How to reduce the number of redundant console rom files????

[jhsmith321]

Hello everybody!  I was wondering if anyone could help me out to reduce the number or redundant console rom files that I have, in order to manage them more efficiently decrease the hard disk space required by them.

I was thinking if anyone knows if there is a tool that would merge console roms (Snes, Genesis, Gameboy, etc) into .zip files
Or
if there is a tool to filter or separate all the original roms from different consoles, (for example, separating all original Snes roms including European, Japanese and from all other regions) in order to eliminate all the repeated roms in different languages.

Thanks in advance!!!!!!
 

[stuzza]

Use the Goodtools to sort your console roms into country region etc.  Each console set has a corresponding goodtools program to use with it, ie. for SNES use GoodSNES, Genesis use GoodGEN.

The goodtools programs are dos based, however I recommend using the Goodwindows gui to make life easier.  Use the "dirs" command to separate countries and bad dumps etc..

Get the GoodTools: http://www.zophar.net/utilities/goodutil.html

[Katana Man]

OK, I've tried GoodGUI, GoodMerge, GoodWindows, and command line options with the Goodxxx.exe file. It simply doesn't work. I've read the (outdated) easyemu tutorial and I cannot get the extra roms to be cleaned up. (I started working with my Atari2600 roms.)

Can someone post an example of what command line or tool can be used to clean up all of the extra uneccessary rom files?

[Katana Man]

Maybe the reason I'm not seeing any change is probably because the are already Good (so to speak).

[JCKnife]

I did most of this using the DOS prompt.

del *[H]*.* and del *hack*.* to get rid of all the hacks, or
move *[!]*.* to move all the correct dumps to another directory.

Shoud give you the idea to do whatever you want to do. 

[Silver]

Maybe the reason I'm not seeing any change is probably because the are already Good (so to speak).  Off the CD these roms were in Goodxxx folders.   If this is the case, then it would explain why the Good utilities are having no effect on my roms. 
Here is a few in my list:
Challenge of...NEXAR (1982) (Spectravideo) (PAL) [p1][!].a26
Challenge of...NEXAR (1982) (Spectravideo).a26
Challenge of...NEXAR (Spectravideo) (PAL) [!].a26
Championship Soccer (AKA Pele's Soccer) (Atari) (PAL) [!].a26
Championship Soccer (AKA Pele's Soccer) [p1].a26
Championship Soccer (AKA Pele's Soccer).a26
etc...

Do these examples look Good?
If so, why aren't the Goodxxx utilities removing the duplicates? 

I don't believe GoodTools see's different versions of the same game - such as (pal) or [p1] or [hack] or whatever as a "duplicate" - they are all (slightly) different.

usually there is a[!] next to one which indicates its verified good dump of a rom....

[Kobex]

I ran into the same issue.  I looked at a few utilities, but the ones I found didn't do exactly what I wanted them to.  I ended up writing a small utility myself that lets me "rank" each of the descriptors (like [!] or (4)), and copies the "best" version of every ROM (based on assigned ranks) to a new folder.

I then realized the problem with artwork files haveing exact names, so I added an option so that any roms with matching artwork can be considered "best."

If you want to give it a shot, PM me your email address and I'll send it to you.  Just remember that no one but myself has used this to date, so testing is minimal and there are no instructions currently (and it's ugly).  That said, it doesn't delete any files (just copies from your ROM folder to another folder you desginate),  so there's no file risk in using this.  However, if duplicates exist in the destination directory, it will overwrite then.  That just reminds me that I never included a check to make sure the source and destination are different dicectories.

So there's not much risk... aside from that fact that you'll be running unknown software from a stranger.