Tosec, Good and No-intro

A decade ago, i was all about collecting roms. All platforms, full sets, mirc, newsgroups and PC turning day and night. After a while, i got tired of collecting for the sake of collecting and i started to create my own sets, only for the platforms and the games i was playing. But, with the years, i have widened my gaming spectrum and i've reached a point where it'd be good to have full sets again. Also, the collecting fever may have returned.:whistle:

Only, this time, i would like to avoid as much as i can the huge sets with 1000000 roms, half of it being fakes, redumps, corrupts, traductions, hacks, obscure korean versions...

In, short i'm trying, for each platform, to get only one set and the cleanest i can find.
Mostly, when i have to make a choice between Goodsets, TOSEC and [no-intro], i go for [no-intro], they are cleaner and more adapted to my (non-completist) needs.
Unfortunately, every platform doesn't have its [no-intro] set, that's when i fall back to what i find, goodsets or TOSECs.

In the spirit "if there should only be one set", I have started a little list with each platform i'm targeting and the sets that i'm planning to get:

Mame - MAME v0.130 complete ROM sets [MAME/Arcade/2009]
CHDs - Mame 0.130 CHD's [Mame/Arcade/2009]

NES - [No Intro] Nintendo Entertainment System (20090218)
SNES - [No-Intro] Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System (20081015) [Rom Set/1990]
N64 - [No-Intro] Nintendo - Nintendo 64 (20090315) TorrentZip'd [Various/1996]
GB - [No-Intro] Nintendo - Game Boy (20081015) [Collection/2008]
GBA - [No-Intro] Nintendo Game Boy Advance (20090322) [GBA/Romset/2009]

SMS - [No-intro] Sega - Master System - Mark III (20090212) [Romset/2009]
Genesis - [No-Intro] Sega - Mega Drive - Genesis (20090331) [Romset/2009]
Dreamcast - TOSEC Sega Dreamcast 2009-03-14 complete part 1 + 2 + 3 [Region Free/all/2009]
Saturn - Sega Saturn Collection USA (U) [All/1995]
SegaCD - Genuine and tested Sega CD USA images (2007-11-14) plus extras [Various/1992]
Gamegear - [No-intro] Sega - Game Gear (20090320) [Romset/2009]

C64 - GameBase C64 V03 [Collections/2006]
Amiga - The complete set of amiga games, TOSEC 0.29 [all games/1980][RS]
CD32 - The complete set of Amiga CD32 games (TOSEC-v0.05 CM) [TOSEC/2006]

Atari 2600 - not decided yet
Atari 5200 [No-Intro] Atari 5200 (20081124) [5200/Rom Set/1982]
Atari 7800 - not decided yet
Atari ST - not decided yet
Jaguar - No-Intro Atari Jaguar 03-23-2009 [Various/1993]
Lynx - [No-Intro] Atari - Lynx (20081228) [Collection/1989]

Turbografix - PC Engine-CD 99% Complete Collection [All/1989]
NeoGeo CD - SNK Neo-Geo CD [TOSEC-2006-03-15] [Collection/1994]
NeoGeo Arcade - Neo-Geo Arcade Perfect Set (20090105) [Misc. Genres/1990]
NeoGeo pocket - [No-Intro] SNK - Neo Geo Pocket Color (20090303) [Romset/2009]
3DO - [TOSEC] REAL 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (2008-10-31) [ALL/1994]

I was wondering what the other rom collectors would think about it. Are my choices right or are there other, better sets? Are the [no-intro] really the cleanest sets? What would you change/adapt in my list?
And you, what are your collecting goals and how do you plan to reach them?

EDIT: i forgot to say that i plan to download the sets, not purchase them on HDs or DVDs

I noticed that the CD32 and Amiga sets you have listed are quite out of date. The latest CD32 set was released in December 2008, and the latest version of the Amiga ADF sets is from around the same time. Have a look on Pleasuredome to see the most up to date sets. And also visit toseciso.org to get a copy of the latest TOSEC CD ISO dats (current dat download also includes all the current cue files too, which is very useful when updating existing sets).

And to speed up the download of new sets, from places like Pleasuredome and Underground-gamer, it is worth using the dats on your existing collection with CLRMAMEPro and using the program to rename your existing sets to fit the current release. That way when you then join a torrent and point it at your existing set it won't need to download as much to bring it up to date.

As for which is the best type of set to download, it all depends on the platform. For the Amiga the TOSEC sets are far more complete than any of the others. But for others like Amstrad or C64 the Good sets seem much more complete. It is best to check the dat files for the sets available for each platform and see what the differences are to make the best choice.

Then you also have specific sets, such as the Gamebase sets, which are specific to their own frontend and therefore only include the supported files and games in the set, which means they will be missing quite a lot of unsupported stuff.

Thanks a lot for your advices harrison, I have updated my amiga sets.
I was already used to CMP thanks to my Mame set which i've kept updating through all the versions for years now but i've also discovered torrentzip for saome of my [no-intro] packages.

I mostly try to get the no-intro sets, they are the most clean, i just don't need all the redumps... Unfortunately, they are (almost) never marked as golden torrents at UG :( Too bad, the "rise of the ratio" week-end would have been a great opportunity to get them all at once...

Yea.. I love the Rise of the ratio weekend.. :) Soon as they started it I just went for the most popular golden torrents and started seeding like crazy.. so far I am up about 20 gig.. YAY!

20Go :blink:?! OMG, how did you achieve that? I've been seeding all week-end and all i have is 2Go upped... Belgian connection makes me sad, really.

Well.. My connection is by no means spectacular, but it suits my purposes. I was thinking.. I wouldn't mind getting my hand on some of those collections myself so if you want to we can pool our resources. We could decide on who gets what collections and afterwards we could share them between us. Saves ratio for both of us..

Just saw on the feed that a new amiga no-intro set was just uploaded at UG. I have no idea if this new one is any more worth getting over any of the other sets than the old one was though.

Edit: Actually, scratch that. Just had a look at it and it's just a renaming/restructuring update, no new additions.

You wouldn't like to see some of our ratios on UG and PD then!

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Originally Posted by thirtywinter

Well.. My connection is by no means spectacular, but it suits my purposes. I was thinking.. I wouldn't mind getting my hand on some of those collections myself so if you want to we can pool our resources. We could decide on who gets what collections and afterwards we could share them between us. Saves ratio for both of us..

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That's a very nice proposal but my problem isn't really the ratio, it's more my monthly download limit. I have the best ISP in Belgium and i can't d/l+u/l more than 30Go/month, after that i have to pay 5euros/5Go supplementary, that makes me wanna cry.:(
So, basically, if i would have to download, let's say, the NEC-Turbogrfx set (+/- 140 Go), it would take me sooo long.
For those big sets, i was more thinking about some "i buy them burned on DVDs on the net" kind of solution... (if anybody has a suggestion, i heard romcollector does nice things)

However, it would be possible for the smaller sets (40 Go max), we could exchange a list of what we both already have...

To Teho: Thanks for the link, since i didn't have the previous set, i'll directly snatch that one. No-Intro sets are an example of what a clean set should be :D

Glad to be of help. Especially since come to think of it, I shouldn't actually have posted that link in here.. :shhh: :unsure:

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Originally Posted by Harrison

You wouldn't like to see some of our ratios on UG and PD then!

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What, you mean hundreds of GB in credit isn't normal? :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by my_lo

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thirtywinter

Well.. My connection is by no means spectacular, but it suits my purposes. I was thinking.. I wouldn't mind getting my hand on some of those collections myself so if you want to we can pool our resources. We could decide on who gets what collections and afterwards we could share them between us. Saves ratio for both of us..

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That's a very nice proposal but my problem isn't really the ratio, it's more my monthly download limit. I have the best ISP in Belgium and i can't d/l+u/l more than 30Go/month, after that i have to pay 5euros/5Go supplementary, that makes me wanna cry.:(
So, basically, if i would have to download, let's say, the NEC-Turbogrfx set (+/- 140 Go), it would take me sooo long.
For those big sets, i was more thinking about some "i buy them burned on DVDs on the net" kind of solution... (if anybody has a suggestion, i heard romcollector does nice things)

However, it would be possible for the smaller sets (40 Go max), we could exchange a list of what we both already have...

To Teho: Thanks for the link, since i didn't have the previous set, i'll directly snatch that one. No-Intro sets are an example of what a clean set should be :D

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Wuth?? You have to a set limit?? Well.. humm.. I can see how that would be a drag. But then again, 5 euros for 5 gigs isn't that bad.. As in.. could have been worse...

My primary goal is to fill up my 1 TB modded xbox w/games from the systems I used to play. Spectrum, Commodore 64, the best from the Amiga days that is playable on the xbox without having to hardmod a USB port to it.. Sega Megadrive (I seem to remember that is what it was called in Europe) including the Sega CD (Good times.... good times), SNES, Nintendo 64 and of course some classic Xbox titles.

Maybe even some lynx stuff on it as I bought the original model that came out. (I wonder where I put that thing.. :hmmm:)

And of course, can't forget to give MAME some love to... after all, it has been a while since I played Black Tiger. or a proper version of Donkey Kong..

Hey.. speaking of which... I heartily recommend the movie "King of Kong" for those that still hasn't seen it. Very interesting.

I have 1.87TB upload at PD at the moment :)

Mine is lower, just coming up to 1TB upload total. Slower upload speed though. But once I switch to ADSL2+ then I should be getting around 2MB/s upload speed, then my upload credit should shoot up! ;)

I only have 512kB/s.

Mine is currently 448Kb/s, however I only have unlimited bandwidth at weekends and between 12am - 8am weedays. Between 8am - 12am te ISP sets a cap of 50GB for the month, with overuse charged at £0.50 per GB after that, so I throttle the upload speed during these peek time hours to 15KB/s, which slows things down.

Switching to the ISP Be* will sort that issue out as they don't have any caps.