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March 28, 2024, 11:57:27 PM

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Help me understand something very basic about emulators

Started by Thursday, March 13, 2021, 07:41:17 PM

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Thursday

I realize this is just me being very stupid, but I need help.

I download an emulator for a console right, this has happened for various kinds of emulator.

I look at various sites that have "Roms" or maybe torrent the game I want.

I extract the files and there's no rom, but there is an Iso file. The emulators I l have have no means of opening this Iso file.

????????????

I've had success with emulators in the past so I have no idea why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Why is it not just download the commonly used thing and it works with most things?

madhair60


JaDanketies

You likely need to 'mount' the ISO to either a virtual disk on your computer (perhaps with daemontools) or to a USB or something that you can shove in another device. I'm sure if you Google 'mount ISO' and then whatever device you're trying to use the ISO on, you'll see something helpful.

Thursday


madhair60

Duckstation for PS1. Find bin/cue versions of the games and load the cue file. DS should just be a .nds file.

peanutbutter

RE ds, I'd get a dsi for £20 on eBay. Now that it's cracked you don't even need an R4 card because twilight menu will boot DS roms for you on it.

Can still even play Mario Kart DS online if you can be arsed figuring out how to get a WEP wifi network set up in 2021

Thursday

Well I've got some stuff working now so thanks, although duckstation didn't help but I got stuff running on epsx now.

Malcy

Quote from: Thursday on March 13, 2021, 10:44:36 PM
Well I've got some stuff working now so thanks, although duckstation didn't help but I got stuff running on epsx now.

I tried a few emulators for PS1 recently and they were all varying amounts of shite. Didn't work at all, games wouldn't load or emulate properly. Got Duckstation, downloaded the BIOS file and put it in the folder and off I went. Zero issues with it and a doddle to use.

Even went on to RetroAchievements and signed up and enabled it in the emulator. Downloaded loads of games. Played through Doom, Spyro, Wu-Tang, Wip3out and Parappa The Rappa in the past couple of weeks and I'm really enjoying it.

As far as getting .ISO roms can you not just right click and extract using WinRar? I downloaded an old Beavis & Butthead Windows game last week and that's what I did for that.

Found an Archive.org link for pretty much every PS1 game earlier but don't know if it's OK to post it here.

Ferris

Quote from: peanutbutter on March 13, 2021, 08:36:45 PM
RE ds, I'd get a dsi for £20 on eBay. Now that it's cracked you don't even need an R4 card because twilight menu will boot DS roms for you on it.

Can still even play Mario Kart DS online if you can be arsed figuring out how to get a WEP wifi network set up in 2021

Fucking hell I tried (and failed) to softmod my DSi just this week! Small world.

Well, I didn't fail I just couldn't be arsed.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Malcy on March 13, 2021, 11:44:51 PM
I tried a few emulators for PS1 recently and they were all varying amounts of shite. Didn't work at all, games wouldn't load or emulate properly. Got Duckstation, downloaded the BIOS file and put it in the folder and off I went. Zero issues with it and a doddle to use.

Even went on to RetroAchievements and signed up and enabled it in the emulator. Downloaded loads of games. Played through Doom, Spyro, Wu-Tang, Wip3out and Parappa The Rappa in the past couple of weeks and I'm really enjoying it.

As far as getting .ISO roms can you not just right click and extract using WinRar? I downloaded an old Beavis & Butthead Windows game last week and that's what I did for that.

Found an Archive.org link for pretty much every PS1 game earlier but don't know if it's OK to post it here.

The psx emulators for android seem ok. But I didn't have a bluetooth controller and trying to play parappa the rapper on a virtual touch-screen control overlay was hopeless.

Malcy

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on March 14, 2021, 06:20:16 PM
The psx emulators for android seem ok. But I didn't have a bluetooth controller and trying to play parappa the rapper on a virtual touch-screen control overlay was hopeless.

Parappa was the main reason I downloaded the emulator. Plugged my Xbox controller into the laptop and I struggled to complete it! Was well over a dozen attempts to just do the driving test. I used to be able to freestyle the levels and get huge scores.

I think if I had tried to do it on a touchscreen I would have flung it at the wall!

Sebastian Cobb

I gave up very quickly.

I never had a PSX back in the day though so wouldn't have had the muscle memory to begin with. Played a few mates and got a lend of one when they went on holiday. My main memory was how frustrating the original Driver car-park intro was. Which later I realise must've been very heavily inspired by the 1970's Bruce Dern film The Driver.

evilcommiedictator

Broadly speaking:

  • A ROM is just a dump of the cartridge/CD
  • A ISO is a computer-format for CD and DVD images - for more modern consoles that use CDs/DVDs they may come as .ISOs. You can probably just load the ISO directly into the emulator
  • Technically it is illegal to have a ROM if you don't already own the original bit of software

And of course, I own every single retro console game released across the world from the Master System to the GBA.....

Consignia

You need cue files for CD based systems as they tell you were all the different tracks (audio and data) are on the ISO image. You can generate them from the raw iso, there were certainly tools when I last did it around 20 years ago, but you might miss the audio tracks. I don't think it's massive problem for most PSX games though. I can't think of too many that use CD audio.

MojoJojo

Quote from: evilcommiedictator on March 14, 2021, 09:26:39 PM

  • Technically it is illegal to have a ROM if you don't already own the original bit of software

Nah, sorry mate, owning the original bit of software doesn't make having the rom legal. The license you purchase with a piece of software is very narrow.

Ferris

What about if it is abandonware or ancient? Would the licenses (such as they are) have expired?

touchingcloth

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on March 15, 2021, 11:58:22 AM
What about if it is abandonware or ancient? Would the licenses (such as they are) have expired?

A grey area, I think.

It's one of those things where even if the ownership of a ROM is technically illegal, the chances of the rights owners knowing that you have it and being arsed enough to prosecute are essentially non-existent.

I believe that the licences for a lot of games technically make creating a ROM yourself for a game you own (for a backup, so you can use an emulator instead of a console) illegal. A lot of the legal language will have been written before creating ROMs and emulating hardware were unimaginable possibilities, so the concepts aren't explicitly catered for and you'd need to be a legal scholar to understand which side of the law you were on.

It's like my approach to books. I prefer reading on a Kindle, but I'll download copies of books I own from libgen rather than pay for an official e-book version, ditto for torrenting films I own on DVD.

Zetetic

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on March 15, 2021, 11:58:22 AM
What about if it is abandonware or ancient? Would the licenses (such as they are) have expired?
Given copyright is of the order of 70 years following death of the creator, no.

Quote from: touchingcloth on March 15, 2021, 12:48:57 PM
A lot of the legal language will have been written before creating ROMs and emulating hardware were unimaginable possibilities, so the concepts aren't explicitly catered for and you'd need to be a legal scholar to understand which side of the law you were on.
I don't think this is true - they were always deliberately designed to prohibit duplication for any purpose. (But at least a few jurisdictions have since determined that these prohibitions aren't justifiable and that people should have the right to, for example, make archival copies of material they own.)

Ferris

What if I got a ROM of a video game published in the 1920s?