Creativision on MAME?

[Lazzeri]

Hello,

I´m trying to run a series of Creativision games on MAME but i´m facing a problem: All of the >4k games I can found are archived as a single BIN file, but MAME demands them as separate files?

For instance: Chopper Rescue can be easily found as a 18 kb, single BIN. But MAME seems to demand a ZIP file with 3 parts, CHOPPER_01, CHOPPER_02 and CHOPPER_03.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a place to download those specific ROMs?

Thank you!

[MADrigal]

You basically need to find and download the ROMs in the format MAME requires - that is one file per 'ROM chip as it was in the original cartridges'.
The oddity is that some games (e.g. 8 KBytes) came in cartridge with 1x8Kb or 2x4Kb and MAME 'opted' to use one only. e.g. 2x4Kb format.
You can make Chopper yourself by splitting the 18K bin file in 8+8+2K files and save them in the format MAME requires.

[@username@]

Another option is just to use the roms from here and cut them up.

In the hash subfolder of Mame you will find the crvision.xml file.

Each expected name and rom parts with SHA1 and CRC-32 are listed.

This is BASIC83B.BIN on this site, broken down in the XML

Code: Select all

	<software name="basic">
		<description>Basic V.1 (1983, Release 2)</description>
		<year>1983</year>
		<publisher>Video Technology Ltd.</publisher>
		<info name="serial" value="8011" />
		<info name="usage" value="Not for manager or lasr2001" />
		<part name="cart" interface="crvision_cart">
			<feature name="slot" value="crv_rom12k" />
			<dataarea name="rom" size="12288">
				<rom name="basicram_01.bin" size="4096" crc="5ee092d0" sha1="c02b0a7e81a2f43a704376381c167b7c6632119c" offset="0x0000" />
				<rom name="basicram_02.bin" size="4096" crc="76e661db" sha1="ad0aff12c7bee9dd4f256942614b7e99586698f5" offset="0x1000" />
				<rom name="basicram_03.bin" size="4096" crc="2a5f9ce8" sha1="deedfaa7f0df92beffeab2c84fc503e6b7b9a262" offset="0x2000" />
			</dataarea>
		</part>
	</software>

To recreate, using DD for Windows, or plain DD on linux/wsl is just

Code: Select all

Part one
dd if=basic83b.bin of=basicram_01.bin bs=4096 count=1

Part two
dd if=basic83b.bin of=basicram_02.bin bs=4096 count=1 skip=1

Part three
dd if=basic83b.bin of=basicram_03.bin bs=4096 count=2 skip=2

To verify the SHA1 of each, just use certutil -hashfile part_filename.bin

Finally just create a zip file of software_name.zip, in this case basic.zip, whichever way you prefer

EDIT - Hopefully this is OK with Luca - here's the Mame set for 0.265 - enjoy

[@username@]

BIOS for Mame is simply our normal bioscv.rom renamed to crvision.u20.