Mame merged set question

[gman314]

I recently updated to a merged .147 set.  The problem is that some non-parent roms, such as Pac-man, are not included.  I understand that the roms required to play Pac-man are zipped up in the Puckman set (the parent rom). 

I was wondering what would be the easiest method to have Pac-man (and maybe a few other non-parent sets) show up in my rom list.  I don't want to go through all the trouble of completely un-merging my set, but would like to pick and choose whatever non-parents I would like to show up.  Can I just download an earlier version of these roms and copy and paste the required files over the old ones?  Thanks in advance.

[gman314]

Any advice on this? 

[BadMouth]

Any advice on this?

The method would vary depending on your front end.

If it's Mala and you have it set to only display parent roms, then you'd just mark the rom as a parent in the XML file and refresh your main gamelist.
You'd still need the puckman rom in your rom folder so MAME can find the needed files.

The xml file is huge and takes a while to open, then freezes for a while each time you enter or delete a character.
My advice is to copy and paste the line to a new txt file, change it, then copy and paste it back in.

[gman314]

My frontend is Maximus Arcade.  Off the top of my head, I'm not sure if MA has an option to display all roms.  Would either of these two ideas work:
1) Simply add a Pacman zip file from a previous version of mame in my roms folder (I am using 147 but also have a complete 127 and 113 set). 
or 2) Create a zip file called "pacman", and the copy and paste the required files from the puckman folder into pacman.

[gman314]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in a merged set are all of the roms for both the parent and all the clones zipped up a single file (the parent)?  In other words if I want "pacman" to show up in list, could I just create an empty zip file and call it pacman.zip?  Will this work since I already have the pacman files in the puckman.zip? 
I wouldn't want to completely split my set just for a few roms to show up. Just out of curiosity though, if I did end up splitting the set, would it take up more space? The merged 147 set already takes up over 40 gb.

[honeyjew]

For opening and editing large text files, can I suggest Notepad++ as a very good substitute for Windows Notepad

[NOP]

Just out of curiosity though, if I did end up splitting the set, would it take up more space? The merged 147 set already takes up over 40 gb.

yes, a split set will consume more space because you're moving identical ROM files into separate zip files.

the good:
  a split set is extremely easy to add/subtract things from your list:  1 zip == 1 game
  games load slightly faster since all the roms are contained inside 1 zip file (but you will likely never notice the speed bump)

the bad:
  a split set will consume more HDD space.

the best:
  split your set, then update your list to how you want them, then merge them down again to save the space


IMO, space is cheap.  What else are you going to do with those extra 100+ Gig on your machine anyway?  I say split 'em and make updates easier.

[gman314]

Just out of curiosity though, if I did end up splitting the set, would it take up more space? The merged 147 set already takes up over 40 gb.

yes, a split set will consume more space because you're moving identical ROM files into separate zip files.

Hmmm? I would have thought that a merged and split set would take up the same amount of space, considering the fact that no files are being duplicated.  Beyond that, an empty zip file takes up 0KB.  As a result, I would guess that spliting a set would simply remove files out of the parent zip and transfer them into an empty zip.  I'm not doubting the above info, but wouldn't the new zip file take up the same space as the files before they were taken out of the merged zip (since the only addition would be the fact that they are being housed in an empty zip file that is initially 0KB in size?).

This is just something that I've always wondered about since I am now starting to understand the differences between merged, split, and non merged sets.

Just out of curiosity though, if I did end up splitting the set, would it take up more space? The merged 147 set already takes up over 40 gb.

IMO, space is cheap.  What else are you going to do with those extra 100+ Gig on your machine anyway?  I say split 'em and make updates easier.

Space isn't so cheap if you recently invested in a SSD like I did.    $200 for 256 gb, but it was worth it.   

[NOP]

Hmmm? I would have thought that a merged and split set would take up the same amount of space, considering the fact that no files are being duplicated.  Beyond that, an empty zip file takes up 0KB.  As a result, I would guess that spliting a set would simply remove files out of the parent zip and transfer them into an empty zip.

you're correct.  This is my inability to remember at work.  this is straight from cmpro tutorials:

Non-Merged Sets =   Any files created will have all of the roms it needs to run
Split sets                = Any files created will have the roms it needs as either a parent or clone rom file.
Merge Sets        = Any file created will have the parent and clone roms in it.

I think the wording for all of these is absolutely terrible, which is likely why I repress it and then spew half-truths.

What I like to do is a full on, NON MERGED set, where in the end you get 1 zip file is 1 game.
Then I do up my lists, move the files over to the machine, then merge them back together to save the space. 
(in all honesty, I don't actually re-merge the sets because in my case, space is cheap and my machine can't play more than a few gig worth of games anyway)