roms-curator

Helper utility to manage Sets of ROMs. Currently only works for MAME ROMs, for example to create a working only ROM Set.

Possible usages might include:

1. As an Application to create a new ROM Set separating working and non-working ROMs (including CHDs)

2. As a Library if you want to categorize your entire collection and do with it what you will.

Index

• Requirement / Dependencies
• How this works
• Application run instructions
• Build instructions
• Library usage instructions
• FAQ
• Useful links
• Help
• Planned for the future (maybe)

Requirement / Dependencies

This program has 2 external dependencies that are not included here, but are easy to get:

• MAME ROM database (xml file)
  • download MAME from here. keep in mind that you need the version that corresponds to your ROM Set version.
  • then extract the database:

    mame.exe -listxml > mame-roms.xml
    

• ROM categories file
  • MAME does not categorize ROMs (some exceptions), to categorize ROMs we need a MAME Support File file which can be downloaded here.
  • download the package for your ROMs Set version and extract the catver.ini file.

How this works

roms-curator will use mame.xml, catver.ini and some custom logic (from trial and error) to go through your ROM collection and categorize all ROMs with working or not-working states as well as specific sub-categories, like type of ROM/game (bios, system, mechanical, etc). From here it will copy your ROMs to a subdirectory in the specified destination_dir.

It can also generate a report with all copied files and/or errors encountered.

Sub-directories include:

• working: for all ROM files in working/playable state (excluding ROMs with CHD dependencies).
• other: for all ROM files NOT in working/playable state (excluding ROMs with CHD dependencies). This also includes bios, system, casino, mechanical and some other non-playable ROMs.
• chd_working: for all CHDs and ROMs dependent on CHD files in working/playable state.
• chd_other: for all CHDs and ROMs dependent on CHD files NOT in working/playable state.

Having the ROMs categorized in these sub-folders will allow you to only import working ROMs (working folder) into your mame front-end, while still giving MAME executable access to all ROMs by adding all directories as ROMs directories (this is needed because of ROM dependency, like a working ROM needing a bios ROM or a CHD ROM to work properly).

You might also want to reduce the size of your collection and one way to achieve that without breaking anything is to delete the non-working CHD directories. Complete Set of CHD files can be 500+ GB.

Application run instructions

See here

Build instructions

See here

Library usage instructions

See here

FAQ

See here

Useful links

• Download MAME
• Online MAME ROM database

Help

Please feel free to open an Issue if:

• You encounter any problems;
• Something is missing from the documentation material or hard to understand;
• Have any improvement suggestions or feature request.

Planned for the future (maybe)

• Add option to automatically download dependencies (mame xml and catver.ini).
• Verify ROM Set integrity.