Rom Managment for dummies?

[harveybirdman]

Okay so I've been compiling Mame for a while now, and I recently upgraded to 146u5.  Since my last compile my games list has ballooned to nearly 800 games.  What I have been doing every time I upgrade to a newer version (don't laugh!) involves pointing Mala to the new Mame version and painstakingly starting every game in my games list making a list of what is broken.

This time around it was only about 21 games and I was able to track down most of the issues revolving around missing roms in a set.  However I'm in no hurry to repeat that process again, and I still have some of the CHD games with checksum errors plus Rastan and Dynamite Duke that either need a rom from one of their clones or are experiencing some other naming issue that I've yet to tackle. 

Now I know there are much easier ways, Mame UI has a nice rom audit feature that I've used before and I am sure there has to be a similar tool available for command line Mame.  But when it comes to fixing issues that don't necessarily have to do with adding roms to sets like the CHD checksum errors I'm currently experiencing it sure would be nice to have a helping hand that doesn't use language like Dat or fixfile or become insulted when I ask a retarded question.

I've downloaded and played around with Clrmamepro but I have no desire whatsoever to A) have all 19000 or so games on my cabinet or B) download said complete set every time I want to upgrade.  Can I still use clrmamepro knowing I don't even want all the clones of the games I already have?  Can it fix the issues I'm having with kinst, kinst2, mace, and blitz99?  dynduke? rastan?

Is there something on  the wiki I should be reading instead of making this post?

Any help for this newb is greatly appreciated.

[Howard_Casto]

Romcenter sounds like a better option for you. 

Next to each game in your folder there will be a green, red or yellow icon.  Anything that's yellow is fixable via the program, anything that's red needs to be replaced.   Since it has the option to just show your folders and their contents instead of the complete set, it should work just fine.   

CHD's are a bit hard to diagnose though.... don't get me wrong both clrmampro and romcenter will do it for you, but imho they don't do a great job because they will often report a chd as "bad" when it really just needs converted via chman. 

[harveybirdman]

chman?  I notice there is a txt file in one of the folders in my mame directory that has this name.  do I somehow use this to update a CHD file?

[Howard_Casto]

It's a program that comes with mame.  Sometimes you need to "upgrade" chds via chman.  Just don't do it recklessly though... make a backup and only use it on chds you are having trouble with as it takes a long time to run.

[BLah247]

Exactly the type of post I need as well.  I've always been lazy and just left the mess of roms that I would get on there.  If they didn't work I would somewhat remember.

I started reading about CLRMAME but a lot of the help links were broken.  I'll check out Rom Center because like the OP I don't have any desire to have 19000 games.

Edit.. hit submit too fast.  So just to be clear Rom Center can tell me which roms are broken and delete duplicates?  ie 15 versions of Street Fighter.

[Howard_Casto]

It should probably help with removing clones yes, but you shouldn't really do that.  Many of those clones are actually the games you want to play!  For example, pacman is a clone of puckman, the 2p versions of all the konami games are all clones, ultimate mortal kombat 3, is a clone of mk3, ect...

Use your front-end of choice to filter your games instead.

[brad808]

+1 on checking the clones before deleting. There is a lot of good stuff, in a lot of cases better then the parent game. For instance some fighting games have more characters added or unlocked , or the game might be more refined in a later version then what is listed as the parent.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=121446.0
This thread has a couple but there are more

Sent from my Desire HD

[BLah247]

Makes sense.  I use Mamewah as a front end, maybe I'll do up a favorites list and just put the versions of games I want to play on that.

[harveybirdman]

Just an update for those that might be experiencing CHD difficulties with a recent upgrade

I coulnd't figure out how to compile the tools after I had already compiled mame alone using Mr. Do's awesome guide.  So I ended up recompiling 0146u5 again using the command "make all" and that made the chdman tool Howard mentioned earlier, as well as some others. 

I looked up some info on chdman thinking I'd update the four CHD's I had issues with using the command line, but after looking at the list of the commands I chickened out and dowloaded the front end for chdman from progettosnaps and it was super intuitive.  37 minutes later on my slow arse family desktop and my CHD's were updated and kinst, kinst2, blitz99, and mace were all working.

As it turns out I found the rom I missed for rastan that was labeled rastan2 in the list where I get my updates.  I'm sure there is a reason for this but the important thing is I found the rom and that game is working now.

I'm sure there is a similar issue with dynduke, I'll post back when I figure that one out.

Thanks again Howard for pointing me towards romcenter, I'm definately going to use that on my next upgrade!

[harveybirdman]

Downloaded romcenter and after pointing it to my upgraded mame executable and rom path it made quick work of the dynduke issue I was having. 

Plus now I see how i can easily use romcenter the next time I upgrade to identify the missing roms I need to find so that I won't have to spend hours starting and stopping games making a broken after upgrade list.

  Cheers Howard, thanks again.