Hello,

I'm a n00b, so bear with me here.

I am getting my modchip next week, and I'm doing as much reading as I can to learn about everything I can.

I'm going to be installing some emulators, and have some questions about the files.

I've read that a .zip is a valid extension for some emulators, but I haven't been able to determine which ones.

Are all emulators able to run compressed ROM files (zipped/rarred) or only certain ones?

I'm running a stock xbox hd and would really like to be able to save some space by zipping all my ROM's (individually of course).

Can anyone offer any direction here?

I plan to use:
NES - MednafenX
SNES - ZSNESbox
N64 - Surreal64

Also, do you feel these are the best emulators available (most compatible)?

Thanks!
Jedi

zip does work for MednafenX, Zsnexbox
as for Surreal64 i think it works.

Yes.

You can also run these off a DVD and not even put them on your hard drive.

of course Nes thought zsnesbox was the best.

Those are all good ones, and if you get cramped for space on your HDD, just burn the stuff to disk. make sure you change any config files to have the roms on disk, but saves and screens on the HDD.

Well, I guess I am a bit biased....

Thanks

Two more Q's if I can hehe

How I understand it, is that the Box Art is displayed by the CRC of the ROM file.

Does ZIPing the files in any way affect this? Will I need to modify the config of the emulator to recognize the CRC of the ZIP rather than the ROM?

Does the filename matter? Some of the ROMS I have are very poorly named (all 8-char's, some very very cryptic).

Also for Sega Genesis, do you recommend Xenesis or Neogenesis?

Cheers!
Jedi

The box art for surreal uses the CRC of the rom. And surreal comes with all the box art named correctly. I don't think it matters if the games are zipped or not. All the others rely on the box art to match the game name:

i.e: SMW (U)(!).zip needs SMW (U)(!).png

The filenames need to be fatx compliant. Run all your files through a fatx renaming tool to check/replace bad characters.

I recommend NeoGenesis.

NES,

Will FatX rename the files automatically?

Do you happen to know of a method to do a batch ZIP job to compress each file into its own .ZIP file?

Cheers,
Jedi

Yup. It will automatically fix all the errors.

As for the zip question. Winrar works great

1) Install winrar
2) Open up windows explorer and select all your roms.
3) Right click the selection and choose "Add to archive"
4) Winrar pops up. Change the type to "Zip"
5) Click the "Files" tab and check "Put each file to separate archive"
6) Click "OK" and it will create a zip file for each game separatly.

then run all these zips through the fatx renamer. That way you preserve the filenames inside the zip (i.e. you used goodsnes, goodnes, etc.. to properly rename them first) for future use. But if you don't care about that, you can do the fatx renaming tool first.

I personally like this tool the best:

http://dwl.xbox-scene.com/~xbox/xbox-scene...Tool0.3Beta.zip

Just don't put too many files (like 2000+) in a folder because sometimes it will crap out and screw up your filenames. If I have a lot of files, I usually split them up into separate folders and run the tool on each.

This might seem silly, but I have all the good-tools for my rom sets, but they are all .dat files.

Where do I get the front-end to work with?

http://www.zophar.net/utilities/goodutil.html

Thanks very much for your help NES

I'm renaming them all now!

i was kidding in case i didnt indicate that, nes. it is the best one ive seen so far, and neverwill's hardware skin will have me using it more.

BTW: have you seen my thread about my snes controller on the xbox? yeah, i did it.

Yeah, I knew you were kidding. And yeah, I saw your mod. Great work!

If you would like to save space you can rip your emulators on a dvd and you will need to change the config file to the path of you dvd drive. For example E:\Roms.