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MAME 0.151 ROMs

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Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect a DMCA takedown on this from at least Namco and Nintendo before the week is over. So grab it while you can (if you don't have an archive like this already).

We've been having a very large discussion about this on the IGDA preservation SIG discussion list http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Preservation_SIG What it comes down to is that Jason Scott, at Archive, is fearless. He saves EVERYTHING. If you think putting these MAME ROMS on Internet Archive is ballsy, check out what else he's put on there: https://archive.org/details/tosec The standard policy, as he explained it to me, is…

Incredible! That C64 archive is immense. From the collection description [1]:

There are an astounding 134,000+ disk, cassette and documentation items in this Commodore 64 collection, including games, demos, cracktros, and compilations.

And I thought the Apple II collection was impressive at a mere "4,800 floppy disk images." [2]

[1] https://archive.org/details/Commodore_C64_TOSEC_2012_04_23

[2] https://archive.org/details/Apple_2_TOSEC_2012_04_23

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect a DMCA takedown on this from at least Namco and Nintendo before the week is over. So grab it while you can (if you don't have an archive like this already).

We've been having a very large discussion about this on the IGDA preservation SIG discussion list http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Preservation_SIG What it comes down to is that Jason Scott, at Archive, is fearless. He saves EVERYTHING. If you think putting these MAME ROMS on Internet Archive is ballsy, check out what else he's put on there: https://archive.org/details/tosec The standard policy, as he explained it to me, is…

Very informative, thanks.

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#23
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been having a very large discussion about this on the IGDA preservation SIG discussion list http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Preservation_SIG What it comes down to is that Jason Scott, at Archive, is fearless. He saves EVERYTHING. If you think putting these MAME ROMS on Internet Archive is ballsy, check out what else he's put on there: https://archive.org/details/tosec The standard policy, as he explained it to me, is…

The vast majority of credit should go to the rippers, dumpers, maintainers of the archives! Scott merely downloaded them and put them on archive.org (which is great but just the tip of the ice berg).

I agree, but that's sort of an illicit, nameless mob of people who probably don't want too much attention. TOSEC is kind of like a hive-mind memory project. I love how utterly comprehensive it is, without any central governing body other than the standards. TOSEC goes way beyond anything an academic body would be able to piece together, or anything a museum could muster. It's basically the Internet put to a task. Where else are you going to find Sega 32X technology demos?

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#24

Why did they put them all in one giant zip file? I would love to participate in the BitTorrent swarm, but I'm not keeping a useless [1] 42 GB zip file around. [1] Apart from using fuse-zip, but as far as I can tell, that doesn't work in Windows.

It's unusual. Typically MAME collections are distributed with deterministic compression and using automatic managing tools, so people can stay up to date without re-downloading large amounts of good data. 40GB torrents tend to hash 4MB chunks at a time, while a ROM might be only 8KB-- there's a high probability of a chunk becoming invalid.

When someone updates to the next MAME version, they can download an "update" pack with only the ROMs that changed, and a tool will recompress them together with the old files so a torrent client can start seeding the new version immediately.

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#25

Why did they put them all in one giant zip file? I would love to participate in the BitTorrent swarm, but I'm not keeping a useless [1] 42 GB zip file around. [1] Apart from using fuse-zip, but as far as I can tell, that doesn't work in Windows.

It's unusual. Typically MAME collections are distributed with deterministic compression and using automatic managing tools, so people can stay up to date without re-downloading large amounts of good data. 40GB torrents tend to hash 4MB chunks at a time, while a ROM might be only 8KB-- there's a high probability of a chunk becoming invalid.

When someone updates to the next MAME version, they can download an "update" pack with only the ROMs that changed, and a tool will recompress them together with the old files so a torrent client can start seeding the new version immediately.

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#26

Why did they put them all in one giant zip file? I would love to participate in the BitTorrent swarm, but I'm not keeping a useless [1] 42 GB zip file around. [1] Apart from using fuse-zip, but as far as I can tell, that doesn't work in Windows.

It's unusual. Typically MAME collections are distributed with deterministic compression and using automatic managing tools, so people can stay up to date without re-downloading large amounts of good data. 40GB torrents tend to hash 4MB chunks at a time, while a ROM might be only 8KB-- there's a high probability of a chunk becoming invalid.

When someone updates to the next MAME version, they can download an "update" pack with only the ROMs that changed, and a tool will recompress them together with the old files so a torrent client can start seeding the new version immediately.

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been having a very large discussion about this on the IGDA preservation SIG discussion list http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Preservation_SIG What it comes down to is that Jason Scott, at Archive, is fearless. He saves EVERYTHING. If you think putting these MAME ROMS on Internet Archive is ballsy, check out what else he's put on there: https://archive.org/details/tosec The standard policy, as he explained it to me, is…

I'm going to have a good chuckle when we wake up from this life and they hand us a backup disk of it. "Here's your life, including all those 8bit games from the early 80s. Enjoy!"

Heh! You are right at the crux of humans base fear about death. Fear of losing the archive.

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect a DMCA takedown on this from at least Namco and Nintendo before the week is over. So grab it while you can (if you don't have an archive like this already).

We've been having a very large discussion about this on the IGDA preservation SIG discussion list http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Preservation_SIG What it comes down to is that Jason Scott, at Archive, is fearless. He saves EVERYTHING. If you think putting these MAME ROMS on Internet Archive is ballsy, check out what else he's put on there: https://archive.org/details/tosec The standard policy, as he explained it to me, is…

Thanks for you post. I was unclear about what was going on with Archive.org. Fascinating. I believe I'll donate to them.

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#29
post #9

Why did they put them all in one giant zip file? I would love to participate in the BitTorrent swarm, but I'm not keeping a useless [1] 42 GB zip file around. [1] Apart from using fuse-zip, but as far as I can tell, that doesn't work in Windows.

MAME supports zipped roms, they should have been each zipped separately...

They are zipped separately - and then those zips are zipped. I'm sure it made sense to someone.

Re: MAME 0.151 ROMs

#30

Why did they put them all in one giant zip file? I would love to participate in the BitTorrent swarm, but I'm not keeping a useless [1] 42 GB zip file around. [1] Apart from using fuse-zip, but as far as I can tell, that doesn't work in Windows.

It's unusual. Typically MAME collections are distributed with deterministic compression and using automatic managing tools, so people can stay up to date without re-downloading large amounts of good data. 40GB torrents tend to hash 4MB chunks at a time, while a ROM might be only 8KB-- there's a high probability of a chunk becoming invalid. When someone updates to the next MAME version, they can download an "update" p…

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