Romcenter

It's probably been requested before, but I would very much like to see support for 7z and RAR compression. Well, RAR might be out of the question, since it is commercial and closed source, but 7z on the other hand, is open-source.

It would be nice to see full support for the compression and decompression of these formats, with as much support as the ZIP format has.

If support for at least one of the formats is added, I'll gladly make a donation to RomCenter!

This has been mentioned several times on the MAME boards.

It is claimed that the major problem with RAR and 7z i sthat they are solid state compression. Unlike Winzip.

This causes slower read times than ZIP which may mean NEOGEO rom loading times taking ages.

Also, the amount of space you save using 7z or RAR isnt that huge a difference.

As Aaron Giles of MAMEdev said "hard disks are so cheap these days, if your hard disk is full buy a bigger one you cheap skate!"

Also, with Winzip 10 around the corner and claim higher compression ratios than before it maybe worth holding back.

Ad_Enuff wrote:This causes slower read times than ZIP which may mean NEOGEO rom loading times taking ages.

Well, some people may have a lot of time on their hands. Also, I don't play one-tenth of the ROMs I have, and I have a few full sets. I just want good compression for the sake of being a collector.

Also, the amount of space you save using 7z or RAR isnt that huge a difference.

It could add up, though. You can only fit so much on a single CD.

As Aaron Giles of MAMEdev said "hard disks are so cheap these days, if your hard disk is full buy a bigger one you cheap skate!"

I agree. But some people do not store ROMs on their hard drives.

Anonymous wrote:Well, some people may have a lot of time on their hands. Also, I don't play one-tenth of the ROMs I have, and I have a few full sets. I just want good compression for the sake of being a collector.

As I understand solid state, the way it works is that it has to unzip them then read them which will mean each time you play a game it will temporary unzip the contents which will mean less space on your hard drive. Also it makes create huge temp files in the process.

The contents of Winzip or ZIP files can be read without doing so. Which is THE biggest PLUS over 7z and RAR.

If you want to 7z or RAR your roms for archiving then do so. But my advice is NOT to use 7z or RAR to play them.

Ad_Enuff wrote:If you want to 7z or RAR your roms for archiving then do so. But my advice is NOT to use 7z or RAR to play them.

Yes, I will be using 7z and RAR primarily for archiving. It would just be nice if RomCenter supported these formats, so that I won't have to uncompress my ROMs if I want to audit/rename them when new dats are released.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I will be using 7z and RAR primarily for archiving. It would just be nice if RomCenter supported these formats, so that I won't have to uncompress my ROMs if I want to audit/rename them when new dats are released.

Dont change any roms from ZIP to RAR/7z. If you want to play them you currently have to use ZIP anyway as MAMEdev refuses to move to any other format.

My advice is to use RAR and use "SPAN TO CD or DVD". It will reduce your ZIP files further so you should get more files per CDR/DVD-R for archiving purposes.

You might also want to use my CD Labels and Covers as per my link below.

Ad_Enuff wrote:Dont change any roms from ZIP to RAR/7z. If you want to play them you currently have to use ZIP anyway as MAMEdev refuses to move to any other format.

Yeah, I realize that MAME ROMs must be in ZIP format, as the ROMs are split into multiple files. Other systems, however, have the ROMs merged into a single file. MAME isn't really a priority of mine, but I'll keep this in mind for the future.

My advice is to use RAR and use "SPAN TO CD or DVD". It will reduce your ZIP files further so you should get more files per CDR/DVD-R for archiving purposes.

I'm not sure what you mean. Is that an option in WinRAR? I couldn't find it, even after searching the manual. :/

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what you mean. Is that an option in WinRAR? I couldn't find it, even after searching the manual. :/

Simply select all romsand RIGHT CLICK the mouse. Select WINRAR "Add to Archive" and then WINRAR will pop up with options. Simply use use the "SPLIT TO VOLUMES" and pull down the menu and select CDR 650Mb or 700Mb.

Its not something you want to do on a regular basis as its gonna take ages to backup! But you did say you had time on ya hands didn't you?

It also has autodetect which I believe you can then span to DVD-R.

Well, thanks for the tips.

I was just thinking, if I had a DVD drive, I could probably just use ZIP files with DVD-RWs. I don't have one though, so unfortunately I'm limited to CD-Rs. :/

BTW, can DVD-RWs be treated as floppy disks? I mean, can they have data added and removed from them easily as if they were a floppy? If so, this would allow RomCenter to rename ROMs directly on the DVD, which would be good. (I know this is possible with CD-RWs.)

Anonymous wrote:BTW, can DVD-RWs be treated as floppy disks? I mean, can they have data added and removed from them easily as if they were a floppy? If so, this would allow RomCenter to rename ROMs directly on the DVD, which would be good. (I know this is possible with CD-RWs.)

I cant say I have ever tried using rewritable DVD-RW's, I just dont trust them due my paranoia of losing all the data......but if you can do it to CDRW then I cant see why it wont work for DVDRW. After all its just a different capacity.

Also if you do purchase a DVD Burner, make sure its dual layer. I bought mine (NEC ND-3500a) for £60 which isnt a bad price at all and that was some time back last year.