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Using .7z roms with emulators?
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Turnarcades:
I've google'd and can't seem to find an answer to this one:

Is there a way to get emulators to recognise files in .7z format?

7-zip is excellent for compression and it would be great if I could compress my roms into .7z format and have them take up much less space on my hard-drive. I've seen that certain emulators have a plug-in (Gens I think does) to read .7z but was wondering if others can be made to do it.

It sounds like a reasonable request that I thought emulator authors would have thought of by now, but as I'm not a programmer I don't know the details so maybe it is a bit too much to ask.

Anyone shed on light on this at all?
SGT:
Doubt we'll see it in Mame for a long time:

http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html#g17

I know that N64 Roms size difference can be substantial but I never could get Project64 to read them.
Turnarcades:
Damn it. Oh well, any more emulators/custom builds that allow the use of 7-zip?

Not too fussed about N64 as my machine struggles with those anyway, hence now removed. But I do have limited HD space and if I could get my SNES/Megadrive collections down from 1Gb each it would be helpful!
Silver:
I've been down this road before, but in the end its more trouble than its worth.

If you PC struggles with N64 games, and you need to trim 1GB collections - its going to struggle with 7zip.

7zip is a very impressive - sizewize - compressor, but its an absolute resource hog, and very slow. You end up staring at a black screen for ages while the rom decompresses.

If 1GB is an issue - get a bigger hard drive. I know that sounds a bit rubbish, but in the long run it will be faster and easier.

If not, by the far the best option is unwanted games - delete them. You can probably delete 75% of most game collections if you are honest about what gets played....
ahofle:
I wrote a batch file a while back to convert all my 7z files to zip for this very reason.  It basically unzips each 7z file in the directory, then zips it back in zip format.  I can post it if you want, let me know.  It's at home though, so it won't be until I get off work.

EDIT: Nevermind, I misread your post...I thought your roms were already 7z'd and you needed them in zip format.
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