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[haroldion]

Okay well here goes, I am a Mac user and there isn't really a lot as far as checking ones ROMs go on the Mac. There is ClrMAMEPro on the PC sure but not for Mac. However there has just been a new release of Lesminni, which I believe to be similar in working to ClrMAMEPro: http://github.com/MatthewCallis/Lesminni/tree/master

The problem is I don't know how ClRMAMEPro works, I actually don't even get it, what its supposed to do. I have an idea of what I want though: basically that is for a program to use the dats provided by dat-o-matic to proof a downloaded rom against the 'clean' list, thus verifying it. This then would guarantee that the game you play on your emulator was the exact same one you played on your console - no hacks, no flaws.

So, if anybody has access to a Mac, can they please try out Lesminni to see if it does actually do this. Because I can't figure it out at all, you have read what I want to do (and I think its important), but the whole scene is too complicated for me.

And yes I have tried, tried a lot and read all the tutorials.

Thanks for your help.

[Roman]

clrmamepro works fine on a Mac using Crossover.

What clrmamepro does, well, it audits romsets. It compares the content of your harddisk/whatever with the definitions of the romsets in a datfile or an emulator binary.

Dat-O-Matic came about 10 years after clrmame was born and is only one little source of datfiles.

[haroldion]

Thanks for the reply but I hate look of CLrMAMEPro, its just ugly and hy shouldn't Mac have its own software I think. Plus its so hard to understand and use. I think that Mac should have its own solution and Lesminni could be it, well there isn't much else.

I thought Dat-o-matic was the source for the most up to date dat files, they have the most recent activity I think. Anyway, seem as though I can't even figure out (even with the help guides) how to use ClrMAMEPro then I was hoping somebody might take a look at Lesminni, if they have access to a Mac, and try and get it working. It sounds like it should be simple I know..

Thanks.

[Roman]

clrmamepro is simple. There are docs, there are tutorials.

Basically a simple 3 step is all you need to do: profiler -> load a datfile, settings -> setup rompaths, scanner -> hit scan. That's it.

All you have to do is reading and of course you need some knowledge about rom auditing and basic terms. And I think the latter is missing on your side (no offense though).
It's clrmame *PRO*. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you don't want to spend a minimum time in learning how to use it, tough luck, try to find something else which suits you.

I doubt that your mentioned tool is as powerful as cmpro. Coming from its website:

- Display the ROMs internal info
- Calculate ROM Checksum
- Rename ROMs based on internal info or from a ClrMame DAT *Disabled*
- Export ROM list in ClrMame Pro Format
- Display the ROMs internal info

wow...what a feature list....but don't get me wrong... I fully respect what the author does. I appreciate and will also support any auditing tools author...but the upper list is maybe 1% of what cmpro does.

[haroldion]

Okay, I spent the whole day today (again) looking at Clrmamepro and trying to figure it out. I managed to install it using Wine, which went well and even managed to make a video tutorial of that, however the familiar frustrations crept in when using Clrmamepro ..so I made a video of it. I sound a bit grumpy I know, but you would if the issue persisted.

video: http://drop.io/kkwvjpv#

Basically you can now see where I'm coming from, I am now hoping somebody can create a video to show how this thing is actually supposed to work, in practice. The only video help I have ever seen is in Spanish/Portugese on Youtube, aside from that I really have tried using the online guides.

My problem as you know is a home based console one but SDLMess just looks naff and the devs on it say that its not got an audit option. So I know that Clrmamepro is not going to help me with console ROMs (or that's what I think) but tried Arcade games just to see it work. As you can see I failed miserably, any help?

[Roman]

Well, thanks for the video.

Ok, no offense but if you're want to audit romsets, you need to know the basics.

A) You need to know what rompaths are. It's the path were you store your romsets in.
B) You need to know what datfiles are. It holds the romset definitions.
C) You need to know how you have to store sets in the rompaths. Either rompath\setname\file 1...file n for decompressed sets ot rompath\setname.zip(.rar/.7z) for compressed ones. Remember, the set definitions come from the datfile.
D) You need to know what the different merge mode mean...(I skip this here)

So assuming you got some sets you want to audit in c:\roms (yeah...MACUser I know...just an example). You first have to know which datfile maybe useful for you. If you're checking MAME roms, a MAME datfile or binary could be helpful.

1) So load this data in profiler
2) Go to settings and setup a rompath for it so cmpro knows where to look for your sets...in the example c:\roms
3) Go to the scanner and hit scan....

After hitting scan, the tree list will list each any any problem with your sets. If it shows a warning prompt that it doesn't find any file, the chance is high that all files have a wrong name or you store them wrong (see C)). After that prompt, the actual scan starts and it tells you in detail what's wrong with the files in c:\roms.

If you're there you may want to enable the fix options as well to fix issues which are fixable.


It is actually these 1-3) steps....but I advise you to first know what you're doing, i.e. you need to learn a bit about storing romsets.
If you coming from nothing, and want to draw a picture, Photoshop will be tough for you in the first phase as well.

[haroldion]

Not much luck again, I didn't quite understand 'c' and have made a new video showing what I did. Its so much more interesting with a video don't you think   

http://drop.io/m3el7tn#

Thanks again.

[Roman]

c) is about how you store your romsets.

The datfile defines how a romset should look like, i.e. listing the single romfiles in the set.
For example a romset (let's call it 'pacman' for easyness) consists of 3 romfiles 'a.bin', 'b.bin', 'c.bin'.

You store romsets in rompaths, i.e. a folder on your hd. Let's assume (ok..Windows style here) you store them in c:\roms. So you rompath is c:\roms.

Now the 2 possible storing methods for pacman are either as a compressed archive (pacman.zip (or pacman.rar/pacman.7z)) or not compressed.
In case of not compressed sets you need another subfolder in your rompath, named after the setname. So you will end with: c:\roms\pacman\a.bin ... bin.bin....c.bin

for compressed sets you will end with: c:\roms\pacman.zip (where the zipfile contains the bin files).

In cmpro you'd setup c:\roms as your rompath in this example.

[haroldion]

Okay, but in the case of smc (SNES) roms, where do they fit in. If the roms you have are .nes, .gb, .smc.. then these are not romsets, they are just roms. Are romsets specific to MAME and arcade emulators?

Just to entertain me, can you confirm that a rom (that is an .smc or a .nes for example) can be compared against a dat list, thus "verified"? I think using Ucon64 I was able to at least extract the real info from the ROM with a compatible dat list and if the features worked/alwed the ROM could have been given the thumbs up or down as a propper dump (i.e. not a hack).

Thank you.

[Roman]

A single .nes file is of course "just a rom"..and the belonging set consists of for example that single rom.
As said before, the datfile specifies the set. The set definition can be anything...

There are datfiles which define them as single sets (i.e. you got 1 rom per set). This would look in the datfile like:

game (
   name "pac2000"
   description "another pacman clone"
   rom ( name "pacman.nes" size 4096 crc 12345678 )
)

game (
   name "ark"
   description "Arkanoid 2010"
   rom ( name "arcanoid.nes" size 4096 crc 87654321 )
)



and there are datfiles which combine single roms into bigger sets:

game (
   name "my_collection"
   description "some games"
   rom ( name "pacman.nes" size 4096 crc 12345678 )
   rom ( name "arcanoid.nes" size 4096 crc 87654321 )
)


So see the difference. One setname is my_collection and in the other part you got 2 sets. And again, this influences how you store your sets (let's take c:\roms again as rompath again):

c:\roms\my_collection.zip (where the zip contains the 2 .nes files) or c:\roms\my_collection\pacman.nes ... arcanoid.nes
and in the other example you got:
c:\roms\pac2000.zip and c:\roms\ark.zip (or folders of the same name when keeping the files decrompressed).


To confuse you even more now.....if you scan NES sets, you have enable (nes) header support, otherwise checksums won't be calculated correctly......but that's something for later...first understand the basics.