My Ideal ROM Collection and Bad SD Cards
May. 13th, 2024 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroSo, a warning: If you get an SD card from AliExpress that has no branding, just a size number (64, 128, etc), you should probably replace it with a name-brand one and dub everything over. I learned this the hard way, though much later than I might have expected. The card for my Trimui Smart Pro spontaneously wiped itself when I put it into my PC to rearrange files, and then the card for my RG35XX-H stopped reading in my PC (though it still played properly in the device) shortly thereafter.
It occurred to me to wonder why I hadn’t hit this problem before; the only bad card I had was the original one with the Miyoo Mini Plus, which worked but just loaded incredibly slowly. Then I realized that for the majority of my handhelds (that had SD cards) I either:
• Replaced the SD card so I could use a different OS (Q90, RG35XX)
• Had to buy my own SD card begin with (various Retroids, mostly)
• Didn’t swap out the SD card enough or didn’t use the system enough to detect this failure mode. (A dozen other devices)
Really, my original RG350 was the only device that I got super-lucky on in this regard. The Trimui Smart Pro and the RG35XX-H are the first two Linux devices in a long time that I want to use heavily but I wanted to keep the stock firmware to do it.
Anyway, I downloaded the Anbernic firmware package for the RG35XX-H and that was easy-peasy and even included the same rom list. But the Trimui firmware package didn’t, and I had to decide what to fill the card with. I ended up ordering another AliExpress card just to pull roms off of, because I was upset to lose the “Best” folder of 500-in-1 rips. But then I made a new Sandisk card with my curated “Ideal Roms Collection” that I’ve been working on for the last year or so.
But it didn’t have any mapped box art. And I remembered I kinda wanted mapped box art for the RG35XX, too. And the mapped set that came with the RG35XX-H didn’t match my ideal list (especially for SNES games, but it was missing all sorts of things). So for the past week, I’ve been doing the ridiculous task of mapping all of my roms (literally thousands of them) to box art from various collections, including the ones that came on the RG35XX-H, the R36S, and the Trimui Smart Pro; and various artwork I found online for romhacks. And I updated my collection along the way, clearing out a few duplicates and adding a few new hacks and translations. Then I put the new lists on the new Trimui Smart Pro card, updated the lists on the RG35XX-H, and updated both cards (GarlicOS and Koriki) for the RG35XX. And it is sweet, let me tell you.
This also just made me realize how I’ve been handling my rom collection: I’m actually more likely to keep every game for older systems I never played or played very little of (Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Lynx, Neo-Geo Pocket Color, Arcade games), but be more choosy with older systems I played heavily (NES, SNES, GB, GBA, Atari 2600). And for newer systems, I’ll actually cull it down to exclusively the games I own/like/want to play again (DS, PSP, N64, PS1). Some of that is space concerns, but I think a lot of it is that you can play 5 minutes of anything in the Lynx catalogue and get a sense of how fun it is; and an hour of play is your money’s worth. For much of the PS1 catalogue, five minutes won’t even get you past the opening cinematic and into gameplay. Newer games are much more of a commitment and less useful for random pick-up-and-play. A 12 MB file for a game I might (or might not) play on the subway for ten minutes is worth keeping. There isn’t much point to keeping a half-gig disc rip of a 20-hour game I’m not actually interested in.
Anyway, long story short, I lost my saves for Breath of Fire 4 but reconstructed everything and hopefully I’m better protected now, and I have my full rom collection with associated artwork that I can enjoy on all my devices.
It occurred to me to wonder why I hadn’t hit this problem before; the only bad card I had was the original one with the Miyoo Mini Plus, which worked but just loaded incredibly slowly. Then I realized that for the majority of my handhelds (that had SD cards) I either:
• Replaced the SD card so I could use a different OS (Q90, RG35XX)
• Had to buy my own SD card begin with (various Retroids, mostly)
• Didn’t swap out the SD card enough or didn’t use the system enough to detect this failure mode. (A dozen other devices)
Really, my original RG350 was the only device that I got super-lucky on in this regard. The Trimui Smart Pro and the RG35XX-H are the first two Linux devices in a long time that I want to use heavily but I wanted to keep the stock firmware to do it.
Anyway, I downloaded the Anbernic firmware package for the RG35XX-H and that was easy-peasy and even included the same rom list. But the Trimui firmware package didn’t, and I had to decide what to fill the card with. I ended up ordering another AliExpress card just to pull roms off of, because I was upset to lose the “Best” folder of 500-in-1 rips. But then I made a new Sandisk card with my curated “Ideal Roms Collection” that I’ve been working on for the last year or so.
But it didn’t have any mapped box art. And I remembered I kinda wanted mapped box art for the RG35XX, too. And the mapped set that came with the RG35XX-H didn’t match my ideal list (especially for SNES games, but it was missing all sorts of things). So for the past week, I’ve been doing the ridiculous task of mapping all of my roms (literally thousands of them) to box art from various collections, including the ones that came on the RG35XX-H, the R36S, and the Trimui Smart Pro; and various artwork I found online for romhacks. And I updated my collection along the way, clearing out a few duplicates and adding a few new hacks and translations. Then I put the new lists on the new Trimui Smart Pro card, updated the lists on the RG35XX-H, and updated both cards (GarlicOS and Koriki) for the RG35XX. And it is sweet, let me tell you.
This also just made me realize how I’ve been handling my rom collection: I’m actually more likely to keep every game for older systems I never played or played very little of (Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Lynx, Neo-Geo Pocket Color, Arcade games), but be more choosy with older systems I played heavily (NES, SNES, GB, GBA, Atari 2600). And for newer systems, I’ll actually cull it down to exclusively the games I own/like/want to play again (DS, PSP, N64, PS1). Some of that is space concerns, but I think a lot of it is that you can play 5 minutes of anything in the Lynx catalogue and get a sense of how fun it is; and an hour of play is your money’s worth. For much of the PS1 catalogue, five minutes won’t even get you past the opening cinematic and into gameplay. Newer games are much more of a commitment and less useful for random pick-up-and-play. A 12 MB file for a game I might (or might not) play on the subway for ten minutes is worth keeping. There isn’t much point to keeping a half-gig disc rip of a 20-hour game I’m not actually interested in.
Anyway, long story short, I lost my saves for Breath of Fire 4 but reconstructed everything and hopefully I’m better protected now, and I have my full rom collection with associated artwork that I can enjoy on all my devices.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-14 01:23 pm (UTC)