CHD files

[Sotenga]

Who knows exactly what to do to download a working CHD file? I've downloaded a file in five parts and placed them in a folder in my MAME roms directory. What more am I supposed to do? :hmm:

[ghsqb]

Hi Sotenga,
Please bear with me as I am posting this from work, and don't have my MAME in front of me, but I believe there is a specific separate folder for your CHD files. They don't go in the ROMS folder.

Further more, you say it is in several parts.
Perhaps it is .rar/.par format?

If so you will need to use winrar or some such program and combine the pieces to make the whole.

I will confirm all this once I get home and can look at it in person, I'm just going by memory here. But that should maybe help you get going.

[NE146]

I don't even bother.. the majority of the .chd games even when you get them to run end up going around 5fps unless you got a 8+ghz cpu

Definitely not worth devoting a couple of gigs too imho. x_x

[Sotenga]

Hi Sotenga,
Please bear with me as I am posting this from work, and don't have my MAME in front of me, but I believe there is a specific separate folder for your CHD files. They don't go in the ROMS folder.

Further more, you say it is in several parts.
Perhaps it is .rar/.par format?

If so you will need to use winrar or some such program and combine the pieces to make the whole.

I will confirm all this once I get home and can look at it in person, I'm just going by memory here. But that should maybe help you get going.

Thanks. :)

There's a WinRar now? Hmm... :hmm:

NE146, I got teh gigs. This is seriously a huge computer that I've got. :D

[NE146]

NE146, I got teh gigs. This is seriously a huge computer that I've got. :D

So do I.. and I got several CHD's as well ;) But like I said I give up on them and just keep 'em because I got them already. :P

But like I said, it's PLAYING them that's not even worth it. Have fun trying though ;)

[Sotenga]

ghsqb, a slight problem. I don't see a separate folder for CHD files. x_x

NE146, now that MAME supports Beatmania, you better believe that it won't be a waste of hard drive. :D

[NE146]

NE146, now that MAME supports Beatmania, you better believe that it won't be a waste of hard drive. :D

Try playing it bro :P


or should I say. plaaa aaa aaaa aaa y y y y y y y iii i i i i iiii ii ii i ngggggg it ;)

[zektor]

ghsqb, a slight problem. I don't see a separate folder for CHD files. x_x

NE146, now that MAME supports Beatmania, you better believe that it won't be a waste of hard drive. :D

The CHD file goes in a folder inside your ROMS folder bearing the same name of that game's rom.

IE: The romfile for NFL Blitz 99 is called blitz99.zip. the CHD file is called "blitz99.chd" and goes into a folder called "blitz99" inside your roms folder. I hope that made sense :)

[Sotenga]

It did make sense. For example, I created a folder for Killer Instinct's CHD. The rom is in my rom folder/directory (kinst.zip), the folder for my CHD is in my rom folder/directory (kinst) and the folder has all five .rar files for the CHD (kinst.part#.rar) Where do I go from here? Do I compress the .rar files?

[zektor]

It did make sense. For example, I created a folder for Killer Instinct's CHD. The rom is in my rom folder/directory (kinst.zip), the folder for my CHD is in my rom folder/directory (kinst) and the folder has all five .rar files for the CHD (kinst.part#.rar) Where do I go from here? Do I compress the .rar files?

Almost. the CHD has to be unzipped/unrared. Use winrar and unzip the five rar files into one kinst.chd file and put that into the directory.

[Ed Oscuro]

Cool...maybe I'll be able to try out that FMV fighting game (Atari's unreleased Vicious Circle) someday (the one that's still a huge percentage of my MAME directory's bytes...lol)

[Sotenga]

Killer Instinct works! Boo-freaking-yah!!! Thanks to everyone, especially Zektor, for their help! And now, I'm going to try Beatmania! Behold the power of MAME. :D

[Sotenga]

Killer Instinct works! Boo-freaking-yah!!! Thanks to everyone, especially Zektor, for their help! And now, I'm going to try Beatmania! Behold the power of MAME. :D

[leonk]

hope you guys enjoying your CHD's on real arcade hardware.. nothing like it !

also.. check out the newgroups.. lots of new CHD's for future mame! (e.g. wayne gretzky CHD!)

[leonk]

hope you guys enjoying your CHD's on real arcade hardware.. nothing like it !

also.. check out the newgroups.. lots of new CHD's for future mame! (e.g. wayne gretzky CHD!)

[zektor]

hope you guys enjoying your CHD's on real arcade hardware.. nothing like it !

also.. check out the newgroups.. lots of new CHD's for future mame! (e.g. wayne gretzky CHD!)

This is actually something these CHD files are excellent for. Say you have one of these hard disk based machines and the HD dies (which isn't uncommon at all) you can recreate the game data from the CHD file and pop a new HD in your machine. Back up and running again! This is preservation at it's best.

[zektor]

hope you guys enjoying your CHD's on real arcade hardware.. nothing like it !

also.. check out the newgroups.. lots of new CHD's for future mame! (e.g. wayne gretzky CHD!)

This is actually something these CHD files are excellent for. Say you have one of these hard disk based machines and the HD dies (which isn't uncommon at all) you can recreate the game data from the CHD file and pop a new HD in your machine. Back up and running again! This is preservation at it's best.

[Jorpho]

Do you not require a specific model of hard drive, or will any old IDE thing do?

[zektor]

Do you not require a specific model of hard drive, or will any old IDE thing do?

From what I have been told, this was tested on a few machines with an ordinary IDE HD.

[887788]

hope you guys enjoying your CHD's on real arcade hardware.. nothing like it !

also.. check out the newgroups.. lots of new CHD's for future mame! (e.g. wayne gretzky CHD!)

This is actually something these CHD files are excellent for. Say you have one of these hard disk based machines and the HD dies (which isn't uncommon at all) you can recreate the game data from the CHD file and pop a new HD in your machine. Back up and running again! This is preservation at it's best.

[quote="zector'][quote="887788"]I'm a new guy. About CHD's. How and where do i extract the files to in order to make a CHD file? Please e-mail me at luigi_675@yahoo.com

[887788]

This is 887788. I'm a new guy over here. Can anyone tell me all of the steps in order to make a CHD file? Please e-mail at luigi_675@yahoo.com O_O

[InsaneDavid]

Geez, nothing like bumping a 3 year old thread - TWICE. You don't make CHD files, they're an extension for old builds of MAME (I think somewhere around v0.88 they were reformatted) that contained data for games that used harddisk images such as Primal Rage and Beatmania. DP isn't a roms site, go read the MAME FAQs for all the information you need.

[roushimsx]

Geez, nothing like bumping a 3 year old thread - TWICE. You don't make CHD files, they're an extension for old builds of MAME (I think somewhere around v0.88 they were reformatted) that contained data for games that used harddisk images such as Primal Rage and Beatmania. DP isn't a roms site, go read the MAME FAQs for all the information you need.

Just a few corrections here...

a) You can make CHDs (http://aarongiles.com/?p=97), and it's not that hard
b) They're for more than just Hard Drives. CHD stands for "Compressed Hunks of Data", and the change that you're thinking of is when Aaron got pissed off that someone wrote a CHD compression program that he ended up rewriting the format to be natively compressed (making the Killer Instinct CHD files a shit ton smaller). CHDs can also be used for CDs, which basically stores the disc images in ISO+FLAC format.

CHD support was hacked into a build of Zinc, IIRC... I'm not huge on playstation-based arcade hardware (except for the as of yet unemulated G-Net :( ), so I don't pay toooooooo much attention to it :)

...so...yea.

[NE146]

But again.. playing 99% of the chd files is useless.. with a few exceptions, the majority just run too slow on even current top-of-the-line hardware.

They will always be available in the future.. and probably even by then there'd be some changes to them. So I'll just kick back and wait until they're PLAYABLE to even look at them again :P

[Ed Oscuro]

But again.. playing 99% of the chd files is useless.. with a few exceptions, the majority just run too slow on even current top-of-the-line hardware.
The two I've tried (Violent Circle and Crypt Killer) ran just fine even on my second-newest system...

[Jorpho]

Crypt Killer? I imagine it loses much without the shotguns.

[NE146]

But again.. playing 99% of the chd files is useless.. with a few exceptions, the majority just run too slow on even current top-of-the-line hardware.
The two I've tried (Violent Circle and Crypt Killer) ran just fine even on my second-newest system...

Try out the rest of them :P

[Ed Oscuro]

Crypt Killer? I imagine it loses much without the shotguns.
Not as far as I'm concerned, nope. LOL




But again.. playing 99% of the chd files is useless.. with a few exceptions, the majority just run too slow on even current top-of-the-line hardware.
The two I've tried (Violent Circle and Crypt Killer) ran just fine even on my second-newest system...

Try out the rest of them :P
It's a given that 3D games like Cruisin' USA are gonna be slow, but what about the Area 51 games? I imagine all of them (Site 2, Maximum Force or whatever) should run reasonably well. Basically the 2D games should do fine.

[Ze_ro]

I tried playing through a bunch of CHD games today, and surprisingly, most of them were quite playable. Here's a quick summary:
SF Rush, Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy, Mace, Tenth Degree, Hyperdrive, Vapor TRX, Biofreaks, etc Midway/Atari 3D games: Unplayably slow due to high amount of 3D graphics.
War Gods - About 14 FPS, entirely playable in my opinion
Area 51, Maximum Force, etc FMV shooters - Full speed
Beatmania games - I couldn't get any of these to start, as they seem to hang at the RAM check... how long am I supposed to wait for it to finish the SRAM check?
Beat the Champ, Simpsons Bowling - Fail start-up tests, couldn't play
Deadeye - Seems to get stuck in a loop when you try to start a game, couldn't play
Killer Instinct 1 & 2 - Completely playable
Viscious Circle - Full speed
Nagano 98, Hyper Athlete, - About 14 FPS... kinda slow, but playable
Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey - About 5 FPS, unplayable
SFIII, Red Earth, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - Games are encrypted and don't run, so unplayable
Primal Rage 2 - Seems to hang when you try to start a game
My computer is a 1.8 GHz AMD, which isn't exactly top of the line, but there are plenty of CHD games that are playable. Obviously, it's not CHD games that are inherently slow, it's 3D games that are inherently slow.

--Zero

[kingpong]

Beatmania games - I couldn't get any of these to start, as they seem to hang at the RAM check... how long am I supposed to wait for it to finish the SRAM check?

Several minutes. Eventually the games do start. You might be tempted to disable throttling to speed up the process, but that can throw off the in-game timing, which obviously would be a big problem given the nature of the game


Beat the Champ, Simpsons Bowling - Fail start-up tests, couldn't play

From the MAME FAQ - To re-initialize the EEPROM, hold down the test switch (F2) and tap reset (F3) once. Do not let go of F2 until you see a message that says "Initializing EEPROM".


Obviously, it's not CHD games that are inherently slow, it's 3D games that are inherently slow.

Actually it isn't the 3D aspect that makes the games slow. It is just the complexity/power of the general hardware that is being emulated that eats up most of the processing, not the graphics emulation. In the past the devs have built versions of their drivers that don't do any graphics, just the rest of the emulation, and the change in speed is minimal.