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Preparing neogeo roms for MiSTer

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:48 pm
by keilmillerjr
Hello,

I am new to MiSTer, have experience with MAME, own an MVS-2-25. I have read NeoGeo_MiSTer/readme.md, and have a few questions in regards to preparing roms for the neogeo core.
  • Why isn't MAME roms directly supported?
  • Is both Darksoft and TerraOnion .neo formats supported?
  • Is one rom format better than the other?
  • Is Hardware Target Game Database a tool that would convert MAME to Darksoft, and include decryption?
  • Does the neogeo core use a specific version of MAME derived roms?

Re: Preparing neogeo roms for MiSTer

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 3:19 am
by allegrosurf
Search "darksoft neo geo rollup pack" on google..

Re: Preparing neogeo roms for MiSTer

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 3:53 am
by C-R-T
Weird coincidence, as I struggled with the exact same thing at the exact same time as you. I had no luck finding the above, but on archive.org someone had prepared something that did work - neogeo mister 2019 something, a 1.6 GB archive.

Re: Preparing neogeo roms for MiSTer

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:43 am
by KnC
keilmillerjr wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:48 pm Hello,

I am new to MiSTer, have experience with MAME, own an MVS-2-25. I have read NeoGeo_MiSTer/readme.md, and have a few questions in regards to preparing roms for the neogeo core.

[*]Why isn't MAME roms directly supported?
They are supported through the xml (but not all games work without patch or decrypting)

[*]Is both Darksoft and TerraOnion .neo formats supported?
yes

[*]Is one rom format better than the other?
plain mame and darksoft need a xml .neo does not

[*]Is Hardware Target Game Database a tool that would convert MAME to Darksoft, and include decryption?
no it is just a list you can use to compile your own collection of roms

[*]Does the neogeo core use a specific version of MAME derived roms?
Not special but some require a patch and decrypting which is all ready done by the apps to make the darksoft/.neo roms

Re: Preparing neogeo roms for MiSTer

Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:45 am
by georgemog
I had a problem with the ROMs and couldn't find the Darksoft ROM rollup-pack. The NeoGeo core would show 000-lo.lo loading and nothing else. It had me puzzled completely for a while. Yesterday after several weeks of playing with this I figured out what the problem was. The MAME ROM's that I had were not in the correct format. I found the following python scripts in GitHub that would allow me to do the conversion:-

https://github.com/aluzed/MiSTer-Neogeo-Rom-Decrypter

Many thanks to Alan P fro posting this.

I copied the two python files generator.py and get_hash.py into the same directory as the MAME ROM zip files on my Mac. I then put together the following command to process all the .zip files.

Code: Select all

for file in ` ls *.zip`; do unzip $file; python3 generator.py ; cd export ; zip ../../$file ./*; cd ..; rm -rf export; for rom in `ls | egrep -v 'zip|py'`; do rm $rom; done;  done
This didn't work because the generator.py script asks for the user to "press a key to continue. Using your favourite editor comment out the last lines of generator.py so that it doesn't do this.

change

Code: Select all

# Launch /!\ 
try:
    convert_roms()
except:
    print (sys.exc_info()[0])
    raise

print('job done, press a key to exit...')
input()
to

Code: Select all

# Launch /!\ 
try:
    convert_roms()
except:
    print (sys.exc_info()[0])
    raise

#print('job done, press a key to exit...')
#input()
Run the command and it will pack and zip up all the ROM files in to the Darksoft format.

Copy them over to the Mister and load the NeoGeo core. If all goes well these ROMs should work. Well they did for me. I now need a larger SD-RAM card so that I can run all the games.