Copy arcade game hard drive to flash disk

priglmeier

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I have several games that have HDs attached to them for loading the game code. I'd like to convert some of them to compact flash drives. I have a couple reasons for wanting to do this:

HDs will eventually fail
HDs are noisy as hell in most arcade games
Flash is reliable and then I can keep the HD as a backup

My question is does anyone know folks who have done this? I'd like to migrate a Gauntlet Legends from HD first.

Thoughts?!?
 
thanks

I forgot all about that MAME utility. It will be nice to use it for the conversions.
What games have you used it on? Can you use it with golden tee?
 
You should be able to use it on any HDD game. Keep in mind that some games will require a custom boot disk because they look for a specific brand and model hard drive. The modified boot rom lets it see any drive.

I have done a few Killer Instincts with it.
 
There was a guy on ebay who was selling ready-made hard drive to CF conversions.

In many games that have hard drives you must be very careful when doing a manual degauss so that you don't erase/corrupt the hard drive. Naturally, a CF drive is immune to those kind of problems.
 
not to derail, but I was thinking of building my own CF kits. any particular hardware you guys recommend using?

the RevisionX tutorial is great, I cloned my Road Burners drive with it and it matched with the MAME image.

the obvious secret is to clone the drives before they fail. some of my games I might be SOL on, they're all in MAME (in spirit, of course) so it'll be ok I think.

I saw some CF -> IDE adapters on newegg, but none of them looked like the ones that RevisionX uses. I guess I could dig into my KI1 and maybe read a model # from it. he's good for e-mailing too, he helped me out a bit with my KI1 last year.
 
There was a guy on ebay who was selling ready-made hard drive to CF conversions.

In many games that have hard drives you must be very careful when doing a manual degauss so that you don't erase/corrupt the hard drive. Naturally, a CF drive is immune to those kind of problems.

Aha!

This is exactly what I was concerned about with my Gauntlet Legends!

What do you do to avoid messing up the hard drive?
 
You take the hard drive out when you do a manual degauss. Keep it far away (at least ten feet) from the hand held degausser when it's in operation.
 
I have done this with my SF Rush the rock and also with my two Megatouch Maxx games. works great. I believe I bought the IDE to CF from newegg and bought a few 8GB CF cards. I used CHDman83 and it worked great.
 
chdman tutorial on Mac OS X

The Windows XP machine I have doesn't seem to be able to extract the CHDs consistently so I'm using my Mac to get the job done. Windows seems to be able to create the CHD with no issues most of the time.

If you're a mac user:

download macMAME or other with the 'chdman' command line program

Connect the hard drive or CF that you want to extract to either internally or / USB /firewire/etc

Decide whether or not you need to partition / format the NEW disk. Verify the current arcade game HD disk format. It should probably be almost 100% FREE SPACE. Free space, FAT, AFT32, NTFS, UFS...
If you don't need to leave it as is.

Open Disk Utility (optional)
Partition the NEW drive with 1 partition and as 'free space' w/ option button and then MS DOS FAT selected
*** Make sure you are correct or you will erase the wrong disk

Open a terminal
type 'diskutil list'
find the disk that you just connected and find the /dev/disk##
*** Make sure you are correct or you will erase the wrong disk in the next step !!!


Open a terminal
'cd' to the place where chdman and the CHD are located
./chdman -extract filename.chd /dev/disk#
WAIT....

That's the power of UNIX. Done!
 
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I had no problem extracting chd's from the hard drive with chdman.
You can use the chd's in mame if you dont have a good original hard drive.
I bought my CF adapters off e bay, they came out of china. You can get them dirt cheap from china but they take about 2 weeks to get. I buy the one with a 90° connector on them that plugs directly into the board and doesnt require a ribbon cable.
 
hey guys, does this work with megatouch ruby and greater, my hard drives are dropping like flies!!!
 
I tried doing this a while back with a War: Final Assualt but it didn't work. I didn't know about some games needing modified boot ROM's however. Since it's the same hardware as Gauntlet Legends, anyone know if a modified boot ROM is needed for that hardware?
 
chd Question

Hi, I read your quote responses about chd files and chdman. I own a Mac OSX 10.6.3 with MAME OSX 135. I love to play classic arcade games in my spare time.

I downloaded Killer Instinct 1 & 2 for this emulator but it appears I have the wrong chd files. I heard that they would have to be updated by a program called chdman but I do not know how to do it from a mac. I heard MacMAME has a chdman that opens a terminal.

The chd files I have run both games at quarter the normal speed (very slow). I check the log window from the menu and it reads:


kinst.chd WRONG CHECKSUMS:
EXPECTED: SHA1(81d833236e994528d1482979261401b198d1ca53)
FOUND: SHA1(a37a2c5e52ea936a715210d237874dd573bb002f)
WARNING: the game might not run correctly.

I used to play both games no problem when I had MAME OSX 124 in my Tiger Mac 10.4 When I test both games in MAME OSX 124 from my current snow leopard, I get a message saying "unsupported chd."

After downloading chd files from multiple sources I get the same message...

Would you know how to use the chdman for Macmame so I can update the chd files? Or any other type of possible solution that you could help me with?

Thanks!
 
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kinst.chd WRONG CHECKSUMS:
EXPECTED: SHA1(81d833236e994528d1482979261401b198d1ca53)
FOUND: SHA1(a37a2c5e52ea936a715210d237874dd573bb002f)
WARNING: the game might not run correctly.
!

KI 1 and 2 require a special boot rom to allow for a copied drive. perhaps in an emulator you will require those also. google killer instinct project and your answer should be found on the first hit.
 
what kind of IDE to CF adapter would need to be used in a cabinet, such as Golden Tee? I am wanting to do this but want to get the corrector adpater that takes power form the HD power molex...
 
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