MAME/ROM help

[Hatta]

Still illegal. Even if you did it for free, making a copy of a copyrighted work is illegal. Fucked up, but that's the way it is.

As for the GB question, 1 TB would be sufficient. It's hard to buy a smaller hdd these days anyway. Sizes can vary wildly, depending on what's included and what sort of compression they use. I have an older set of NES roms that includes bad dumps, translations, and hacks. These are compressed with zip with one rom per zip file. The size is 1.2GB total.

On the other hand, I have a more recent NES full set that is "goodmerged" with 7zip. That is, all variations of the same rom are zipped together in the same archive with 7zip. This allows 7zip to take advantage of redundancy and leads to a much smaller archive. This one weighs in at 200mb.

The problem is, emulators don't recognize the 7z format, nor do they handle multiple file archives well. So I keep both around. When you can get a terabyte harddrive for $50, why not?

[Shogun]

I can recommend the Wester Digital Caviar series. I bought one late last year and it has worked great so far.

[AmishSamurai]

I have a Seagate 250 GB, but it's two years old now so I doubt they make that model, or that size anymore. 1TB drives are cheaper nowadays, and you can also use it to back up your hard drive. Should be able to fit a complete romset for every 4th Gen system and earlier, and most likely 5th Gen (I don't know how large a PS1 romset is- I'd assume in the neighborhood of 20-30 gigs)

[Evildeadmanwalking77]

Wait was the auction just a rom burning service? I don't think that is illegal. I used to do that back in the day with Neo Geo roms. You just pay someone $5 for a full set and they'd burn the disc and mail it to you. The payment was for the service and to cover shipping.

I'm not so interested in full sets anymore because I like to just get a few and actually play and enjoy them. Full sets are way too overwhelming.

I don't know if it was a rom burning service. I had no idea that existed though.

Still illegal. Even if you did it for free, making a copy of a copyrighted work is illegal. Fucked up, but that's the way it is.

As for the GB question, 1 TB would be sufficient. It's hard to buy a smaller hdd these days anyway. Sizes can vary wildly, depending on what's included and what sort of compression they use. I have an older set of NES roms that includes bad dumps, translations, and hacks. These are compressed with zip with one rom per zip file. The size is 1.2GB total.

On the other hand, I have a more recent NES full set that is "goodmerged" with 7zip. That is, all variations of the same rom are zipped together in the same archive with 7zip. This allows 7zip to take advantage of redundancy and leads to a much smaller archive. This one weighs in at 200mb.

The problem is, emulators don't recognize the 7z format, nor do they handle multiple file archives well. So I keep both around. When you can get a terabyte harddrive for $50, why not?

Yeah I agree with you that it is messed up. It's no different from downloading music or movies from file sharing sites really. It's all copy right protected and of course video games are no different but the bottom line here is that people are going to do it anyways, right or wrong. I just wanted to add to my collection (the older games like NES SNES, Genesis, etc), which is an overwhelming one at that, and I'm limited on space living in an apartment with my wife so I thought this would a good way to get rare games I can not find anywhere and to back up my current collection in case something happens to the games or systems themselves.

I was thinking of going with a 500GB external HD which I think will be more than enough to save the files, game progress, and controller config set up. I do already have one that my wife used to save some photos on but I think there should still be enough space on it for this.

[Hatta]

I was thinking of going with a 500GB external HD which I think will be more than enough to save the files, game progress, and controller config set up. I do already have one that my wife used to save some photos on but I think there should still be enough space on it for this.

I'm sure 500gb would be fine too. You don't start needing crazy amounts of space until you start getting fullsets of CD based games. My PSX folders add up to 400GB, heh.

[Evildeadmanwalking77]

WOW!! 400GB for PSX games!! Understandable at the same time though when I think about it. Do they take up alot of space when saving your progress in the games?

[AppleQueso]

WOW!! 400GB for PSX games!! Understandable at the same time though when I think about it. Do they take up alot of space when saving your progress in the games?

Most of that massive amount of space goes toward FMVs and CD audio. I remember hearing that games like Final Fantasy 8 could've easily fit on a single disc without all the FMV.

Psx memory cards are like ~128kb, so individual save files are tiny.

[Evildeadmanwalking77]

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm just curious at 400GB, how many games would that be? I guess it would depend on the game because of the file size? Let's say like Heart of Darkness is a 2 disc game so that would obviously take up more space than say Tekken? I'm still learning with these ROMs, sorry.

[Evildeadmanwalking77]

I also forgot to add an idea I had going throuhg my head. I was considering buying this flash drive I saw at Best Buy it's a SanDisk Cruzer 16GB USB 2.0 strictly for NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega Master System, N64, GameBoy, GB Color, GBA, & Game Gear ROMs, plus game & Controller settings saving for all systems. Would that be a sufficient amount of space for these ROMs? I'm also taking about a complete set of ROMs for each system, meaning every game released. I just can't see all of this fitting on a 16GB flash drive like that but like I said I don't know much about this so I really appreciate everone's input and patience.

[AmishSamurai]

I also forgot to add an idea I had going throuhg my head. I was considering buying this flash drive I saw at Best Buy it's a SanDisk Cruzer 16GB USB 2.0 strictly for NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega Master System, N64, GameBoy, GB Color, GBA, & Game Gear ROMs, plus game & Controller settings saving for all systems. Would that be a sufficient amount of space for these ROMs? I'm also taking about a complete set of ROMs for each system, meaning every game released. I just can't see all of this fitting on a 16GB flash drive like that but like I said I don't know much about this so I really appreciate everone's input and patience.

I'm going through undergroundgamer to see the size of complete romsets- GBA's is reading at 22 gigs by itself. However, I really don't think you need to do a complete romset for each- for every masterpiece there's 10 stinkers, especially on the more popular systems of the time. You could easily fit a complete romsets for everything gen IV and earlier, but still.