romlister troubles

[Fonkybeachbum]

Hello,
I am trying to create a game list to use in hyperspin.  I have a 188GB folder of mame roms, and am trying to sort them out using romlister.  I have followed the instructions and can get the to the point where I combine my merged xml list with my romset.  The indexing happens very slowly and now twice has frozen.  I have let the indexing run for hours and the second time let it run for 48 hours figuring maybe it was just something that took a long time with 188GB of roms.  The first scan got to the "d" and the second scan got to the "s" of my roms before freezing.  Thinking maybe this was a problem with the laptop i am using to make my machine, i just tried to do the same thing on my pc, and romlister crashed immediately. 

My romset is version .149 and i downloaded my;
catver.ini from http://www.progettoemma.net/?catlist
nplayers.ini from http://nplayers.arcadebelgium.be/index.php?p=old
controls.xml from http://controls.arcadecontrols.com/controls/controls_dat.php

my controls .xml is version .141, do you think this is the problem?  my nplayer.ini is for .149 and the catver.ini says 'all files update to .152.

any help or points in the right direction would be most appreciated.

[NOP]

are you using the absolute latest version of romlister?
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

the rom scan tool (which is what I think you're complaining about) was recently fixed and speed improved by 100x.

[Fonkybeachbum]

I'm on 029 (latest)

[bbmonster]

If you are 100% sure you have all the roms for that set (ie clrmamepro says nothing missing), skip the scan since you already know you have all the roms. Well that's what I did because, yeah, took forever to run that scan on my old Pentium laptop.

[NOP]

I'm still trying to get my head around where the reported failure is coming in.

If I read your initial post one way, it looks like you are unable to create a merged file.
If I read your post another way, it looks like it's the rom scan tool that is failing (and that is traditionally what I've gotten complaints about for speed, which I believe I fixed)

I created a merged file with mame 149 and the files you linked to in your first post, and the merged file popped out in about 2 minutes.
My machine is from about 2006- a dual core Pentium 4.  Nothing special at all.  I can't believe that this is where your problem is.  If my machine can do it in 2 minutes, I'm guessing my 286 could get it done within 2 days.


So, now I think it's the rom scan tool you're having troubles with.  Here's a little background information:

You only need to do the rom scan tool if you have already trimmed your full set of roms down to a folder of roms that you need on your machine- perhaps via individual drag-n-drops or "add to favorites" from your existing front end.    In other words, you have a folder where you *don't* have a full set of roms sitting in it.

RL's rom scan utility doesn't scan your roms like CMPro does- it doesn't validate them.  Instead it looks through that folder and finds your zip files (ie puckman.zip) and then matches that rom name with the corresponding data in your merged XML file.  It copies that XML data into a new file.  At the end of the process if you had 250 .zip files corresponding to the 250 games you wanted on your cabinet, then after the rom scan runs, you will have a trimmed down XML file that now only has 250 game entries in it.  THEN you take that new XML file and you can create an "all game list" from the main screen and output the list to any format you want.  that's one way to convert from one front end to another.

Are you perhaps running the rom scan utility against a full collection of roms?  I could see that taking a longer time, but still shouldn't run for multiple days!


That's all I've got for you until I can get some more information on where exactly you're at.  You can find my email address at the bottom of the romlister website, so we can either take this offline or perhaps we hash through it here for future searchers to discover whatever solution we come up with.

[Fonkybeachbum]

Thanks for your responses. I was running the rom scan against a whole set.  I'm picking up what you're laying down. Thanks.

[Dungeonsdeep]

Just my 2 cents here, Romlister AFAIK won't recognize 7z extensions, so this could be slowing things down possibly? Apparently the way to work around this is place all the .7z files in a separate folder, rename them to .zip extension, run romlister, and copy and paste the outputted XML into the XML created from your current .zip files.

Then rename them back to .7z, and replace into original folder. Pain in the A**, I know.

Come to think about it, have you tried just doing your roms in batches? and merging them all into one XML?

[NOP]

if he only has 7z files, that would significantly speed up the rom scan process, as it would ignore all of his files. 

you are correct, romlister only supports zip files. 

I think we've gotten to the point where we know what the problem is- the rom scan utility is not designed to check a full set of roms, only a trimmed down set that you're basically transferring from a working front end environment to a new one.  With a full set you're basically taking a full XML file and then individually copying each game's XML data out of that file and creating a brand new one, resulting in an XML file which could exactly match the input file.  that is a total waste of time.

I'll be changing the scan utility to warn you that you have way too many roms to be a realistic scan if it detects maybe >1000 roms.
While I'm in there I'll try to get .7z support too.

[empardopo]

I've just tested the 0.30 version of Rom lister and It doesn't read 7z roms.
Still not working the 7z roms?

Thanks!

[NOP]

try this one:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister30.1.zip

it's unofficial, but I added 7z support to the rom scan feature.  It works with either/both zip and 7z, but it's very lightly tested.  Good luck!

[empardopo]

try this one:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister30.1.zip

it's unofficial, but I added 7z support to the rom scan feature.  It works with either/both zip and 7z, but it's very lightly tested.  Good luck!

Thanks! I'll take a look!

[empardopo]

At this moment, I get errors using zip file.

I don't know where I am wrong!

I want get "an output XML file with a reduced set of my merged xml file with only the entries from my roms in that folder."

[NOP]

You're doing it right in picture #1, but romlister doesn't like the XML file that wolfmame has produced and crashed,  I think.  I'm a dumb american and only speak english

If you could zip that listxml.xml file up and send it to me, that would help me figure out what went wrong.

[empardopo]

It's the original xml file generated by wolfmame 0.151 version.

[NOP]

I used wolfmame 1.52's listXML and I did not get the error message you are getting.  ?
I am unable to extract the attachment you supplied here, so I don't know how to help you.

Here's what I did:
1) click setting and tools
2) in the merge utility section, click the MAME ListXML browse button, I browsed to wolfmame152.exe
3) romlister created the listXML.XML file and then put the filename in the listXML box.
4) I then copied this filename into the upper most XML input file field "Input XML file"  If you had created a merged XML file with wolfmame's listXML file+catver+controls, this would be done for you after the merge tool was done.
5) Then I clicked on the Set button to return back to the main RL screen.  This sets RL up so it knows what your main input XML file is.
6) Now go back into settings and tools. 
7) Click the ROM Scan Utility button. 
Browse to where you have .zip/.7z roms
9) provide a new filename for your XML file
10) wait.  RL will now compare your 7z/.zip files against your input XML file (listXML.XML) and reduce that file down to just the roms that you have in your folder.
11) when finished, RL will put the new filename into the top field for your input XML file.  You can now use this file to create any rom lists you need. 

Beyond that, if you are having problems I'm not sure if I can help.  It worked perfectly for me following these exact steps and wolfMAME 152.

[NOP]

I did the same job this time using the XML file you provided.
The indexing step does take some time - it is a 150mb file that it has to read through.  My machine is not that fast, but it was done in 2-3 minutes.
When finished, it indexed 28873 games.  Then it was able to scan through my roms folder and create a new XML file in about 4 seconds. (I only have ~500 roms in my rom folder)

This version of RL has more information as it is working through the steps of doing a rom scan.  If romlister crashes on you, please let me know what step it was on.
Otherwise be patient, especially during the index phase.  If it goes on for several (15+) minutes, then there is something wrong, or you are using a 486 computer.

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister30.1debug.zip