Walkthrough for DAT files

[Shibathedog]

Is there one? Specifically for CoinOPS? (although I don't know why it would make a difference) I used to be able to do this (for some neo geo emulator anyway) but apparently I did something wrong. Clrmamepro took about 5 hours to build a bunch of roms that didn't work, hooray! I tried Romcenter but I can't find the option to export roms to a separate directory anywhere, only verify, maybe mine was messed up.

 

I'm guessing what I did wrong was make split sets instead of a merged one because I ended up with about 5000 roms, Does that make any sense? and when it says stuff like:

 

 

Issue: Possible wrong nodump definition found

A valid checksum for it within its parent/clone relationship was found though.

Insert found checksum instead of using the 'nodump'?

 

and

 

Can't merge set due to equal names for different ROM hashes

Press yes to remove parent/clone relationship or no to force split-merge mode.

 

What should I select?

[fumanchu]

there are i think new dats added with the r4 release but bp can answer this one,as i dont relly mess around with dats.

[Shibathedog]

yeah those are the dats I used, I used the Full Dat instead of the top games one or whatever it was. I just made a new set that is merged and I clicked YES to the error messages I posted and it has about 3000 roms now which is still way more than my R1 which has around 1000. Does that sound like it's right this time? I couldn't even upload the last one because there was too many roms in one folder for the filesystem I guess.

[BritneysPAIRS]

recommended games is 1200 or so games all setup by default in CoinOPS

[Shibathedog]

Oh okay so the recommended games are all the tested and confirmed games and the full set includes some that are kind of like a work in progress, I thought the recommended was just the most popular ones.

 

So before I make this new set what should I select for those errors (or will I not get them because it is a different DAT file?) and should I do merged or split sets?

[Shibathedog]

Tried it again with the recommended DAT and still no luck.

 

It seems to have built all the sets, but not included all the files in each set, A lot of games get missing files errors. I did not get any errors about the DAT file though like last time. It would only let me select Non-Merged sets and not Split or Merged. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? I have a 100% verified and complete .133 romset here am I supposed to be using an older one?

 

EDIT: Just double checked everything, I think maybe the DAT is messed up? Checking all my roms with the mame exe as a dat says everything is correct besides CHDs that I don't have, If I check those same roms with the DAT from CoinOPS it says files are missing (and a bunch of unneeded files which makes sense) and I checked a few of the zips manually and they are indeed not there, so wtf is going on?

[Shibathedog]

So is this really complicated and you guys can't figure it out or what? It seems to me that dealing with DAT files would be something you guys do quite often/understand quite well and the answer to my question would be very simple so I cannot help but feel ignored.

[waal]

Is there one? Specifically for CoinOPS? (although I don't know why it would make a difference) I used to be able to do this (for some neo geo emulator anyway) but apparently I did something wrong. Clrmamepro took about 5 hours to build a bunch of roms that didn't work, hooray! I tried Romcenter but I can't find the option to export roms to a separate directory anywhere, only verify, maybe mine was messed up.

 

I never got to CLRmamepro, I just don't like the way it's designed. But I'm used to Romcenter.

And I can tell you that to export roms, you have to select all the good roms (displayed when the green zip icon is active) then click on the right mouse buttons and in the menu chose "operations > move files to..." (should sound like this as mine is in french, just in case it's "opérations > déplacer les fichiers dans...). You can also find these commands in the "ROMS" menu at the top of the screen.

You can also repair your roms. Click the yellow zip icon, then select all the listed roms, right click and chose repair on the menu.

I have a 100% verified and complete .133 romset here am I supposed to be using an older one?

 

Yes your are. As 0.133 roms are different and Coinops requires much older roms. It's Mame 0.8x or something...

 

Maybe you should try FBAXX 1.29 which uses latest romset (and also recognizes my analogic arcade stick and that's veeeery nice).

So is this really complicated and you guys can't figure it out or what? It seems to me that dealing with DAT files would be something you guys do quite often/understand quite well and the answer to my question would be very simple so I cannot help but feel ignored.

 

Yes it is complicated. It's slow, messy and boring. Better browse the web. That's what I did.

 

NB: And don't forget to rescan your roms in Coinops. Just in case...

Edited August 2, 2009 by waal

[The-Ice-Man]

He has a point about FBA, if you've already got a MAME v0.133 romset then 99% of them will work in FBA without any fixing in Romcenter. The ones supported by FBA that is. Obviously if you're wanting to play games that CoinOps supports and FBA doesn't then you'll have to hunt down old MAME romsets and use Romcenter to piece together a set that will work with CoinOps. This will be hard as most MAME sites only carry up to date roms. This is the main argument for why CoinOps should be updated to the latest romsets. This will never happen though as BP has said he doesn't want to do it. You'll probably be much better off to just ask someone to link you to a full CoinOps romset.

[Shibathedog]

Ah okay, I've made sense of everything now, Thank you very much for your assistance. I think what I'm going to do is switch back to FBA then because I don't want to hunt down an old romset that is probably going to take forever to download. Even if I did get this romset, it would be pretty large and I would have to keep it around just for this purpose, not really worth it IMO. Like I said I already have the latest set which I always keep up to date taking up space. So I guess FBA gets added to my list of awesome bonuses to maintaining an up to date romset. I feel like they update the sets for a reason too.

 

I've got Coinops Ignite R1 on there that works, I'll just leave that on there in addition to FBA in case I need it for something, but I dunno it looks like they both support all the titles I would insist on.

[waal]

For CoinOps there's the old BAED collection that was build for MameDOX (or something like that). I used it many years ago and it was a mess because of too many crappy-buggy games and ugly interface. That's why today's Coinops with it's "best of" collection and light design gives me satisfaction. Too bad the drivers are old but many tried to update them in the past and have quit...

 

And for FBAXX, I built my romset based on Mame 0.133 this weekend. Piece of cake. Kenshiro did a great work updating the drivers, especially for my favorite, the Neo Geo.

Edited August 2, 2009 by waal

[- kenshiro -]

Here is a simple trick to understand what roms managers are, so how use them. You need first to understand what a romset is.

 

A common error which confuse a lot people is calling a romset a rom. A romset is only a zip file which contains couple of roms, in some case it could be a single one rom. A rom has a name, a size, a CRC32. So to get a romset working on an emulator you need to have:

 

* The correct zip name

* The correct name, size and CRC32 for all the roms in the zip container

 

Having wrong name isn't a problem as you can change it. Having the wrong size, in most case you have to find a new one. Sometimes you can resize it if it's an overdump (twice the same data in the file). Having the wrong CRC, you're f*****, you need a new one or to patch it.

 

Doing this by hand will be absolutly a pain, so there are roms managers. I use both RomCenter and ClrMamePro.

 

Romcenter gives a really good and quick view of the romsets you have, and it's the most simple to use. I use it when i finished a driver update and wanna quickly check if something wrong.

 

ClrMamePro is more advanced, a bit more ballbreaker on the first time, but is extremely powerful and add much more options, especially the checksums one I use it when i wanna rebuild a complete romset for an emulator. It allows you to make extremely clean sets.

 

So i really recommanded both Each one contains a documentation, i really suggest to read them. Make always sure you set the option "split sets", that's the more efficient way to store your sets, and also the less HDD space consumer.

 

PS: watch with latest FBA-XXX Pro RomCenter will shows some CPS1 romsets with the red color. As some roms haven't been dumps yet, they are just referenced in the emulator. If you don't wanna have errors message during the game loading, as this ballbreaker of Cospefogo don't like (joke Dude lol), you can create dummies (Romcenter can create them automatically, is you set the correct option). Hope it will help.

Edited August 3, 2009 by - kenshiro -

[The-Ice-Man]

Yeah I have a few games that I needed to make dummies for in Romcenter. The Jap version of Final Fight, Mercs, Battle K-Road, Guwange, Hyper Pacman, Knights of Valour, Raiden, Strikers 1945 and Tengai. The zip names will show yellow in Romcenter and the missing rom files inside them say 'can be generated'. Just right click the zip name and click 'fix game' and then they'll show green with a little cross. Also a few of the latest romsets have different zip names to what FBA needs, Battle Bakraid and Battle Bakraid Unlimited Version if I remember need to be remamed to work with FBA. If a game has the wrong zip name it should show up yellow too and so long as the zip has all the files needed Romcenter will rename the zip to what it should be if you click fix game.