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> MAME 0.260 How large is a full ROM set these days, I wonder?
by ur-whale 3y ago
> MAME 0.260
How large is a full ROM set these days, I wonder?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LeoPanthera 3y agoCompressed (and so sizes are approximate): 74GiB for the arcade ROMs 83GiB for the software ROMs (which used to be for MESS) 937GiB for the arcade hard disk images 2.6TiB for the software hard disk images BitTorrent makes distribution less painful these days, since you can point your client at your existing roms folder and it won't bother to re-download things you already have. Only a small percentage of the set changes with each version.
- plugin-baby 3y agoWhat’s the difference between arcade ROMs and arcade hard disk images? Do these cover different games?
- LeoPanthera 3y agoYes, although some need both. ROMs are images of physical ROM chips. The hard disk images are called "CHDs" and are usually hard disk images but can also be laserdiscs.
- unnah 3y agoI didn't know they used hard disks in arcade games... were those games implemented on some sort of embedded PC hardware?
- LeoPanthera 3y agoVirtually all arcade games made since the 2000s (ish) run on standard PC hardware.
- TheMogMiner 3y agoMaybe, but Konami "djmain" (first-gen Beatmania series) didn't. Neither did their "Twinkle" hardware (Beatmania IIDX series). Nor did their "Firebeat" hardware (Beatmania III series, Pop'n Music series, Keyboardmania series, Para Para Paradise series). Neither did their "GQ" board (Crypt Killers). Also, Taito's "Type Zero" board (9 games, look it up on System16). Oh, and Atari/Midway/Williams's Seattle, Vegas, Denver, Atlantis, Phoenix, and Flagstaff boards (SF Rush, SF Rush 2049, NFL Blitz, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, Gauntlet: Legends, others). Incredible Technologies' "Eagle" board (Golden Tee Fore, Big Buck Hunter, Virtual Pool). I have omitted quite a few.
- photonerd 3y agoBasically hdd arcade games are PCs or similar (occasionally customized console hardware) with HDDs attached. Pretty much anything made post 2002 is that. It started a few years earlier tho. Before that: custom roms (or at least some custom Roms on standard arcade platform hardware for that company)
- jandrese 3y agoFamously games like Dragon's Lair from the 90s require a CHD for all of the full motion video.
- TheMogMiner 3y agoWhile MAME does support some Laserdisc-based games - Firefox, Us vs. Them, Mach 3, Cube Quest, and Time Traveler, along with a couple of others - Dragon's Lair is not among them. It's complicated.
- photonerd 3y agoYeah, they’re originally laserdiscs so a bit of a special case, but same basic idea. However it famously doesn’t support Dragons Lair! Not properly (it can play the video but that’s about it). Tho work has been ongoing. Daphne is the only emulator of Dragons Lair I know of
- dfxm12 3y agoCHD's also represent optical media, not just HDD's. For example the SEGA NAOMI arcade hardware was based on the Dreamcast. As such, GD-ROM was one medium for games. the GD-ROMs are dumped as CHD's.
- sumtechguy 3y agoCHD (compressed hunks of data) They represent a CD DVD or hard drive. Now for most items in MAME you will need both some ROMs and CHDs. The ROMs usually in that case are the firmware of the device that loads up the CHD. The arcade platforms basically ended up being fairly beefy PCs or in some cases retooled game consoles. At one point the ROMs for those devices were split out into their own torrent. They usually represent something like an playstation. With the CHDs being the CDs. It is also used in places like the Atari platform that runs some of its hardware that has basically different hard drives and some roms to switch out the board being the same between all the arcade games. It is also used for laserdisc games but those probably will change in the next few years as the doomsday project gets its preservation setup the way they want it. In the laserdisc game it would represent the console the arcade game used to load up the disc. Many of the emus out there are adopting the CHD format for CD/DVD support.
- amlib 3y agoUsing bit torrent to do partial downloads is nice but it will not remove deleted or renamed files. Over the years, specially if you update each release, you will end up with lots of files that shouldn't be there. You can of course have some kind of script that checks file lists for each set and delete anything not in there.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoI use qBittorrent, and all I have to do is tell it to "Move" the torrent after the download is complete. It only moves files in the torrent, and leaves redundant stuff in the old directory.
- happymellon 3y agoI read the parent post to imply that there were ROMs or hacks distributed previously that are no longer distributed as part of the set because the hack is no longer needed. I'm not sure how your "move" would resolve this if it was already copied in a previous release.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoIf you point the current torrent at the same rom directory, wait for it to finish, and then tell the client to move the downloaded files, it won't move anything that is no longer part of the current torrent.
- happymellon 3y agoUnless Im really missing something, it would have already been moved by the previous torrent?
- bdsa 3y agoYes, into the directory you're moving the files from...
- 3y ago
- TheRealDunkirk 3y agoThey should break it up by year. I've had it all downloaded and installed and working in several ways over the years, but I only really care about stuff released before, say, 2000.
- TheMogMiner 3y agoWow
- rnd0 3y agoI can kinda understand. I'm looking at MAME (again) because I'm seeing people here say it emulates synths and because I'm interested in some older systems it emulates that simh and qemu don't quite (eg SGI, though qemu may do that one now?). So it would be nice to be able to pick by category (game,arcade,instrument,computer ...just a for instance) and by year (nothing after 2000, for instance).
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoI'm looking at the torrents but I don't know what I need to just have the complete arcade collection and the software to run it. Right now I'm downloading the ROMs torrent, which does add up to 74 GB. But what else do I need for arcade emulation only? Thanks for any insight!
- TheMogMiner 3y agoThe "arcade hard disk images" torrent, too. Lots of arcade machines weren't purely based on ROM chips.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoThanks. I think I'm clear on it now. Looks like I gotta commit a full terabyte for the complete collection!
- chongli 3y agoHuge, if you include all the laserdisc games!
- m463 3y agoLooks like > 1tb a full set for 0.258 is 1073gb (CHDs + ROMs + Extras): https://archive.org/details/mame-chds-roms-extras-complete https://archive.org/details/mame-chds-roms-extras-complete
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoWhat are ROMs vs. CHDs vs. extras?
- rnd0 3y agoIt sounds ike CHDs are hard disk images -similar to vhd files? While ROMS is semi-obvious (game images or firmware), "extras" can probably mean just about anything ...
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoI've gathered that the ROMs are the firmware that runs on the "hardware" to create the computing platform inside the arcade machine or console, which was similar or the same across many games (essentially the computer inside the cabinet). Therefore it's separated out to prevent massive duplication. The CHDs are the game-specific material that ran on the platform to present a particular game.
- photonerd 3y agoIt’s 2.5tb for the software archive alone. But for games 1tb is roughly correct. Assuming no deduplication