Hacking Quick Question about ROM Collecting

[JohnDrake]

Greetings!

Thanks for reading my post. I wont take but a moment of your time.

I am currently trying to assemble a complete NDS rom set. I believe I already have all the files I need.

Now I am looking for a good DS Rom Manager.

I have looked into ROMINATOR by Hankchill. It seems like the program for me but I have a few quick questions.

I didn't think my questions belonged in the Rominator Topic so I'll just ask them here.

First, I need software that will check the integrity and quality of my ROMS. I want to know if any of the games I have are corrupted or altered. I would also like something that will tell me what I am missing. Will Rominator handle this task or do I need something else? (Like good tools software)

My next question is what is the best way to archive my collection? (Burning software, should roms be zipped?)

And finally my last question concerns zipped roms. Does the R4,M3 or any of the other "drag and drop" NDS flash carts support zipped roms? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to running zipped roms?

Thank you for your help.

 

[Brenex]

The first question I can answer yes to for rominator, It checks the CRC value of your rom against his clean database. Also will tell you what you are missing by way of the statistics screen. Excellent program.

 

[JohnDrake]

The first question I can answer yes to for rominator, It checks the CRC value of your rom against his clean database. Also will tell you what you are missing by way of the statistics screen. Excellent program.

Thank You Brenex. I've just downloaded Rominator and I'm going to give it a try.

Now I hate to do this because it makes me look like a total n00b but may I ask another really stupid question?

What exactly is a CRC value? Also what defines a "clean rom?"

I'm not sure what is considered a clean rom. I assume it means the rom has not been patched, trained, trimmed or stuck with a scene intro. I may be completely wrong on this. Can someone clarify this issue for me?

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

The first question I can answer yes to for rominator, It checks the CRC value of your rom against his clean database. Also will tell you what you are missing by way of the statistics screen. Excellent program.


Thank You Brenex. I've just downloaded Rominator and I'm going to give it a try.

Now I hate to do this because it makes me look like a total n00b but may I ask another really stupid question?

What exactly is a CRC value? Also what defines a "clean rom?"

I'm not sure what is considered a clean rom. I assume it means the rom has not been patched, trained, trimmed or stuck with a scene intro. I may be completely wrong on this. Can someone clarify this issue for me?

As the name suggests, a clean rom is a 100%, unmodified ROM that has not be altered in anyway with the extension of .nds. The ROM file you download for ROM Sites should be clean.

 

[mcp2]

My next question is what is the best way to archive my collection? (Burning software, should roms be zipped?)


Zipped or RARed ROMS save alot of space, aproximately 50-70%. So you should zip them up and burn them onto a DVD.

And finally my last question concerns zipped roms. Does the R4,M3 or any of the other "drag and drop" NDS flash carts support zipped roms? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to running zipped roms?

No, none of the flash carts on the market support zipped roms, it would take too long to decompress them on the DS with it's limited RAM and processing power.

 

[Lukeage]

The CRC value is a checksum that is calculated by passing through the bytes of the file and using some "relatively" simple mathematics to produce a 'unique' number.

Thats the oversimplified explanation. If you want more details, wiki is a good place to start as usual.

CRC Wiki

 

[JohnDrake]

I just want to thank everyone who replied to this topic. I think I finally have the knowledge and tools that I need to organize my collection.

I do have one last question. Is there any program that allows you to zip more than one file at a time? I don't want to include them in the same zip file but rather send all of these files to their own zip file. (I hope that makes sense)

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Lukeage]

Winrar can handle that. If you need more instructions then just ask (there was another thread somewhere on the forum asking the same question, so you could search for that too).

 

[xcalibur]

to make all the information display for a game, do you need the .nfo file of it?
i have that rominator and it gives me no info besides the filename of my roms

 

[JohnDrake]

Winrar can handle that. If you need more instructions then just ask (there was another thread somewhere on the forum asking the same question, so you could search for that too).

I hate to ask but can I get your help on this? I tried doing a search but I think my search criteria was too broad.

Thanks again for your helps.

(Off topic, the main reason I am doing this is because I am buying a flash cart in a couple of weeks. I am going to get one for myself and one for my brother. He's not really a computer guy. I thought I would do all the work of getting him a nice rom set and setting up his new flash cart. You guys have really helped me out with this project and I thank you all.)

 

[J_Devon]

When using WinRAR:
- Select the files you want to compress to zip.
- Right click on one of the selected files, and choose "Add to archive" from the context menu.
- In the window that pops up, go to the "Files" tab.
- Check the "Put each file to separate archive" box.

It will then, as you would think, put all the files in their own archive.

Image for clarification:

 

[JohnDrake]

J-Devon thank you very much for that screen cap. It really helped me to get the job done. Thank God I didn't have to zip all those files separately.

I just want to thank everyone who helped me out with this project. This is one incredible web site. Everyone here is friendly, courteous and extremely knowledgeable. I knew when I first signed up that this was the place to be.

Thanks again for all your help

 

[JohnDrake]

Hey Everybody.

I'm sorry to bump this near dead topic but I have one more question I would like to ask if I may.

Now that I have learned about CRC checking is there any software that will allow me to check the integrity of my GBA roms? I keep trying goodtools but I'm having a little trouble. Is there any other software that will allow me to perform a CRC check on my GBA roms?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[FAST6191]

My preferred tool is offline list for GBA: it can read all the main sets files 7zip can (7z, rar, zip amongst others). Recent versions even support region dupe archives where different regions are placed in one file sometimes even nearly halving space:
http://offlinelist.free.fr/

It is also worth pointing out that recently some release groups tweaked the file without altering the standard crc32 value meaning people took a step up to md5. No-intro has more: http://www.gbadat.altervista.org/

There are dats for offline list (not just) at various sources including the official one, ADVANsCEne and no intro.

You might also want to look into goodmerge and speaking of ADVANsCEne the tool based over there called ndscrc although last I checked you needed it in a seperate directory.

 

[JohnDrake]

Damn that is some great info. I can't thank you enough. I'm already on my way to having a verified GBA rom set.

(This all came about after I learned about the EZ Flash 3 in 1 cart. Suddenly I realized that I needed a GBA rom set.)

Thanks for your help. It means a lot to me.

 

[dsbomb]

I prefer OfflineList for my collections. Use Advanscene for its NDS list. Then No-Intro has lists for every other system, NES, SNES, GB, etc. I have all my roms in individual 7zip archives, and OfflineList can extract them onto the memory card in a few clicks.