results in high system requirements. Although

11130-562: Was originally written in C , the need for object oriented programming caused the development team to begin to compile all code as C++ for MAME 0.136, taking advantage of additional features of that language in the process. Although a great majority of the CPU emulation cores are interpretive , MAME also supports dynamic recompilation through an intermediate language called the Universal Machine Language (UML) to increase

11236-685: Was shown running software that drew, in real time, a wire-frame rotating cube that could be speed-controlled in any of its three dimensions. That demonstration created significant interest in the Sperry 1412 computer, which then went on to be at the heart of a number of major projects for the French Navy and the Royal Navy during the period 1972 to 1992. Notable among vector displays are Tektronix large-screen computer terminals that use direct-view storage CRTs. (The CRT has at least one flood gun , and

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