Some Alternatives To Clrmame


Grebn

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Joined
Jan 17, 2005
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128
I've been managing to convert quite a lot of MAME games to their 0.34 romsets without using Clrmame, which for me has just proved an unqualified disaster with no results at all (maybe its just me...).

There's a .txt document you can download called romv34.txt which holds the separate file information for each game that Mame 0.34 can run. In a lot of cases the files are the same as the new versions, just re-named. The thing to look for is the CRC32 register for each file - for example, a file for the game 1941 (current romset) could be 41e_36.rom with a call register of 816A818F, whereas in romv34.txt the file for the same CRC32 address could be referred to as 41_36.rom. In this instance you just change the filename to what Mame 0.34 requires. I have managed to get a couple of dozen games (Toki, Gauntlet 2, Final Fight) working this way.

The other thing it took me a while to work out is that quite often the main zip folder is needed (for instance ; Bubble Bobble runs from the master folder bublbobl), but often you need zip folders from cloned versions (eg; boblbobl and sboblbl) - what I've been doing is putting the necessary clone folders (again use romv34 as a guide - each game is prefaced by which master and clone folders it needs in order to run) into the master folder, as well as copying across the individual files needed into the master folder (as well as leaving them in the rom directory). Some games then run from one of the cloned folders (Bubble Bobble for instance only loads if you run the Bootleg Version (boblbobl).

And if you're looking for one or two missing filenames (which is often the case), just think citrus!

These methods are quite time consuming I guess, but I've spent so much time fartarsing around with Clrmame with no positive results that I figured an alternative would be time better spent. Its also very satisfying when GPMame runs through the files in the folder and boots the game up sucsessfully.

If anyone requires further info just drop me a PM or add to the thread here..

Cheers,

Paul
 
I've been using AdvanceSCAN to convert ROM sets to MAME 0.34 (and 0.35b2). It needs the listinfo file from MAME. Because I don't have any DOS/Windows computer, I had to run old MAME version under dosbox/wine to get the file.

I think AdvanceSCAN has an option to copy all the needed ROMs from the original game zipfile to each clone. This way you don't have the think about wich zip file is a clone and wich is not.
 
ClrMame works fine for me, not sure what you are doing wrong, basically when I first started working on the 0.34 romsets I grabbed my archived discs of 0.33, downloaded 0.36 and I also have version 0.101 on my hard drive. I pointed clrmamepro at the 0.101 rom directory, then created a new directory to put the 0.34 roms, it rebuilt the 0.34 roms but a lot were missing when I used 0.101. So then I pointed it to the 0.33 and 0.36 versions, and it filled in most of the missing roms when I rebuilt using those. I was still missing a good dozen or so after that so I had to search the web and usenet for them.
 
OK, a bit of a different response, but with the roms that I had trouble with, I just went into Franxis' source code, and modified the game drivers to look for Mame 102 compatible romsets and rebuilt the software. Didn't take any time to do really... and now it works with the latest Mame sets that I have.

Hope that helps :)
 
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