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!

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:

1. 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?
   
2. 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?
   
3. 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!

[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.

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.