Why do CPS3 games have to rewrite/reload to memory?? how to avoid it??

[livelike]

Hi guys, I just recently updated to Mame 129, and could not find a post relating to capcom CPS3 games (sf3, Jojo, redearth, etc). It seems that the first time the game is run, it has to rewrite/reload the "gdrom" data to memory (i think this is the correct name), this takes a little more than 10-15 minutes. Even when this is only done once, it takes too long...... I was wondering why is this required? is there a way to avoid this for the other games? kind of like a file that Mame would write after doing it once, that I could just copy paste to another game or PC? 

[Space Fractal]

You do the same in the reallife cabinets too. So it no exception in MAME.

The best is propenty do a batch for all CPS3 games and let it run in a night.....

[Ginsu Victim]

I just let it write while I was doing something else. Don't do it when you want to play. If you're about to work on something else, fire one up and allow it to do what it needs and just ignore the cab for a bit.

[Circo]

Crank the frameskip all the way up or hit the fast forward button (I forget what it is at the moment) anyway it will load up in like 3 min that way

[Ginsu Victim]

Hmm, speeding it up never helped me on the first write. I always speed past the startup after that, though.

[u_rebelscum]

Isn't unthrottling the way to go?  Frameskip while throttled wouldn't help much (unless your computer is too slow to run at full speed in the first place).  Maybe unthrottle + frameskip?

[ivwshane]

I thought there was a file that was actually being written by mame, is that not the case?

[Ginsu Victim]

Yeah, the NVRAM.

[ivwshane]

Is that a file one could copy and give to another person with the same game which would then no longer need to write the file.

[Ginsu Victim]

yeah

[livelike]

I already did this process for some games, I guess the nvram file is stored in the same chd folder, I will zip these and shared them as soon as I can. This would help us all saving some time.

[Ginsu Victim]

Share....where? Not here. That's copyrighted data.

[livelike]

mmm... maybe I have the wrong idea about the nvrams? I had the idea this was a file written by Mame, kind of like an ini file, that would not imply to upload the chd or ROM, just this new file. So do you mean that the actual ROM or chd is rewritten on the first run  if this is the case, I agree with you about not sharing it here.

I miss my home PC, so I can do these testings.......

[Space Fractal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPS3

The speciel install of these games is by design. You do the same with the real arcade machine too, which also take long time.

[u_rebelscum]

The real reasons nvram files aren't copied around:

They're bigger than the chd's, and don't compress well.
They store basically the same data as the chds + a little more.
They're far more likely to break between mame versions than the chds.

The last one's the killer.