MAME advice on CHD's

[Bloodwych]

Decided to update my MAME romset. My last update was v0.106 and I've got the full set of files, images CHD's etc. I'm happy with this set, plays most the games I want, but I thought I might as well have a recent rom set and put utorrent and my bandwidth to some use.

Now I'm going to just download a compete 0.136 set, but not the CHD's, which I kind of see as pointless as most games involving them I'm not bothered about. Plus they take up a horrendous amount of space. Rom set only isn't that bad - about 24GB.

So the question is, which are the CHD's worth having? I know there are some big MAME updaters here who might have a clue. :) I don't mind downloading a few for the best games, but having a complete set just seems totally over the top when I'll hardly play most of them.

Also I have SFIII, KI I and II, Area 51 etc from the v0.106 set. Do these need updating do you think?

[Demon Cleaner]

The latest MAME CHD set is quite big, something around 180GB if I'm right. But they now include Laser Disc and Naomi f.ex, I tested Ikaruga of the Naomi games in MAMEUI32 v136, and it's working more than slow.

In your case I would test your v106 CHD files with the v136 MAMEUI32 version and see if they still work. Otherwise you could just update these games only.

But anyway, if you have some spare disks lying around, the whole MAME sets, ROMs and CHDs, are free for download at PD, so you can always download them and store them somewhere.

[Bloodwych]

Thanks Demon Cleaner.

Yeah, I'll test those CHD's from v0.106. The entire CHD collection back then was about 40GB. I don't think anyone plays many other games apart from Killer Instinct, Street Fighter III and Area 51!

The whole CHD collection is just too big. I could store them on an external hard drive, or wait until I get a blue ray burner, but I know I'll never use most of them.

[Harrison]

Also as you have an older MAME roms set, don't waste time downloading the whole set again. Instead download the full MAME Rom set from Pleasuredome (you need to join if you are not a member) and when you start the download in uTorrent, point it at your existing older MAME Roms set. And because the MAME rom set is torrentzipped, uTorrent will check your existing rom set against the new set and will only download the changes. This can save downloading GBs of files. And once you have an up to date ROM set, when a new one is released, do the same and it is normally 100MB downlaod or so to update the set to the current version.

So much easier than needed to download the whole set again, or downloading update sets then needing to run the roms through a rom manager to merge and update them, which always used to be a huge hassle.

For the CHD's I would also agree that many of them are not worth it because either the hardware emulation for many of the CHD arcade machines is not completed yet in MAME so they don't run fully, or current PCs are not just fast enough to emulate them at full speed.

The LD CHDs for games like Dragon's Lair are different though as they are worth it, so you could always just download the games you want from the complete CHD set.

[Bloodwych]

Great advice Harrision - you've answered one of my questions. :)

I was just about to look into how people manage updates, but it sounds so simple if they use uTorrent to only update changed ROMS.

I'll make sure I get the right trackers for incremental updates. :)

Pleasure Dome have strict ratio's don't they? I only have 60K upload when not capped, 15K when capped, but unlimited downloads (Virgin medium package). That could get me into trouble! Should be ok for the updates once I have the full set (which I'm grabbing from another source).

[Harrison]

The MAME and CHD sets on Pleasuredome are free and don't require any upload ratio credit to download them, so they are a great way to build up an upload ratio credit for when you want to download anything else they have on their tracker. Any torrent with [FREE] after the name is as it says, free to download.

[Bloodwych]

An update. I did download the 0.136 set and recently registered at Pleasuredome to update this to the 0.138 set. I have a few questions! :D

After registering at Pleasuredome (fantastic resource BTW), I downloaded the secure torrent and pointed the incoming folder to the 0.136 set. It searched through and only started to update the missing ROMS.

Ok some questions:


When updating a set, is it normal to get the "IO read error/ Read file error" in the logs? I'm guessing these are the ROMS that need updating/changed?

What is the difference between the Standard vs Secure link? Is it to hide traffic from ISPs? Is one slower than the other when trying to build up a good upload ratio?

Upload ratio. I want this to be good, but I only have the 10MB virgin line - that's 60KB/s uncapped then after a puny 300MB or so in peak times it gets capped to 15KB/s :( To make this worse, I'm noticing that so many people seed the MAME set that I'm only averaging 4KB/s upload speeds - it's going to take me forever to get a 1:1 ratio. Any hints on how to get loads of people to upload/seed to?


As you can see, I'm a newbie at this. :)

---------- Post added at 17:37 ---------- Previous post was at 17:14 ----------

Ok, I've stopped being an idiot and read the rules - there are FREE torrents to help with getting your upload ratio sorted. That's part of my questions answered!

[Harrison]

OK, taking your questions in order.

1, I've never looked in the logs for things like that. I normally run the completed set through CLRMAMEPro with the current MAME dats to double check everything is verified and as it should be. If any files don't pass then I tell uTorrent to redownload any failed files.

2, Secure Link encrypts the data packets between the Pleasuredome tracker and uTorrent. Only each end can understand these encrypted packets and so if the ISP looked at them they wouldn't be able to work them out. So from a download point of view it is much more secure against those looking to track what you are downloading.

As for download speed, I don't think it really makes much difference. I've always managed to max out the download speed when torrents I'm downloading are well seeded..

3, Your package doesn't sound good with those cap restrictions. But uploading is always much slower than downloading whatever the connection. There are some things to make sure when seeding a torrent.

First, never set the upload speed to the same as the maximum upload speed of your connection, because you will saturate the connection and slow it to a crawl. The connection always needs a bit of bandwidth free in the upload speed for other communication between your system and the tracker to exchange progress packets etc, so if for example you had a 60KB/s upload, then set it to 55KB/s in uTorrent to avoid this.

Secondly, try to avoid the peak capped times of day. If you can leave your system seeding the torrent 24/7 then setup the scheduler in uTorrent and throttle the speeds during peak hours. This will avoid any restriction caps getting hit, and allow uTorrent to open up to full speed in off-peak times.

Thirdly, connectivity. Make sure the connectivity icon at the bottom of uTorrent is a green tick and not a yellow warning or red alert. Either of these means a connectivity issue. Normally this is due to the port set in uTorrent not being forwarded correctly from the router. Doing this will greatly speed up the connection.

And finally. The longer you are connected to their tracker and seeding, the more you will see fast download and upload speeds.

Also consider folding@home as Pleasuredome have a group and all folding performed by members gets converted into upload credit in your tracker account, so it is a great way to do a bit for science, and also earn some extra credits. The first month you also get awarded a 1GB bonus upload credit for joining the folding@home group.

[Harrison]

I did mention about the MAME ones being free in an above post. The MAME Roms torrent is always the best to keep seeding at all times as it is a [FREE] torrent and guaranteed to always have people leeching from it. Some of the other free torrents can remain dormant without a single Peer for a weeks sometimes.

It does take time to build a good ratio. Took me a couple of months when I first joined to get back to 1:1, and that was long before Free torrents. Now after seeding for years I've managed to built up a very good upload credit of about 1.2TB, although ask Demon Cleaner what his is as it surpassed that a long time ago! :lol:

[Bloodwych]

Wow, excellent advice thank you Harrision - much appreciated! :)

The only mystery now is why it took me so long to register with this superb site.

Yes the tick is green - I opened up a hole in my firewall and router for utorrent. I'll leave it overnight without the cap limits and it should get me into a good position for the future. Download was 1.1 MB/s right off the bat, until the cap kicked in and I'm finishing up the 0.138 set at 280 KB/s.

The package is just the standard Virgin 10MB line. It's lightening fast, but useless for any serious downloading during the day due to the caps. Still, it has unlimited bandwidth policy so I'd rather have that than monthly restrictions. Downloading stuff during off peak night time hours seems like a much fairer use of the network too. No need to be selfish. :D

So, anyone know what generates good upload traffic? Like I said, the MAME set doesn't seem to generate much upload speed - I like a few files that max out the upload overnight. EDIT: you have kind of answered that above, and yes I edited my previous post after reading the Pleasuredome rules about free torrents. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

I have to say that my upload was also never really high, but seeding since years 24/7 gives obviously a good ratio :D

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/pd.png

[Bloodwych]

You upload whore Demon Cleaner! :p

My upload has speeded up, going at 40-50KB/s on the MAME 0.138 set. So it will get me on my way!

[Demon Cleaner]

Great, and just like Harrison mentioned, the MAME sets are the best to seed, as they are also for free, you will always have leechers around. The key is really to leave the PC on 24/7.

[Bloodwych]

I'm a bronze member!!!! :D

I've only downloaded the MAME v138 ROM set (not bothered about most CHD's) and the MAME Extras Core.

Is the MAME Extras Alternatives worth downloading? The core pack seems to have everything I need.

Also, any other recommendations from the site?

[Demon Cleaner]

The alternate set is not crucial to have, as the core one has really everything you will need together with MAME.

You have to see what's for free, that's always worth downloading :)

Otherwise it really depends in what you're interested, as I think that f.ex. the pinball stuff is worth downloading. Future Pinball, PinMAME, Visual Pinball and Visual PinMAME.

[Harrison]

They do have a lot of great stuff to download, but some of the torrents are now huge (after years of combining different parts for each platform).

The Amiga torrents are a good source if you don't have an up to date TOSEC set. They have the only complete TOSEC CD Amiga set which includes CD32, CDTV and Amiga CD, so that is worthwhile. I seed that one all of the time alongside the MAME one so you would have at least one source. ;)

There are large collections for a lot of other systems too, so it depends what you are in to. Personally I would like to have the lot, but some of the CD collections are huge and really eat into your ratio and upload credit so it is good to be careful.

Remember though, that you don't have to download the complete torrent each time. When downloading with uTorrent you can pick the files within the torrent to download, and ignore the rest. So if you were only after specific games or files in a torrent you can grab just those and avoid wasting download credit on the rest.

As for the MAME extras. The Core set is really all that is needed. The alternative set is just that. Alternatives of exactly the same content, so it might be different icons for each game in MAMEUI for example. Depends how much of a completest you are.

[Demon Cleaner]

The Amiga torrents are a good source if you don't have an up to date TOSEC set. They have the only complete TOSEC CD Amiga set which includes CD32, CDTV and Amiga CD, so that is worthwhile.Who wants to download Amiga stuff :lol:

[Bloodwych]

Thanks guys, you've been a great help!

I am now an initiated Pleasuredome junkie uploader type person. :)

[Harrison]

But have you also visited and joined Underground-gamer.com? A site that sits very nicely alongside Pleasuredome and uses up your connection just as much! ;)

[Bloodwych]

Cool, that will be my next stop! That and ebay for some more hard drives!

[Harrison]

:lol: You can never have enough HDD space!

If you are not a member of Underground Gamer than I can provide you with an invite. They also have a sister site called BitGamer.com which is for modern systems, so they can split retro and modern system downloads into different sites and servers.

[Bloodwych]

Nice one, I'll look at joining up at the weekend. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

Cool, that will be my next stop! That and ebay for some more hard drives!Last time I checked HDDs on eBay, they were even more expensive there as if you would buy them from an online shop. And I would always trust my favorite online shops over eBay sellers.

[Harrison]

I agree. And with Seagate or Samsung drives you get a 3 - 5 year warranty on them.

[Bloodwych]

I actually never buy hard drives second hand - made that mistake once - when you look at the SMART monitoring info, they have usually been on many more hours than the seller claims!

But yeah, you guys are right - ebay doesn't automatically mean cheap. And some things are better new.

SSD's are really making hard drives an absolute bargain too!!!! I'm not ready for SSD yet - give me these cheap massive hard drives! :)

[Bloodwych]

If you are not a member of Underground Gamer than I can provide you with an invite. They also have a sister site called BitGamer.com which is for modern systems, so they can split retro and modern system downloads into different sites and servers.

So, you need an invite? No other way to join?

If you can help me out with this once you're ready, it would be excellent!!!

Thanking you very much! :acclaim:

[Demon Cleaner]

We need your eMail address to send an invite.

[Bloodwych]

Ok I'll pm you both of you! :D

[Bloodwych]

Thanks to Demon Cleaners invites and some good advice from Harrision I'm now ready at the gamer sites!

Any hints as to the best way to build up my upload at these sites, or how to get started. There doesn't appear to be free torrents like at Pleasuredome.

My ISP is going to have fits looking at my account.

[Demon Cleaner]

The golden torrents are freeleech, so go with them first.

[Bloodwych]

Golden, cool. I must admit I only had a quick look at work so thanks for appeasing my laziness. So, I better get uploading.

Also like how you can park your account, because I'm occasionally away from home for long periods (sometimes 6 months) and don't leave my computers on whilst I'm away. Would hate to be deleted through inactivity.

[Demon Cleaner]

Inactivity would only be a problem if your ratio is below 1. As long as you have a higher ratio, your account shouldn't be closed. But I don't know exactly, best would be to contact the admins and ask them about longer time of inactivity.

[Bloodwych]

Well, I tried to get going on Underground. Searched the golden torrents and found the most active in terms of leechers, but I found all my complete rom sets listed have been zipped up slightly differently (a few kbytes larger) so they didn't pass the hash check for uploading, except one...

...my SNES Goodmerge. It passed 96% hash check and downloaded 100MB.

No offers on Golden torrents at the moment, so no free uploading like Pleasuredome.

Several hours and no one is leeching off me. :(

So I have a negative ratio and can see no way to get it right. Pick the wrong torrents and you could be negative for weeks.

Plus, I notice there is no secure tracker (https) option like pleasuredome at these two sites. Doesn't this allow ISP's to snoop?

Bitgamer is an interesting site for my modded x-box - again though, I'm no sure I have a good enough connection to stay in the green without golden torrent offers. Not really interested in their modern stuff. ISP snooping is kicking in this year, even now they're logging.

How much stuff are you guys downloading ??? - it's GB overload!!!! Not sure I have the connection or hard drive space for this! Really interesting sites though guys and appreciate all the help.

[Harrison]

Glad you are enjoying looking around at these great sites. They are a brilliant resource for anything retro. Like you say, they do have some huge download collections and you would need a fast connection, large HDD, and big upload credit to download everything you wanted.

For UG (Underground-Gamer), I've actually been a member since it started, and for Bit-Gamer, I got a personal invite from the Admin, who was Admin on both sites at the time, and upgraded later by him to VIP, so I don't have any ratio worries with that status. ;) I think Teho has also been there since the beginning, or close to it also.

UG does seed the current MAME set, so you could try joining your completed set to their tracker. However, you would need to store 2 separate copies, and seed to each side from a different one, otherwise the tracker and uTorrent will complain that the files are in use for the other torrent.

You can also enter the lottery on UG to win the monthy upload credit and give you account an instant 100GB+ upload credit. I've never won that one myself.

The Blackjack game on there is also a fun way to play against other members and try to win credit. But lose and you lose 100MB credit each game, so it has risks.

[Demon Cleaner]

Last week on both sites was golden torrent weeks, during that period the download is free, and the upload counts double, for ANY torrent. So you might want to wait a bit until it's coming back again.

Another thing I did, look for golden torrents, sort them by popularity (which one has the most leechers), and download that one, whatever it is, and seed. I remember I was seeding some kind of hentai adult game, which had a lot of leechers, and I kept it for several months. It doesn't need to be big, f.ex. the game I seeded only had about 1GB.

[Bloodwych]

I'm just impatient!!! Many people will have had to start out like me and I guess it's just a case of looking for opportunities, waiting for golden offers and not leeching much at first.

I had a look at MAME, but the latest set has been split into two on underground gamer for some strange reason. I'll have a go at splitting the set in the same way and see if I can pass the hash check and get some uploads that way. I'll also have another look at the golden torrents sorted by leechers.

What I really need though is a fast internet connection - Virgin medium package just hasn't got the upload bandwidth to satisfy these great sites, especially with the caps. Plus I've noticed the last few days my uploads seem to getting throttled - perhaps Virgin Media have P2P traffic policies and slow down that traffic if you are using too much. Or perhaps there just isn't many leechers around in comparison to last week.

Fighting to find leeches - LOL! This is strange! :D

[Harrison]

I forgot to mention about protecting your downloads. You mentioned the worry that UG and BG don't offer secure downloads like PD does. One very useful program to help protect yourself, which I highly recommend you install is called Peerblock (http://www.peerblock.com/).

Download this and leave it setting in your taskbar running in the background. It uses 4 different large lists of known bad IP addresses and blocks them. Filtering out all the ones you do not want connecting to your connection and snooping on your download activity. ISPs and many media companies use dummy IP connections to investigate internet traffic and activity this way and Peerblock provents them all being successful. Peerblock regularly connects to the IP list servers and downloads updates to the lists, so it can keep blocking them all. Its a bit like a firewall for P2P and it works well.

Regarding Golden Torrents. UG have Golden Torrent weekends quite often. Maybe every couple of months, so keep an eye out for this as it is great for grabbing something big you really want for free, and with double upload credit (like the p2p equivalent of Tesco clubcard points! :lol:) you can start building some upload credit much faster. BG also have them but not as often. They normally announce them on the site about a week before they happen.

[Demon Cleaner]

Just disable the history log file in Peerblock, otherwise your HD space will grow very fast.

I also need to allow HTTP, otherwise it's blocking me a lot of stuff.

History can get big like this (see below) in less than weeks!! So really don't log anything, you won't need it anyway. Or use Harrison's "manual" method and constantly delete the log file, but don't forget to do it :)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/dfrag2.png

[Harrison]

Very good information DC. When PeerBlock was called PeerGuardian there was no way to disable this log file from being created and it could get very big. My download PC ran out of space on its C drive due to this and when I looked at the (history.db file as pointed out in DC's picture) mine had grown to 15GB! :lol:

Luckily it can now be easily disabled in Peerblock after you install the program. Once installed just double click the icon to open the Peerblock window, then go to the settings tab. In the first part set the Log lines to 8. And in the history section, change it to "Log None" and "Do Nothing". That will disable the logging file from be added to and isn't needed. If you have some strange issues then you could activate the log to capture what is being logged to check things, but normally it isn't needed.

Also, as DC said, make sure "HTTP is allowed" is showing in the main screen of the program top right. A button next to this enables and disables this setting. If HTTP is blocked then webpages will not load in browsers, but it is useful for an instant security lock down if something bad suddenly happened. But leave it allowed normally.

Peerblock will secure you connection very well. It also blocks media companies like MGM, Sony, Apple etc who show up all the time in the Peerblock history log if you did activate it to see who was accessing your connection. It is quite scary to see who is actually looking at your connection when you do log it. 100's of well known companies around the world. It also shows how well Peerblock is stopping them. :)