MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Fixing 20GB romsets with CLRMame

So I'm kind of a MAME novice. I've used MAME on my computer, and on my Android phone. I love playing Galaga and Qix on my phone. But I like try out new games sometimes, or revist old favorites, but all I have is one of those giant 20GB collections, and it seems like every time I scroll through the list of 6000 games and find one I want to play, my emulator gives me a "missing rom files" error message. Sometimes it works on one emulator, and not the other.

Specifically for my Android, I have one emulator that is based on 0.37b5, and one that is based on 0.139u1. For example, the game 1942 from my romset works on the 0.37b5 one, but not on the 0.139u one, and 1943 from the same romset works on the 0.139 one, but not on the 0.37 one.

So I found this CLRMamePro Guide that I mistakenly thought was about going through all your mame ROMS and fixing them, until I read this:

"Realistically the only solution to any of the problems left in the list is to re-download the rom file"

See, thats what I did to get 1941 working. I read the error message, it told me which file was missing, so I went and downloaded it, and added it to the rom zip, and repeated the process until I had a working ROM. But that is a PAIN in the ASS to do for every single game I want to play.

Anywho, I ran CLRMamePro on my 20GB romset. I used the dat file from www.logiqx.com/Dats/, although they only had a 0.140 datfile, and I'm running 0.139, not sure if that makes a difference. My emulator didn't have a datfile kicking around to use.

I don't want to have a full, working, complete 20GB romset. I just want working ROMs of a small collection of good games. Unfortunately all the rom collections available that I can find are the 20GB variety, not the "Jim's 50 favourite ROMs of all time" type.

Is there any easy way I can get a collection of ROMs that are guaranteed to work with one of these emulators? Or is there any way I can fix the collection I have?

And while I'm here, just thought I'd ask, is there any way to sift the good stuff out of the 8,700 games I currently have? I mean I've read a lot of top-arcade-games-of-all-time lists, but its kinda hard to translate that to ROM filenames. Like Space Invaders was found under "invaders.zip" when I was looking in the 'S's, or Donkey Kong is actually "dkong.zip". Is there a file-name list of Forum Member Bob's Top MAME picks?

Edited by moeburn (05/19/14 11:36 PM)