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[aureole]

Hi, I'm trying to use ClrMamePro to rollback a 0.137 set to 0.84 (I've got an arcade cab that I'm MAMEing up with a ropey older PC).  I've got the full 0.137 set of roms and the set of rollback roms too.  I've also got a 0.84 datfile (and I can also build a profile from the 0.84 MAME).  However: I'm a bit unsure as to how to get the rebuilder working best. 

I've got two directories - one with the 0.137 roms and another with the rollback set in.  I've set the rebuilder to have two source directories: however, in this configuration it throws an error because the rollback directory doesn't have any roms in.  When I selected rebuild it didn't do anything.

I've tried a bodge and put a shortcut/symlink of the rollback roms directory into the 0137 roms directory, then selected rebuild and it's doing - something.  It'll take a long while (50% in after 12 hours).

A couple of questions:

1) Is what I'm doing completely wrong?
= Do I have to run the rebuilder with full and rollback in two steps or one
= Do I run the rebuilder on the 0137 roms and then scan and fix with the rollback set?

2) What's the error about the rollback rom set?  Why does it not run any rebuild at all with a directory that apparently contains no MAME roms, just rollback sets?  Have I screwed up here too?

Many thanks, in advance for anyone that can help my hamfisted flailing. 

[Roman]

- Load the .84 datfile in the profiler
- Setup a rompath to point to your future .84 files in Settings
- go to the rebuilder, the rebuilder destination should now show that .84 path....otherwise click on "use 1st rompath" button.
- disable recompress files
- disable remove rebuilt files
- select your prefered merge mode
- and finally drag'n drop your .137 folder and .84 rollback folder into the rebuilder window
(alternatively you can setup addpaths for the these 2 and enable "use addpaths" in the rebuilder.

Depending on your PC and especially HD power, it should create any valid file which is found in your new .84 set.....pretty fast...12 hours sounds way, way, way too long.

After the rebuild, you can use the scanner to see what's still missing.


Please differ:
84 folder as rompath - a new empty folder (or the folder with your old setup of .84)
.84 rollback folder - your described folder with the rollback files
.137 folder - your folder with the .137 collection

[aureole]

Thanks for the super-fast response.  I really appreciate you making this tool and providing support like this.

I think I've done a weird setup.  I also didn't know about the drag-and-drop.  I'd set the 0137 and rollback directories in the settings window (as rebuilder only lets me directly set a single directory).

The computer is a 800mhz Athalon (hence why I'm going for an older MAME!).  I also think I'm recompressing all the files, so that'd be a huge process requirement.  I'll probably nuke the whole lot and start again properly tonight.

[Roman]

Maybe some general things about the Rebuilder

Source Folder - cmpro scans this folder (and optionally subfolders) for valid files (either single file or file in archives....or file in archive in archive..or ...). This is done by a hash lookup against the loaded database. In case of a match, each instance will be generated in the destination folder, now using the correct names. Each instance means that if a file is used in various sets, each set is being generated (if not yet existing) and the file is being added.

Destination Folder - here the matched files are being re-generated with correct names.

You need various source folders?
Then you can either setup folders as 'AddPaths' in settings->addpaths and enable the "use addpath" option below the source folder edit box.
Or you can drag'n drop files, folders directly into the rebuilder window (by the way, drag'n drop also works in the scanner...which then internally runs the rebuilder).

You need various destination folders?
Ok, a bit more tricky, currently you can only use system-default-folders for this, i.e. you can split up sets by bios file usage.


Recompression should usually be turned off....a later run with batch tools to rezip files is a better approach...or drop them in my zipmax tool


Things which make rebuilding slow:

- Recompress enabled (speed killer)
- remove rebuilt source files (useful feature..but of course this is additional effort)
- an enabled Rebuilder Advanced->additionally test md5/sha1 (however this avoids rare crc32 hash conflicts)
- Advanced->backup replaced files

If you know what you're doing you can fiddle around with these features to get some speed up...

[aureole]

Okay, I'm not at home, but I think my problem was that the rebuilder didn't like the rollback roms in the settings->addpaths option, as there were only the rollback sets and no traditional roms in there.  I think drag'n'drop is probably what I should do.  I'm also pretty sure that it's recompressing (and also doing the sha1 test) which explains the slowness.

Does the subfolders scan follow shortcuts/symlinks btw?

[Roman]

well, the purpose of rollback sets is to have only the files which were replaced/removed in later versions, not full sets.
shortcuts/symlinks ...erm...good question. Test it . I'm using some very generic directory tree walk routine....no idea what the OS functions do for shortcuts etc....since shortcuts are pif files I'm assuming they are handled as files....

[aureole]

I'll check exactly what I did last night, but with a MAME rom dir and a rollback rom directory specified in the settings->addpaths rather than drag-n-drop, 0 files got processed by the rebuilder. Sounds like the drag-n-drop is exactly what I want.

Again, thanks for your support!

[Roman]

If you're using addpaths, don't forget to enable the "use addpath" option in the rebuilder.....
...or you rollback set did not contain anything which was matched against the 84 datfile.

[aureole]

Hey, got everything done.  In the end, the easiest approach was to do a  rebuild with 0137 as the source and a new 084 directory as the target, then a second rebuild with the rollback set as the source and the 084 set as the target.  0 missing roms, 0 problems and 1 happy arcade cab.

Cheers!