Using bit torrent to do partial downloads is nice but it will not remove deleted or renamed files. Over the years, specially if you update each release, you will end up with lots of files that shouldn't be there. You can of course have some kind of script that checks file lists for each set and delete anything not in there.

I use qBittorrent, and all I have to do is tell it to "Move" the torrent after the download is complete.

It only moves files in the torrent, and leaves redundant stuff in the old directory.

This is a nice solution.

Back in the days I used an awesome utility called TorrentCheck ( https://pleasuredome.miraheze.org/wiki/TorrentCheck ) developed by the Pleasuredome user "blackpudd".

I miss that community so much.

A lot of them moved to Discord, as perhaps you know. https://discord.gg/zQyAgSAd

(I don't like Discord, personally, but when a community moves en masse, there's not much you can do about it.)

I'm aware of that, thank you, but I don't like it either. The magic for me is lost.

Yeah the discord chats there are pretty dead. Usually only getting a bit of traffic once a month around release. The exo board is a LOT more active.

I read the parent post to imply that there were ROMs or hacks distributed previously that are no longer distributed as part of the set because the hack is no longer needed.

I'm not sure how your "move" would resolve this if it was already copied in a previous release.

If you point the current torrent at the same rom directory, wait for it to finish, and then tell the client to move the downloaded files, it won't move anything that is no longer part of the current torrent.

Torrent check is really what you want it will remove any no longer needed files. It can put them into a folder for safe keeping if you like.

The method here works as well. You basically run the new torrent over the old files (so you start half way done). Then move the data folder. In the old folder will be any files that are no longer part of the torrent. In the new folder will be only the files for the new torrent.

Unless Im really missing something, it would have already been moved by the previous torrent?

Yes, into the directory you're moving the files from...

I'm looking at the torrents but I don't know what I need to just have the complete arcade collection and the software to run it.

Right now I'm downloading the ROMs torrent, which does add up to 74 GB. But what else do I need for arcade emulation only? Thanks for any insight!

The "arcade hard disk images" torrent, too. Lots of arcade machines weren't purely based on ROM chips.

Thanks. I think I'm clear on it now. Looks like I gotta commit a full terabyte for the complete collection!

They should break it up by year. I've had it all downloaded and installed and working in several ways over the years, but I only really care about stuff released before, say, 2000.

I can kinda understand. I'm looking at MAME (again) because I'm seeing people here say it emulates synths and because I'm interested in some older systems it emulates that simh and qemu don't quite (eg SGI, though qemu may do that one now?).

So it would be nice to be able to pick by category (game,arcade,instrument,computer ...just a for instance) and by year (nothing after 2000, for instance).

Wow

What’s the difference between arcade ROMs and arcade hard disk images? Do these cover different games?

CHD (compressed hunks of data) They represent a CD DVD or hard drive.

Now for most items in MAME you will need both some ROMs and CHDs. The ROMs usually in that case are the firmware of the device that loads up the CHD. The arcade platforms basically ended up being fairly beefy PCs or in some cases retooled game consoles.

At one point the ROMs for those devices were split out into their own torrent. They usually represent something like an playstation. With the CHDs being the CDs. It is also used in places like the Atari platform that runs some of its hardware that has basically different hard drives and some roms to switch out the board being the same between all the arcade games. It is also used for laserdisc games but those probably will change in the next few years as the doomsday project gets its preservation setup the way they want it. In the laserdisc game it would represent the console the arcade game used to load up the disc.

Many of the emus out there are adopting the CHD format for CD/DVD support.

CHD's also represent optical media, not just HDD's. For example the SEGA NAOMI arcade hardware was based on the Dreamcast. As such, GD-ROM was one medium for games. the GD-ROMs are dumped as CHD's.

Basically hdd arcade games are PCs or similar (occasionally customized console hardware) with HDDs attached.

Pretty much anything made post 2002 is that. It started a few years earlier tho.

Before that: custom roms (or at least some custom Roms on standard arcade platform hardware for that company)

Famously games like Dragon's Lair from the 90s require a CHD for all of the full motion video.

Yeah, they’re originally laserdiscs so a bit of a special case, but same basic idea.

However it famously doesn’t support Dragons Lair! Not properly (it can play the video but that’s about it). Tho work has been ongoing.

Daphne is the only emulator of Dragons Lair I know of

While MAME does support some Laserdisc-based games - Firefox, Us vs. Them, Mach 3, Cube Quest, and Time Traveler, along with a couple of others - Dragon's Lair is not among them. It's complicated.

Yes, although some need both. ROMs are images of physical ROM chips. The hard disk images are called "CHDs" and are usually hard disk images but can also be laserdiscs.

I didn't know they used hard disks in arcade games... were those games implemented on some sort of embedded PC hardware?

Virtually all arcade games made since the 2000s (ish) run on standard PC hardware.

Maybe, but Konami "djmain" (first-gen Beatmania series) didn't. Neither did their "Twinkle" hardware (Beatmania IIDX series). Nor did their "Firebeat" hardware (Beatmania III series, Pop'n Music series, Keyboardmania series, Para Para Paradise series). Neither did their "GQ" board (Crypt Killers). Also, Taito's "Type Zero" board (9 games, look it up on System16). Oh, and Atari/Midway/Williams's Seattle, Vegas, Denver, Atlantis, Phoenix, and Flagstaff boards (SF Rush, SF Rush 2049, NFL Blitz, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, Gauntlet: Legends, others). Incredible Technologies' "Eagle" board (Golden Tee Fore, Big Buck Hunter, Virtual Pool).

I have omitted quite a few.