PSX Roms - Best way to organize

THRobinson

Got my Pi built, up and running with my PS3 controller and a bunch of NES/SNES/N64/Megadrive games and now starting to add in PSX. No luck with MAME/PCEmulation stuff yet.

So I had a bunch of PSX ISO's... all zipped. Unzip and of course, none are ISO files.

Some are .bin only, some .bin/.cue, a few were .bin.ecm, which when expanded were .bin or .bin/.cue, and a few have a single .cue file and two .bin (like part 1 and 2). As a test I took one and resaved as an ISO but when I tried to play it it didn't work.

So, wondering, what do you guys do?

Do you convert everything to single file ISO? I read another thread about renaming the .bin file to lose the extension, which I don't think would work for the files that have no .cue.... basically looking for an easy way to make these work and look nice and organized.

lilbud

Turn them all into .pbp files. The filesize of each will be shrunk

https://gbatemp.net/threads/guide-to-converting-ps1-games-for-psp.206195/

THRobinson

How about for those ones that have 1 cue and 2 bin files? Do we join those together somehow? or make 2 files and RetroPie kinda handles the rest?

Belowstupid

Making pbp is probably the cleanest solution, but by the time I learned about that I had a lot of psx roms already... maybe I'll eventually convert them but that'll take time and it just adds another step to my cataloging.

I just have all my roms on an external drive and obviously each set of roms goes into the corresponding console folder, but for the psx folder I just keep the bin+cue files for a game in a folder with the game's name.

For PSX games you may end up with a WHOLE LOT OF TRACK FILES like for Tomb Raider, or random japanese games. I keep those in a folder and transfer the folder onto the pi to keep the ES list organized.

Also if you go to the 20 minute mark on this video it will show you were you can tell emulation station to not show cue files so the bin file will only show up in your games list on the pi.

Belowstupid

@THRobinson The software that makes pbp files usually just merges the two bin files into a pbp. I'm assuming those are multi disk games like MGS. You just need to make sure you "Swap disks" in the Retroarch Gui when the game asks you to, that should be in Quick Menu >>> Disk options.

mediamogul

@THRobinson said in PSX Roms - Best way to organize:

Do you convert everything to single file ISO?

I know that the .pbp solution has already been mentioned, but it should be worth noting for posterity that converting a BIN/CUE to an ISO will result in data loss for most cases.

THRobinson

That may explain why the test file I tried as an ISO failed to load. Started then just went back to the main screen again.

Thanks for the info guys... I will try pbp tonight and see what happens.

Rookervik

You can easily make folders for each of your games with multiple files and in your gamelist.xml set up a <folder> tag instead of a <game> tag. This will allow you to add all of your meta data and a box art to the folder. Then you just go in the folder and launch whichever file you need to. ESPECIALLY useful for Amiga, C64 and any other disk-based system.

gamelist.xml:

        <folder>
		<path>./Chrono Cross</path>
		<name>Chrono Cross</name>
		<image>./images/Chrono Cross.jpg</image>
	</folder>

That should take care of things without any converting on your part.

THRobinson

@lilbud said in PSX Roms - Best way to organize:

Turn them all into .pbp files. The filesize of each will be shrunk

https://gbatemp.net/threads/guide-to-converting-ps1-games-for-psp.206195/

This worked great, even for the multi .bin files. Made the .pbp files and dropped them to the PSX folder and tested a couple last night without issues. Though, just before starting there is a very small message in the corner that said "no BIOS was found, expect issues" or something similar.

The BIOS stuff still eludes me. I've been to the site and I see some files listed, not sure what I need or if can copy all of them over, which if that simple, why not be part of the img file.

Belowstupid

@THRobinson Do a search for psx bios files and get scph1001.bin (that's the bios for usa ps1s, the bios for our purposes is the region lock) and unzip it. You drop that into the bios folder on your flashdrive, and transfer it to the pi that's all you need to do.

dankcushions

@THRobinson said in PSX Roms - Best way to organize:

@lilbud said in PSX Roms - Best way to organize:

Turn them all into .pbp files. The filesize of each will be shrunk

https://gbatemp.net/threads/guide-to-converting-ps1-games-for-psp.206195/

This worked great, even for the multi .bin files. Made the .pbp files and dropped them to the PSX folder and tested a couple last night without issues. Though, just before starting there is a very small message in the corner that said "no BIOS was found, expect issues" or something similar.

The BIOS stuff still eludes me. I've been to the site and I see some files listed, not sure what I need or if can copy all of them over,

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/playstation-1#bios

it says what you need and where to put it.

which if that simple, why not be part of the img file.

for the same reason games are not. BIOS dumps are copyrighted material that should not be distributed.

THRobinson

Thanks... and I can ignore scph5500.bin /scph5501.bin /scph5502.bin ?

Rion

*.bin.ecm are compressed iso files.
If you have audiotracks (wav, mp3 or ape) outside of the bin/iso files these need to be merged/converted.

These files likely comes from The Redump project here.

Search google with these search parameters
" iso ecm guide " to find some guidelines.

Belowstupid

This post is deleted!

PetroRie

I just create a game folder for each PSX game and drag the ISO's in them. Works fine for me.

THRobinson

Thanks for the suggestions, but that pbp maker worked great. Haven't had the chance to add the BIOS file yet but for the 5 games I added (Spyro 1-3, MediEvil 1-2) they seem to be working just fine.

Though I do have a 'general curiosity'... does compression % affect performance? I assume the greater the compression, the more resources to expand on the fly to play... or is it one of those cases where technically that's true but regardless what amount compressed by, we'd never notice a difference.

kbronctjr

for ecm and ape files, use this guide:

http://www.epforums.org/showthread.php?57757-ECM-And-APE-Guide

THRobinson

@ekoniq why resurrect a 4yr old post for spam?

Ecks

@Rookervik Sorry to bother you but there is a spammer on here for "online poker" which i am going to assume the link is for phishing.