forums.marpirc.net

No links to roms in this post, I hope it doesn't break forum rules.

My roms are getting old (0.72) and I have decided to update. I searched and found a new alternative to old methods of updating.

Dunno if it's well know here ?

Anyway you DL ClrMamepro and verify your roms, then use MAMEzip 1.3 to change and rezip the roms so that hash values can be added then the roms can be shared via bittorrent.

Here is a snippet of the changes ROMzip makes
quote
"Using MAMEzip
Making the file hashes of the ROMs that you currently have match identically to those already being seeded on the torrent.



This stage is essential as it will make the hashes of all your correct ROMs match those being seeded by the other users on the torrent around the globe, WARNING: if you skip this key stage your ROMs will be overwritten by those currently on the torrent, not because there is anything wrong with them but just because the hashes do not match up.

The program is written by Jano and is Java based, it is specifically designed to zip ROMs and give a consistent outcome every single time. This means that if the same files are zipped with MAMEzip on different machines the resulting created zipfiles will always be identical (assuming all the required files were present in the original zip to begin with). This is achieved by using exactly the same processes to rezip all of your ROMsets, MAMEzip extracts the files and rebuilds a new zip archive by removing the R.A.S.H. values, sorting the files out alphabetically, changing all the datestamps of the files, making sure all the filenames are in lower case text and are using the maximum standard zip compression method. (You may even find that your set takes up a little less disk space than before after the process has completed).

So that's how MAMEzip works, you will also need the Java Runtime Environment to run it, if you don't happen to have it currently installed, download and install it now.

Now launch MAMEzip by double-clicking the 'mamezip.jar' file and browse to your newly created 'roms' directory, click 'Start' and go and find something else to do for a good while. The re-zipping process can take several hours to complete but it will prove worthwhile once you begin downloading from the torrent. It is also advisable that you shut down any Virus Checkers and non-essential programs running in the background during the re-zipping process as they can slow it down drastically."
end quote

I'm in the process of learning all this and getting it done, I'm busy at work ATM so I don't expect to get the time to finish it till mid next week.

My question is do you think marp playbacks will be affected by the changes that ROMzip makes to the roms ????

I found a good walkthrough about this at pleasuredome.org.uk (considering that is not a hyperlink and they don't actually host roms I hope it will be ok to post?)

Replay's will not be affected because MAME won't be affected. MAME simply reads a zip file for it's roms. As long as the roms are zipped in a suitable format, they can be read and loaded into MAME.

All MAMEzip is doing, is standardizing the roms in the zip archive so they are alphabetical, don't have esoteric attribute flags set and use a standard level of compression. It is simply a convenience for distributing roms, that's all.

Note that you will also need to remove any nodumps from your romset before joining any torrent or you will be downloading several roms you already have.

The main factors affecting playbackability are the MAME version you use, the OS you are using, frameskipping and sound options and the dreaded nvram (never use it). Different MAME versions affect the playback because the driver may have been changed (is slower, faster or in some way different) or possibly the game uses a different set of roms (e.g. nodumps and baddumps replaced with corrected roms).

Cheers,
Tim

Thanks Tim

I followed the Clrmamepro instructions on the pleasuredome site, now I'm running MAMEzip. But a few roms have been stopping the mamezip prog with errors saying the file check was the wrong lenght or something ? anyway I'm deleting those and starting the mamezip again.

Are these the nodumps ?

I'm not sure how to check my rom set for no dumps, I better RTFM on clrmamepro

hi

rat wrote:errors saying the file check was the wrong lenght

on a basic level
i sometimes unzip and replace small files.
32 or 256 bytes in certain roms in order to
get it to boot up.
2 or 4k once in a while.
find a game of the same year , cpu , manufactuer.

example
digger , a dig dug clone , lacked a certain file.
so i took gold bug & extracted a close match file.
both are century electronics

just check properties + rename.
Audit is a good feature.
just click ok when you see the error message.

Rat wrote: Are these the nodumps ?
I'm not sure how to check my rom set for no dumps, I better RTFM on clrmamepro

No, those are most likely corrupted zip's where the zip header does not match the data. By default CMP doesn't check for it. You need to select checksums in the scanner and tick "unzip and check crc32" to get the deep scan. You'll have to download those roms again - they are bad.

Removing the nodumps is a manual job because CMP doesn't support it directly. It won't remove nodumps if they are already there. You should always leave the 'rebuild nodumps' options unticked ((it's a default already). If you have enough disk space then you can do a full rebuild to another folder and the resulting set will be clean.

Cheers,
Tim