Rebuilding Mame Roms.


prplehz

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Mar 6, 2008
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Ok, I have a complete set of roms for mame 0.34. All I want to do is convert these over so they will work with Mame4all, which is version 0.65 I believe. So I load the clrmame.dat file that comes with mame4all up in clrmamepro and I followed the directions step by step as described on wiki and it appeared to have done everything right. Buuuut, when I go to try and play Galaga it tells me it is missing 5c.bin. So I try rebuilding them again with no luck the file is still missing. Is there some trick to getting clrmamepro to fix certain roms? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance....
 
MAME4ALL is version 0.37b5, not 0.65

"Converting" is a really bad terminology - "rebuilding" or actually "renaming" is much better especially if you have only one ROM set.

What these utilities (Romcenter, ClrMAMEPro, etc) do is check the unique CRC of each ROM and renames it if required. If you have multiple ROM sets then it can rebuild by combining ROMs to create a specific ROM version.

The reason being that ROMs get redumped over time as more is found out about the workings of the machine.
During the early days of MAME developing ROMs were often mis-named or in some cases just couldn't be dumped. Portions which were missed were often simulated or reverse engineered and replacement code inserted in it's place. As the devs got better and wiser they managed to dump all the ROMS in a much more complete way often renaming them in the process.

This is why newer ROM sets change.

As for Galaga, you will most likely need to find another Galaga ROM from a different version of MAME and try to use the utilities to rebuild a working ROM for 0.37b5. You can even do this manually (I often do) using WinZip.
 
You know PalmMAME is based off the exact same version. I wonder if you could find romsets by using that as a keyword? ;) Even if you get an old version that was based on 0.36 which is still better...
 
Wow, thanks for the fast replys!

Well I noticed Galaga had a file in it named 5n.bin so I extracted it renamed it 5c.bin then added it to the zip and deleted 5n.bin from it. Wallah Galaga works now. So I thought I would try some others. And sure enough there are alot of them that are missing files.

If I use a complete mame .123 rom set and the dat file that came with mame4all do you think I would have better luck rebuilding them properly? I think I am going to have a look for the palm version of the same mame build first though lol.
 
If you figure out how to do this in some automated fashion please update this thread with what you did.

Here is my sad story...
I tried using clrmame to "fix" my roms, but in the end I gave up.
I started by following the instructions here:
www.mameworld.net/easyemu/clrmameguide.htm

I have 3 full rom sets of various ages. One old, one close to 0.37b5 and one fairly new set.
I tried using clrmame to scan, rebuild in many different iterations. I tried fixing up the set that was close to .37, no dice. I tried fixing up the new set I have, no dice. I tried combining various iterations of old/new sets and still no dice. In the end I gave up and found the full set that matches 0.37b5 by "other" methods, but it was lame that I could not get the clrmame tool to work.

The funny thing is I did the exact same thing you did. I tried to play Galiga and is complained about missing the 5n.bin file. I found this in another rom, extracted it, put the 5n.bin file back in the Galiga zip and bam, Galiga works. I would think that clrmame could fix something like this, so either I don't know how to run to tool well enough or it just can't fix something like this.
If anyone has had success with clrmame please let us know!
 
slaanesh said:
MAME4ALL is version 0.37b5, not 0.65

"Converting" is a really bad terminology - "rebuilding" or actually "renaming" is much better especially if you have only one ROM set.

What these utilities (Romcenter, ClrMAMEPro, etc) do is check the unique CRC of each ROM and renames it if required. If you have multiple ROM sets then it can rebuild by combining ROMs to create a specific ROM version.

The reason being that ROMs get redumped over time as more is found out about the workings of the machine.
During the early days of MAME developing ROMs were often mis-named or in some cases just couldn't be dumped. Portions which were missed were often simulated or reverse engineered and replacement code inserted in it's place. As the devs got better and wiser they managed to dump all the ROMS in a much more complete way often renaming them in the process.

This is why newer ROM sets change.

As for Galaga, you will most likely need to find another Galaga ROM from a different version of MAME and try to use the utilities to rebuild a working ROM for 0.37b5. You can even do this manually (I often do) using WinZip.
QFT! B)

I myself use ClrMame Pro to rebuild ROM sets. I usually just look for the missing sets or files manually (which takes a lot of time), and eventually I'll end up with a complete set.
 
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Well it appears that clrmame pro isn't as good at rebuilding roms as I thought it was going to be. Either that or it takes alot of trial and error with all the dang options it has. It is not a very intuitive program what so ever I must say. But hey you get what you pay for, lmao.. I am going to try rebuilding a complete set for mame4all from .123 roms. I will let you all know what happens. I have a feeling it is skipping or not properly rebuilding roms because of settings that are selected or not selected. I hope I am right.
 
Rebuilding from 0.123 to 0.37b5... that's surely gonna result in a LOT of missing files. :rolleyes:

Do you have rollback (or older) sets that ClrMame Pro could use to help rebuild the sets?
 
Manjuu said:
Rebuilding from 0.123 to 0.37b5... that's surely gonna result in a LOT of missing files. :rolleyes:

Do you have rollback (or older) sets that ClrMame Pro could use to help rebuild the sets?
The only complete set I have is .123. I do have a complete set of the ones for the other Mame emulator for gp2x that are 0.34. But I know it isn't a complete mame romset. I know they wont build a good Galaga, but if it helps with others I will use those instead. It wont take as long either. Also no luck finding a set for palmmame.
 
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Well, I was hoping to report back with some better news, but it isn't all bad I guess, lol. I was unable to rebuild any where near a complete .37 set no matter how I tried. So I gave up on that and went back to my .34 roms and started playing with clrmame a lil. I managed to make my roms so they all run on their own with no need for parent roms. Which does take up more space but it's worth it to me. Unless you have a complete set of older roms it is virtualy impossible to rebuild a set as old as .37. There are just too many files that have been lost throught the various updates. But it does infact rebuild some of them. But no matter what I did I could not get it to build a proper Galaga with 5c.bin. I am guessing the dat file is telling it that 5n.bin is what it should be when that infact isn't correct. So basicly until there is a torrental down pour of .37 roms or PALMmame I am just going to stick with the good ole gp2x4mame.
 
Well you could just search for a torrent that contains the proper ROM sets for MAME4ALL for the GP2X. There is bound to be one available somewhere. :lol:
 
Ya, I have been looking but it isn't as easy to find as I thought it would be. If you find one let us know so we can all jump on it...
 
Manjuu said:
Well you could just search for a torrent that contains the proper ROM sets for MAME4ALL for the GP2X. There is bound to be one available somewhere. :lol:
prplehz said:
Ya, I have been looking but it isn't as easy to find as I thought it would be. If you find one let us know so we can all jump on it...
The words you need to search for are in Manjuu`s post, Look closely at his post ?.

Trooper
 
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So are rollback roms differnt than others. As in do they contain more files specialy for rebuilding sets? And if so do I have to get a 37b5 set to rebuild that? Or will any rollback set work?
 
prplehz said:
So are rollback roms differnt than others. As in do they contain more files specialy for rebuilding sets? And if so do I have to get a 37b5 set to rebuild that? Or will any rollback set work?
Rollback sets are just sets containing ROM files that are no longer used in the later versions. They would fill up the missing files that you would lack when rebuilding sets to a different version.

To use them, I think you would need the entire rollback from all the previous versions (your current version is the starting point) up to your target older version. Make sure ClrMame Pro use both your current sets and the rollback sets as the sources when rebuilding. That should probably give you a complete set for that version.
 
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Manjuu said:
prplehz said:
So are rollback roms differnt than others. As in do they contain more files specialy for rebuilding sets? And if so do I have to get a 37b5 set to rebuild that? Or will any rollback set work?
Rollback sets are just sets containing ROM files that are no longer used in the later versions. They would fill up the missing files that you would lack when rebuilding sets to a different version.

To use them, I think you would need the entire rollback from all the previous versions (your current version is the starting point) up to your target older version. Make sure ClrMame Pro use both your current sets and the rollback sets as the sources when rebuilding. That should probably give you a complete set for that version.



Got ya, it is gonna be hell finding rollback roms for all those though. It seems .97 is the furthest back I ever see. I will take a look but otherwise I will just wait till I find a complete set someday. Is there a reason developers don't use the newer versions for gp2x. I am assuming it is because of processor power and such. As they require more than the old stuff. Thanks for all your help man :D
 
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