Managing ROMs with clrmamepro

[Roo]

I created a new wiki article. Any and all feedback is welcome.

[u][url=http://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs]Managing ROMs[/url][/u]

I may be new to RasPi and RetroPie, but I’ve been collecting ROMs for a looong time :) I see a lot of people have trouble with ROMs that don’t match the emulators used in RetroPie, so I thought I could share some knowledge on how to use clrmamepro to manage your ROMs.

[Floob]

Can you include a link to it here?

[Roo]

Sorry, the first tag didn’t work – I’ve updated the original post.

[noobaphile]

Hi that would be very helpful for me, thanks, but I can’t see the link!

[Roo]

it’s weird – the link is there but it’s not underlining. I just used the button to insert a link… Let me try to fix it.

[dkcdocdos]

So i’ve followed these fine instructions by the letter with varth.zip, it didn’t work out as expected, the game still isn’t running.

I noticed clrmamepro even removed some files, the zip ended up even smaller than before.

Do i required multiple, different sets of the same game, so clrmamepro can rebuild them into one working romset?

Or is it something else i haven’t thought of?

[Floob]

Hi Roo,

I think I’ve got a MAME 0.138 set, what is the best way to confirm this?
Would it be (if I download the windows exe of mame 0.138):
mame -verifyroms * >verify.txt

Or is there an easier way?

[Roo]

[quote=86052]So i’ve followed these fine instructions by the letter with varth.zip, it didn’t work out as expected, the game still isn’t running.

I noticed clrmamepro even removed some files, the zip ended up even smaller than before.
[/quote]

MAME ROMs change over time. Maybe better dumps are made, or maybe they decide a ROM really isn’t a ROM, and is a logic chip instead. For whatever reason, MAME v0.37b5 varth.zip may be nothing like MAME v0.157 varth.zip.

Clrmamepro found all the ROMs in your source path that matched the v0.37b5 dat file and rebuilt the best version of varth.zip it could find. Which doesn’t mean it is complete. That’s where the Scanner function of clrmamepro comes in. You can also use MAME to verify a ROM, which may be easier if you are just trying to validate one ROM. The command would be like this:

cd /opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all
./mame -verifyroms varth

But you would have to copy the ROM you want to verify to /opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all/roms to use this command. It seems MAME4ALL is hard coded to look in the roms subfolder – it doesn’t use the path in mame.cfg file when using the -verifyroms switch.

[quote=86052]
Do i required multiple, different sets of the same game, so clrmamepro can rebuild them into one working romset?

Or is it something else i haven’t thought of?
[/quote]

Yes, you may have to rebuild from multiple locations to get a complete working ROM. For example, I have two locations I rebuilt my 0.37b5 ROM set from: MAME v0.157 and MAME rollback ROMS.

[Roo]

[quote=86072]Hi Roo,

I think I’ve got a MAME 0.138 set, what is the best way to confirm this?
Would it be (if I download the windows exe of mame 0.138):
mame -verifyroms * >verify.txt

Or is there an easier way?
[/quote]

Yes – you need the Windows MAME v0.138 executable, which you can get from http://mamedev.org/oldrel.html

Extract it on the same computer where you have clrmamepro installed.

* Launch clrmamepro
* Click Profiler
* Click Create…
* Filename points to MAME v0.138 executable – i.e. MAME.EXE
* Description would be something like “MAME v0.138”
* Emulator is MAME
* Click Create Profile

Load the profile and Clrmamepro will build a DAT file from the MAME executable (by running MAME.EXE -listxml). When clrmamepro asks you questions, answer No to “use software lists” and answer “Yes to All” or “OK to All” to everything else.

You can now use this profile to scan your ROM folder, just define a ROM path in Settings. If you have problems here, you can follow the wiki page instructions. It’s all the same process, you just got the DAT file from a different source.

Yes, you can also use the MAME -verifyroms switch, but I think that’s a pain. You’d have to pipe that out and try to parse through the results manually.

[dkcdocdos]

Yes, you may have to rebuild from multiple locations to get a complete working ROM

That just did the job, Varth runs like a charm now!

I took all the varth roms i could find super-duper legally own and ran the process again, clrmamepro fixed 3 zips and discarded one. The 3 remaining all work (in case i want to play the j-version – one day)

thx!

[Floob]

Hi Roo,

Thanks very much for your help.
I think I’m slowly getting to grips with scanning and rebuilding now.
clrmamepro certainly has a lot of options!

So is it the case, that the dat file will contain the precise information about the relevant roms (filesize, anme and crc check) and sets, so when you build it will rip out any matching roms from your sources and recreate/rebuild valid ones itself, so a lot of the hard work / important data is held in the dat file?

So potentially you could build a full romset against a given version even if you never had any of those roms to begin with?

And with RetroPie, the FBA dat file is 0.2.96.71, and this appears to have 684 games, so that would be the maximum amount of verified games that will run on it? And that also implies that the fba binary would be most happy with this set as thats the dat file that came packaged with it?

Should I worry my neogeo.zip never seems to find the correct sized 000-lo.lo rom in it?

Floob.

[Roo]

[quote=86214]Hi Roo,
Thanks very much for your help. I think I’m slowly getting to grips with scanning and rebuilding now. clrmamepro certainly has a lot of options![/quote]

It does! But it’s not CMP’s fault. All these different emulators do things a little differently from each other and CMP just gives you options to deal with that :)

[quote=86214]So is it the case, that the dat file will contain the precise information about the relevant roms (filesize, anme and crc check) and sets, so when you build it will rip out any matching roms from your sources and recreate/rebuild valid ones itself, so a lot of the hard work / important data is held in the dat file?[/quote]

Yes, that is exactly how a dat file works. I wouldn’t say “rip out”. With default CMP settings, your source files are not destroyed in the process of rebuilding. Here’s an example section of a MAME dat file, it’s pretty easy to see how it works:

‘ <game name=”dkong”>
<description>Donkey Kong (US set 1)</description>
<year>1981</year>
<manufacturer>Nintendo of America</manufacturer>
<rom name=”c_5at_g.bin” size=”4096″ crc=”b9005ac0″ sha1=”3fe3599f6fa7c496f782053ddf7bacb453d197c4″/>
<rom name=”c_5bt_g.bin” size=”4096″ crc=”1c97d324″ sha1=”c7966261f3a1d3296927e0b6ee1c58039fc53c1f”/>
<rom name=”c_5ct_g.bin” size=”4096″ crc=”5ec461ec” sha1=”acb11a8fbdbb3ab46068385fe465f681e3c824bd”/>
<rom name=”c_5et_g.bin” size=”4096″ crc=”ba70b88b” sha1=”d76ebecfea1af098d843ee7e578e480cd658ac1a”/>
<rom name=”c-2j.bpr” size=”256″ crc=”d6412358″ sha1=”f9c872da2fe8e800574ae3bf483fb3ccacc92eb3″/>
<rom name=”c-2k.bpr” size=”256″ crc=”e273ede5″ sha1=”b50ec9e1837c00c20fb2a4369ec7dd0358321127″/>
<rom name=”l_4m_b.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”59f8054d” sha1=”793dba9bf5a5fe76328acdfb90815c243d2a65f1″/>
<rom name=”l_4n_b.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”672e4714″ sha1=”92e5d379f4838ac1fa44d448ce7d142dae42102f”/>
<rom name=”l_4r_b.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”feaa59ee” sha1=”ecf95db5a20098804fc8bd59232c66e2e0ed3db4″/>
<rom name=”l_4s_b.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”20f2ef7e” sha1=”3bc482a38bf579033f50082748ee95205b0f673d”/>
<rom name=”s_3i_b.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”45a4ed06″ sha1=”144d24464c1f9f01894eb12f846952290e6e32ef”/>
<rom name=”s_3j_b.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”4743fe92″ sha1=”6c82b57637c0212a580591397e6a5a1718f19fd2″/>
<rom name=”v_3pt.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”15e9c5e9″ sha1=”976eb1e18c74018193a35aa86cff482ebfc5cc4e”/>
<rom name=”v_5h_b.bin” size=”2048″ crc=”12c8c95d” sha1=”a57ff5a231c45252a63b354137c920a1379b70a3″/>
<rom name=”v-5e.bpr” size=”256″ crc=”b869b8f5″ sha1=”c2bdccbf2654b64ea55cd589fd21323a9178a660″/>
</game>’

Just a small note, when you create a dat file from a MAME executable, CMP doesn’t actually make a dat file you can go look at, it just caches the same data.

[quote=86214]So potentially you could build a full romset against a given version even if you never had any of those roms to begin with?[/quote]

You have to have the roms somewhere, CMP can’t create the roms from nothing. But yes, if you have a full set of MAME v0.157 and you rebuild into MAME v0.138, you’re going to be pretty close to a full rom set. Over at pleasuredome, two popular MAME sets are the current version and the “rollback roms”. With these two, you should be able to rebuild any previous MAME version’s roms. That’s what I keep on my hard drive.

[quote=86214]And with RetroPie, the FBA dat file is 0.2.96.71, and this appears to have 684 games, so that would be the maximum amount of verified games that will run on it? And that also implies that the fba binary would be most happy with this set as thats the dat file that came packaged with it?[/quote]

Yes and yes. Whoever made that dat named it “working roms”, I have no reason to doubt their accuracy :)

[quote=86214]Should I worry my neogeo.zip never seems to find the correct sized 000-lo.lo rom in it?[/quote]

You can try a scan with the “fix size” checkbox selected. Again, CMP can’t create data from nothing. But if your current rom is too big (but the real data is in there somewhere) CMP can fix that. Or if your current rom is too small, and CMP just needs to pad it out with zeros, it can do that too.

[Floob]

Thanks very much for that, all a lot clearer now.

I’m currently running with gngeo as my neo emulator along with 0.138 mame romset and it seems pretty happy with that and running better than FBA seemed to.

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