Help: Setting up hard drives for Mame

[Midcoastsurf]

Hello,

I posted this in the "software" section, but thought more people might see the post here.   I am new to the board and to Mame, but have been in the pinball/arcade hobby for about 16 years.  I am building a bartop mame machine and am looking for suggestions about the best way to set up my hard drives.  I have 1 80gb and 1 250gb hard drive.  I will be running Windows XP.  Both hard drives are wiped clean.  Looking for advice around partitioning, amount needed for Win XP, etc.  My initial thought is to partition the 80 gb into two portions, one 20gb and one 60gb with Win Xp on the 20gb, then put the consoles games on the remaining 60gb (Only really want Atari, Nes, SNES, N64, Genesis).  Then put Mame on the 250 gb (obviously not much room for CHD files.)

I realize that buying a larger Hard drive would be the best solution...but that is not an option right now.

Thanks for the help,
Brad

[Eldritch1969]

Hi there,
Your parttioning scheme seems to me to be quite alright. Only thing I have doubts about is the need to have a 20 gigs partition for WinXP. Yous should (in my opinion), get a smaller partition for the OS, by using Tiny XP, for instance. Or by stripping XP down to the bare essentials. Consider 10 gigs to be sufficient in that case.

It will boot much faster and run more smoothly, too
That is what I have done for my own bartop build.

[Garza]

I agree if you are going to partition tiny XP would be the best. However if you are just going to use Reg XP Why partition? I have mame, and all the emus in individual folders and use atomicFE for the Front end and it works perfectly. By just using one partition it may make your mame affair that much easier... Just a thought...

[brad808]

Here's my opinion. Old hard drives tend to be loud and bartops tend to be pretty cramped for space. I would partition the 250gb drive with maybe 20-30 gig for system and the remainder for all the roms. My hyperspin folder with just mame (videos, roms, mostly all the good working chds) is 70 gig. I would imagine you could fit all the rest of the emulators you want to on there as well. Then in the future if you need the extra hard drive, throw it in there and bam extra space for whatever you need.

[rCadeGaming]

My MAME PC isn't accessible right this moment, but if memory serves, 80g is enough for most of MAME's working roms and a selection of CHDs.  Don't think you need all the CHD's, a lot of them are for newer non-working games, or games that are too dumb to warrant the space.

if you are just going to use Reg XP Why partition?

Good question.  Is there a speed benefit to partitioning Windows seperate from MAME?  I was just going to put everything together on one partition on an 80g solid state drive.

[brad808]

The only reason I did a partition is the ease of wiping the system drive while leaving all emulators in tact. Just saves me hooking up an external and transferring the files back and forth.

Sure you could argue that you never really need to format but I know myself and I know I like to format things and start from scratch a lot so I just took a couple steps to make it easier.

Sent from my Desire HD

[rCadeGaming]

Makes sense.  I try to format all my computers about once a year, along with cleaning dust and replacing thermal paste and stuff.  It's probably overkill, but nothing refreshes things as well.

[paigeoliver]

If you don't need the CHD games (almost all of which require analog or other specialty controls that won't be on a bartop) then you don't need the 250 GB drive at all. In fact, the 80 GB drive is more than enough. My cabinet has an 80 GB drive and it is half empty.

Repeat, most CHD games require analog controls, specialty controls or driving controls and very few would even translate well to a bartop.

[rCadeGaming]

Let's not tell people to overlook CHD games altogether. 

Agreed, many do need specialty controls, or don't work, or aren't worth it.  However, there are some true gems like Third Strike.

Incedentally, there's a clone of Third Strike with no CHD, but I think the music was compressed to fit on a PCB instead of a disc.  The CHD isn't too big, so it's worth including the best version of the game.

There's other totally worthwhile games where I think the CHD is mandatory, like Blitz, Shikigami no Shiro, Killer Instinct 1 and 2, Jojo's Venture, and Red Earth.

Luckily, the list of CHD games is short enough that you can quickly look through, research what you haven't heard of, and pick and choose what you want.  With ROMs its more feasible to just download the entire set so you can try things out, but a ROMset is MUCH smaller than a full CHD set.

http://www.retroroms.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=35952

[BobA]

If you go beyond MAME to the many other console emulators you can easily fill a 250GB drive. The old school consoles are fun and take only a few player buttons.

[rCadeGaming]

I'm running real hardware wherever possible, no emulators other than MAME.  Check out my project thread, (in my signature).

[paigeoliver]

Not if you stop with the 16 bit generation, which you might as well because after that you run smack into the same analog control issue that makes installing the CHD games 93 percent pointless. Plus you get a whole new set of control problems in the form of console button layouts that don't transfer in any sane way to an arcade control panel. Even the venerable SNES has that problem with games that used the shoulder buttons in any sort of directional fashion (which is why the Nintendo Super System arcade machines basically had SNES controllers on them).

Sure, there are a couple CHD games that don't require specialty controls (hint, they aren't the sports games, all of those were 49-way or analog), so you will miss out on a couple games by not installing the CHD files. However you will miss out on many multiples of those numbers simply by not having a 4-way joystick (insert any other control type here).

If you go beyond MAME to the many other console emulators you can easily fill a 250GB drive. The old school consoles are fun and take only a few player buttons.

[brad808]

I thought with almost all of the 49 way joy games you could change to 8 way through dip or settings menu no?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[paigeoliver]

You can indeed do that with most of them, but it doesn't really ADJUST the game for it. It just replaces the fine control of the 49-way with the rough control of the 8-way. They were written for the 49-way.

I thought with almost all of the 49 way joy games you could change to 8 way through dip or settings menu no?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Yenome]

personally i dont bother with most chd games, save for blitz, KI series and street fighter 3rd strike. also there is a layout that works perfectly for arcade and snes. look at what mk and killer instinct use the shoulder buttons for. this same style of layout is found in the xbox360 and ps3 arcade stick layouts. most times the should buttons are the first button on both rows or are on the top row. and you will probly have to set some games controls diff than the layout below.
snes        PS3
R Y X     Square Triangle R1 L1
L B A     Cross   Circle     R2 L2