(Thanks to @HendrixTrog for the video!)

MiSTer SAM puts all your games on display to enjoy whenever your MiSTer is idle!

Like a screen saver, MiSTer SAM comes on when your MiSTer is idle. Then SAM will launch a random game from your library every few minutes. If you like a game that's currently playing, just pick up your controller and push a button, press a key, or move the mouse. SAM will start another game once you return to the main menu. Then the gaming tour begins again!

• Copy MiSTer_SAM_on.sh to your MiSTer's /media/fat/Scripts directory - that's it!
• From the main MiSTer menu navigate to Scripts and select MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.
• NOTE Additional files will be downloaded automatically the first time you run MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.

If your MiSTer is not connected to the internet, click on "Code" -> "Download Zip" and download the project package.

• Copy MiSTer_SAM_on.sh and MiSTer_SAM.ini to /media/fat/Scripts on your MiSTer.
• Additionally copy the entire .MiSTer_SAM directory to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM on your MiSTer.
• To enable autoplay, launch MiSTer_SAM_on.sh - push up button to enter Menu. Now find enable autoplay in the menu.

• Running MiSTer_SAM_on.sh will update your exisiting version to the newest version.
• Backup MiSTer_SAM.ini and delete (recommended). Since we constantly add new features, it is advised to backup your custom settings and start with a fresh MiSTer_SAM.ini.

Simply wait at the main MiSTer menu for 2 minutes (default setting) without touching the mouse, keyboard, or controller and SAM will start.

• NOTE When you set the startup time to 60 seconds, it will actually wait 2 minutes since there is a default 60 second wait after boot (to let all processes start up).

Don't want to wait? You can start SAM instantly by launching MiSTer_SAM_on.sh script in your MiSTer's Scripts folder!

• Autoplay - MiSTer SAM autostarts by default when your MiSTer is idle in the main menu. If you want SAM to always autostart, no matter if in the main menu or not, you can do that by changing "menuonly" setting in MiSTer_SAM.ini .

• Controller Detection - MiSTer SAM will only start when no input has been received from your controllers for the amount of time set in MiSTer_SAM.ini

• Options Menu - All options of SAM can be configured from a menu when launching MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.
  NOTE The menu does not work out of the box on CRT's . Please try adding the following settings to your /media/fat/MiSTer.ini and see if it will make the menu work for your CRT setup:

[Menu]
vga_scaler=0
fb_terminal=0
vsync_adjust=1
video_mode=512,38,66,64,224,12,20,6,10689

• Exclusion Lists - You can exclude any amount of games in the ini that you don't want to have displayed.

• Whitelist Support - Specify a list of games you would like to display (ignore all other games in the folder). E.g. set gbawhitelist="/media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_whitelist_gba.txt" in MiSTer_SAM.ini

• Custom Game Directory Support - You can set a custom directory for your games in MiSTer_SAM.ini like /media/usb0.

This process can be used if you want to return MiSTer SAM to default settings or ensure you have the latest files.

• From the main MiSTer menu open the terminal (F9).
• Login (default user: root default password: 1).
• rm -fr /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM /media/fat/MiSTer_SAM /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM.ini
• Open the OSD (F12 or your controller's menu button).
• Navigate to Scripts and select MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.

The script is highly customizable through the included ini file MiSTer_SAM.ini (details below).

Currently supported MiSTer cores:

• Arcade
• Game Boy Advance (.gba)
• Genesis (.md)
• MegaCD AKA SegaCD (.chd)
• NeoGeo (.neo)
• NES (.nes)
• SNES (.sfc)
• TurboGrafx-16 AKA PC Engine (.pce)
• TurboGrafx-16 CD AKA PC Engine CD (only .chd)

The Update-all script works great for putting system files in the right places.

Uncomment one of the "arcadepath" settings in the MiSTer_SAM.ini file to choose from only horizontal or vertical arcade games.

tty2oled adds a 3" OLED screen to your MiSTer! By default, tty2oled displays the current core name. With SAM's enhanced tty2oled support you can see the core and game name!

Simply edit the MiSTer_SAM.ini and change the ttyenable setting to ttyenable="Yes". If you need to use a non-standard device change it with ttydevice="/dev/ttyUSB0".

Want to exclude certain arcade games? Just add them to mraexclude in the MiSTer_SAM.ini file.

A Linux startup daemon runs in the background of your MiSTer's ARM CPU. It looks for any keyboard activity, mouse movement, or controller button presses via Linux. This is being achieved by monitoring the hardware devices on your MiSTer while using minimal resources - with only native tools (CPU load of >1%). When your MiSTer is displaying the main menu and it's idle for several minutes, SAM will start launching random games.

MiSTer arcade cores are launched via a MiSTer command. For console games there is no official way to load individual games programmatically. SUper Attract Mode automates the process by sending simulated button presses to the MiSTer. This is done with a modified version of pocomane's MiSTer Batch Control.

SNAC is not handled by the Linux kernel so unfortunately we wont be able to support SNAC devices.

MiSTer SAM is designed to be highly configurable. Please check the /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM.ini file to see if the behavior you want is configurable. If not, please open an issue! We love feedback and feature requests.

Short answer is no. FPGAs don't have a limited number of writes. They are solid state devices that are configured at boot up or - in the case of MiSTer - when a core is loaded. There is no wear from this configuration step.

If you would like to know what game is currently playing, you can check the file /tmp/SAM_Game.txt. Some folks even use this with OBS to automatically change the game name for their Twitch stream!

The great work began with MrChrisster building a MiSTer Attract feature for the NES core. This begat Attract_Arcade after Mellified kept opening issues started helping. Once MrChrisster worked with mbc it unlocked the power to load ROMs for more MiSTer cores, resulting in Attract_Mode. We wanted to bring the project to the next level by automating the process. From this collaboration and passion was born SAM - Super Attract Mode! Since MiSTer SAM does everything the old projects did - and lots more! - we wanted to create a new name appropriate for its new superpowers.

- When I try to launch the script, it fails and says something about Document Type
You most likely didn't download the "raw" file.
When downloading a file from github, click on the file, then click on "raw".
Now push Ctrl+S to save

- Core is loaded but just hangs on the menu
Sometimes this happens (even on our test setups) and it could be for a variety of reasons.

• Neogeo and GBA seem to have the most issues while SNES, NES and Genesis work pretty reliably.
• We noticed that some MegaCD games that the script is trying to load also won't work when loaded through the MiSTer interface.
• Make sure you are using the recommended folder structure, such as /media/fat/Games/SNES/.
• The script supports zipped Everdrive packs or unzipped folders. For MegaCD and Turbografx16 CD games must be in CHD format.

If you are still having trouble it could simply be that the rom failed to load, it seems to happen every now and then.

- Turbografx16 CD and MegaCD just showing Run/Start button but not starting into the game
Make sure you use a bios that auto launches the game.

- Can I use a CIFS mount for my games?
CIFS is supported. Here is an example of some values in cifs_mount.sh that should get you started. The idea is to mount The SMB Games folder over the MiSTer SD card Games folder:

SERVER="192.168.1.10"  
SHARE="Games/Mister/Games"  
LOCAL_DIR="*"  
BASE_PATH="/media/fat/Games" 

For technical users here are a few handy tricks to observe and debug SAM.

• To update the daemon from local files: cp /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_init /etc/init.d/S93mistersam && /etc/init.d/S93mistersam start &
• To disable the daemon startup delay add to your INI: startupsleep="No"
• To enable more console messages: samquiet="No"

Some commands to control SAM from the command line

• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh monitor - This will attach MiSTer SAM to current shell (only works while autoplay is running)
• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh start - Start SAM immediately
• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh skip | next - Load next game - doesn't interrupt loop if running
• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh stop - Stop SAM immediately
• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh update - Update SAM
• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh enable - Enable SAM autoplay mode
• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh disable - Disable SAM autoplay
• MiSTer_SAM_on.sh arcade | gba | genesis | megacd | neogeo | nes | snes | tgfx16 | tgfx16cd - Only launch specific system

• 30 Nov 2021 - @InquisitiveCoder added Whitelist support
• 16 May 2021 - Fixed hotplug detection, added ini editing feature through menu
• 10 May 2021 - "2.0" release! Menu, per-core exclusions, directory exclusion, timer until next game (ssh), custom game dir support (usb0), expanded controller detection, NeoGeo compatiblity improvements
• 28 Apr 2021 - Test branch support, added reboot to on to improve reliability, fixed confusing messages in on, fixed monitoring with no js devices
• 24 Apr 2021 - Controller detection and removal, launch SAM only from the main menu (configurable), allow controller/keyboard/mouse interrupts (configurable), fixed INI parsing, added SAM now to launch instantly, more bugs squashed.
• 23 Apr 2021 - Updated INI and data directory - Reset to defaults recommended!
• 21 Apr 2021 - Initial version