Can anyone tell me exactly how to update the ROMs using CLRMamePro (I have vers 3.71a)? I spent over 5 hours last night trying to do this with no luck. I'm very frustrated. A few months ago I installed Mame32 v94 and ROMs. Now I installed the Mame32v 98 executable in that same Mame32 directory (overwriting the v94 executable.) Then I downloaded the updated clrmamepro dat files for .95, .96, .97, and .98 and extracted those zip files into the datfiles directory of CLRMamePro (which is what I'm guessing I was supposed to do. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do next because I printed out three different docs for CLRmamepro and they all say something different. I tried different things and thought I might have got it working but when I run Mame32 v 98 it still shows missing ROM files for the games that were supposed to be updated with vers 98. Just how do the dat files get converted to the ROM files that need to go into the mame32/roms directory? Also, I believe I have split roms but I don't know how to verify that. And when I unzip the update datfiles there are 4 dat files (Full-merged, non-merged, split (the one I assume I use) and then a 4th dat file. What is that one used for? I'm very confused at this point. Can anyone help me out and give me some good instructions or point me to where there is some "good" easy-to-understand documentation. The doc at the CLRMame website is no help, also another at "Doug's Roms" (where I got the ROMS) was no good either, nor at EasyEMU. One says to use rebuilder, the other one does not. Also, when I was trying to run it, windows would pop up asking if I want to delete certain files and rename others. Do I just answer "yes" to all of these? Just very frustrated.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Darren

You don't need datfiles.

After reading the documentation and following tutorials (e.g. at mameworld.net/easyemu) you can simplify everything to the following simple procedure

1) Profiler->create-> add a profile for your mame executable
2) Settings->rompath/samplepath selector -> setup your rom and samplepaths
3) Scanner-> enable all check and fix options and hit scan.

If MAME gets updated, you replace your MAME executable and clrmamepro will detect the update and automatically gets the updated data.


To add the sets to your collection:

- add an addpath in settings and use scanner's fixmissing option

or:

- use the rebuilder. Rebuilder destination has to point to your rompath, source to your newly not cleaned not added sets. This can also be done by drag&drop from the scanner.


Roman Scherzer

> You don't need datfiles.
>
> After reading the documentation and following tutorials (e.g. at
> mameworld.net/easyemu) you can simplify everything to the following simple
> procedure
>
> 1) Profiler->create-> add a profile for your mame executable
> 2) Settings->rompath/samplepath selector -> setup your rom and samplepaths
> 3) Scanner-> enable all check and fix options and hit scan.
>
> If MAME gets updated, you replace your MAME executable and clrmamepro will
> detect the update and automatically gets the updated data.

So what you are saying is every time I update the mame32.exe to the newer version, then I rerun CLMamePro and it gets the updated data? Where is this updated data? I thought that was what the datfile was for but you say I don't use that at all.
> To add the sets to your collection:
>
> - add an addpath in settings and use scanner's fixmissing option
>
> or:
>
> - use the rebuilder. Rebuilder destination has to point to your rompath, source
> to your newly not cleaned not added sets. This can also be done by drag&drop
> from the scanner.

So where can I get the updated ROM sets? I thought that was what the datfile was for. Maybe that was part of my problem, too, because for the source in Rebuilder I was pointing to the clrmamepro/datfiles folder bcse that is where I put the datfiles. But you are saying that I need actual rom files, not datfiles? This is confusing because it seems wherever I read about updating your ROMS it says you need the datfiles. So are the datfiles the ROMS or not?
Thanks for you help?
Darren
> Roman Scherzer
>

> So what you are saying is every time I update the mame32.exe to the newer
> version, then I rerun CLMamePro and it gets the updated data? Where is this
> updated data? I thought that was what the datfile was for but you say I don't
> use that at all.

When you update your MAME binary, clrmamepro detects the change and will get the new database directly from the binary. You don't need external datfiles for MAME.



> So where can I get the updated ROM sets? I thought that was what the datfile
> was for.


A datfile, or in this case a direct data import from a MAME binary, only got the romset definitions like setname, romnames, romsizes and checksums.
It's the database which is used for verifying your romsets on your harddisk.



Roman Scherzer

>
> When you update your MAME binary, clrmamepro detects the change and will get the
> new database directly from the binary. You don't need external datfiles for
> MAME.
>
From the binary? Are you referring to the mame32 v98 executable? The ROMS can't be there because you legally cannot have the emulator and the ROMs together. I know you are trying to help but I'm getting more confused.
Let's back up....when I run Mame32 v98 and dbl click on say "Action Hollywood" which is one of the games that it says was added for v98 I get an error that says that the ROM cannot be found. So where does this ROM comes from? Does everyone just search around and upload them one at a time off the internet? If this is true, then I guess the the source of my confusion is that I thought the datfiles contained the ROMs and that was all I needed.

> From the binary? Are you referring to the mame32 v98 executable? The ROMS
> can't be there because you legally cannot have the emulator and the ROMs
> together.



You got a major misunderstanding of datfiles and romsets.
A datfile is just a textfile which describes the romsets, something like:

game (
name puckmanf
rom ( name namcopac.6e merge namcopac.6e size 4096 crc fee263b3 sha1 87117ba5082cd7a615b4ec7c02dd819003fbd669 region cpu1 offs 0 )
rom ( name nampfast.6f size 4096 crc 51b38db9 sha1 0a796f93462aec4758c2aa1c1f34cd05bb10a178 region cpu1 offs 1000 )
rom ( name namcopac.6h merge namcopac.6h size 4096 crc 02083b03 sha1 7e1945f6eb51f2e51806d0439f975f7a2889b9b8 region cpu1 offs 2000 )


....

Such datfiles are the basis for clrmamepro. You can either download such datfiles for emulators (e.g. MAME) or some emulators can export such datfiles directly. MAME can and clrmamepro can directly import this data.

So you can directly import the database from a MAME binary (e.g. mame32.exe or whatever) and after that you scan your ROMSETS on your harddisk. Scanning means, the ROMSETS will be checked against the data given by the datfile / MAME data import.



Roman Scherzer

Thanks, part of this is becoming clearer now. So basically, am I correct in stating that if one wanted to update their ROMs to work with the latest version of MAME, they would need to find each of them on the web somewhere and put them in their Mame32/roms directory with all the other ones they already had. They could then run CLRMamePro (either using downloaded datfiles or use a datfile exported from Mame) to scan all the ROMS for errors and possibly fix them as well.
And if all the above is true, CLRMAMEPro could be used to determine which ROMs are missing so one would know beforehand which ones to look for.
Does all this sound right? Can the newer ROMS just be put in the mame/roms directory or should CLRMamepro do something with them first. If so, is this where the rebuilder function comes in.
Sorry for all the questions but I wish there was an easy to follow tutorial for doing this (but maybe for legal reasons noone wants to write this or post it).

Thank you,
Darren

Sounds like you finally understand it ;)



New roms can be added to your collection by using several ways...

- manually putting them into a rompath
- using clrmamepro's scanner with fix-missing enabled (this will look into specified addpaths for missing files)
- using clrmamepro's rebuilder to add them to your collection



Roman Scherzer