Main > Software Forum
Shared Network drive for ROMs?
(1/2) > >>
CM:
Has anyone setup their cabinet and FE to use a shared network drive for their ROM storage?  I am getting tired of ROM and preview image/video maintenance on the cab and want to change it over so my main PC can "host" everything.  What are the Pros/Cons of this (other than network being down and drive-letter assignment setups)?

NOP:
I have it this way for all of my emulators that are on my xbox currently, and as soon as I get my motherboard with gigabit on it, I'll do the same with my dedicated MAME machine.

I see no drawbacks personally-it's fast, 1 source for all of your ROMs, easy to maintain on a real computer with a real keyboard, multiple machines can access the collection.  I even toy with the idea of having my MAME machine network boot and do away with the hard drive completely.

ok, maybe 2 drawbacks:

1) having to be tethered to your server.  Taking your machine to a remote location is out of the question.

2) no 2ndary backup of your collection in case your PC dies.

Totally, completely worth it if you ask me, especially if you have the network lines running throughout your house so it isn't cluttered.

-jeff!
u_rebelscum:
I don't have mame currently set up this at home, but similar stuff at work and tested it at home, and  I agree with NOP.  I'll just add

3) Version maintenance/syncing issues.  EG, If you share the same ROM folder, and update your main PC mame more often than the cab, you might have problems.  (You did hint at continuous file maintenance....)

But doing the file maintenance from the main PC is much easier, and nothing wrong (besides disk space) with keeping multiple sets of different versions ROMs on one computer.
CM:
Good feedback so far. 

#1 is not an issue since my cab is upstairs and weighs more than I care to (or can) lift.
#2 is covered with my main PC backup/raid.  In fact, the way it is now (100% on arcade) is worse since I keep no backup for it.
# 3 is a good point.  I try not to update MAME version too often, but several FE/emulators require a ROM directory rescan before showing new additions.   I think this is manageable though using Remote Desktop Control.

Ultimately, I would love to have the FE and emualtors hosted as well so I could do their configurations once and only have to maintain them in one place.  Is there any resource/link for an example of a network booted MAME yet?
um3k:
While I don't directly play from a network drive, I do have network setup on the arcade and the partition that has all of the emulation stuff is shared out.  What I do is setup the emulators, front end(s), roms, preview movies, etc all on a partition on my main PC.   Get it exactly the way I want it, then I wrote a little batch file using xxcopy to basically duplicate everything to the arcade share.   The first time this runs, everything gets transferred over, but after that, only the changed/updated files get transferred so it is fairly fast.

This lets me do all the setup from the comfort of my primary PC, but not have to have the PC on or deal with network problems while using the arcade since there is a local copy of everything there.  I also get a side benefit of having a backup copy of everything so I can just reverse the sync to get everything back.   I also run a VNC server on the arcade, in case I need to remotely control the arcade, but I rarely use it.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page

Go to full version